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track.com welcome to the very first episode the inaugural episode of stories from the hurricane Highway the new podcast I'm happy to be producing this and so glad you tuned in episode one here I call this in the beginning this podcast in fact in the date for this is December 4th 2019 these will be dropped once per week every Wednesday hopefully but definitely once per week between now and May and this podcast is not going to cover current events this is going to be a
look a very intimate look behind the scenes of the stories that have shaped my career and we're going to start at the very beginning and just move through the chronological history so this could take a few years which is good on the one hand because this will give us something to do especially between December and may of each year this will be a seasonal thing that we will do in the off season of hurricanes you know hurricane season goes from June through November and then I figured hey at the end of November early December let's start something different and thanks to the support that I have received on patreon especially over the last year to year and a half I am in a position to be able to do this original content and you all are the benefactors of such as this is available exclusively to our community of
supporters whether it be our patrons specifically on patreon or our hurricane track insiders that have been subscribers to that service for a number of years and eventually by the way we will talk about how all of that came to be but that was in 2005 so hard to say
exactly when we will get to 2005 yo know several episodes down the road but back to my original premise here and first of all this is also going to be relatively unscripted I do have a general outline of each show each podcast episode but it's just talking you know just sitting down and kind of like you're on the other side just listening to me as if you were taking notes to write a book maybe you're a ghost writer and you're going to write a book about what I've done well this is how I would do that now that's what this podcast is all about stories from the hurricane highway so no current event stuff this is just um history so we're not going to do anything like I would talk about in in the discussions in fact it's the off season so there shouldn't be any hurricanes right all right so the episode one here is called in the beginning now what in the world would
make somebody who has Intelligence of an above average level hopefully want to go into hurricanes on purpose driving into them
or fly into them as the hurricane Hunters do uh but that's an you know another story from another group of people maybe they'll do a podcast one day um so what would make somebody want to do that such as myself and there's others that you know of out there and eventually I will sit down with some of those people uh in future episodes as time permits and they'll be part of this these are going to be stories about people that I have encountered events that have shaped everything and it all goes back to this beginning what in the world would drive me to do this to drive anyone to do this well I don't know that's the short answer all right so hey thanks for tuning in and listening this has been great no I'm just kidding um I don't know I don't know what the mental um mechanism is to go against all logic and
drive into something that is inherently
dangerous that we know about in advance could be dangerous whether it be firefighters that go into a burning building police officers the military you know anybody that's doing something that they know and Advance is dangerous but they do it anyway but you know as We examined that question why would somebody do that it's not just weather extreme weather tornado Chasers hurricane Chasers whatever it's also you think about it in sports like professional sports um there's only been a tiny tiny handful thank goodness of storm chasers and I use that term in a very general sense that have been killed in the line of duty so to speak in football at professional football I
don't know the statistics off the top of my head but it's got to be more than a dozen football players that have died as a result of concussion related injuries even after they have retired they've committed suicide whatever that's a really big controversy so you know more teachers have been killed in school shootings than Storm Chasers have been killed out in the field so it's not as dangerous and crazy as people make it out to be I don't know where that came from maybe it's just the human nature most people look at severe weather they run away from it people like me do not so where did that get started um well as they say in the beginning I
was born in North Carolina in Durham and I think that has a lot to do with it uh where where you grow up uh in terms of what weather influences you as a child if yo grow up in Minnesota um my condolences but um you know it's a lot colder there you know are you going to become somebody that's interested in uh winter weather you know maybe yo grew up in Rochester New York um there's a big difference you know in those areas in the the northern latitudes then if you grew up in Miami or in North Carolina or Houston Texas however in Hurricane Alley I guess that has a lot to do with it so you know I was born in Durham um in 1970 and North Carolina has four
distinct Seasons I think that is the first clue uh as to why I am what I am because as a kid yo experience those four distinct seasons in the spring we have a big severe weather season there's even sort of a small tornado alley if you will in parts of North Carolina um where tornadoes are more apt to form um it's not just random and you know we have well not the winters used to be much more severe I say severe but um I remember as a kid we'd have a lot more winter weather than we do now um and of course we had hurricanes and then in the fall too we had fall weather but I was never much of a fall person in fact fall was always depressing to me because that meant the end of convective season generally the end of hurricane season and it was kind of depressing and until we got to Winter and now winter has become kind of depressing because it doesn't snow like it used to but as yo know I now can go wherever I need to if I want to be in the snow we'll cover that in a future episode as well so as kid grew up in North Carolina moved from Durham down to New Bern at a very young age and in New Bern you have the Trent and the Neuse Rivers we my family and I lived on the river for a number of years and that's where it really started um the Down East North Carolina area the Crystal Coast that's where we would vacation the Outer Banks Rodanthe waves Avon Hatteras Buxton wherever we went there as a child my family and I my mom my dad my brother and myself and you start learning about things yo learn about the Lost Colony and the settlement times and hurricanes and storms and the graveyard of the Atlantic now just that term itself is really interesting as a
child is it not I think it is so yo learn about these things at a young age the graveyard of the Atlantic wow that's really interesting so I read about it and that's not because of um some Supernatural Force that's a real thing and it was because of Storms and shoaling off of the Outer Banks but mostly storms the ocean turning against the early Sailors and the attempts at settlement wow and then what happens after that well the graveyard of the Atlantic and the resulting um you know lost to ships Etc shaped early American history now you start to see where weather shapes American history wow that's interesting too so at a very young age the seeds are planted because of where I grew up and locally
Newburn had a hurricane history going back all the way to settlement times and you know Newburn used to be the capital of North Carolina now it's in Raleigh Tryon Palace was the literal Capital Area and um now it's up in Raleigh of course at the Capitol building but newborn was the focal point for hurricane history yo know Beaufort Atlantic Beach Morehead City and of course as I mentioned the Outer Banks and so at a very young age I got the bug and I did as much as I could you remember these things called encyclopedias now it's called Google or whatever you use and the world is at our fingertips but back then it was an encyclopedia and I would open it up and read about hurricanes tornadoes volcanoes I was a a science nerd I loved
it um and I did everything I could to read about it at an early age and um it also didn't hurt that my dad owned a sailboat and we would go sailing from time to time and of course if you're going to go sailing you have to know about the weather and he being an educated man taught me what he knew I learned about thunderheads you know cumulonimbus clouds is what they are technically called but you know we as a kid my brother and I oh those are thunderheads you know talked about severe weather he had a hurricane tracking map each summer that would be on the wall wall of the kitchen and I just thought it was fascinating and you know kind of scary at the same time what are these big things called hurricanes we had never been through one remember this is now in the 70s and we were in this least active era of hurricanes compared to now because of the cold cycle of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation things that we now know about that we're just starting to be studied by people like Dr William Gray Dr Bill Gray the former uh the late well I guess he's still Dr Gray with the late Dr Gray yo get what I'm saying his work was just starting in the 70s to understand this stuff and um that's a big part of it just growing up where I did learning about it from books from other people my dad Etc and
so that has to be the root you know uh I
can't explain it any better than that I think that's the cause of it there's just something that draws me in inherently to learn more about hurricanes specifically but I had a big interest in weather as a whole now the
very earliest hurricane experience at all that I can remember was 1979 and Hurricane David and all I remember is my family getting ready for it um probably saw some stuff about it on the local news I'm sure it was talked about on the radio these are memories that are somewhere deep inside but I definitely remember uh my dad getting supplies and getting ready in case it came up the coast stuff like that um him tracking it on a paper tracking chart so Hurricane David when I was nine years old is probably the first memory that I have of a hurricane affecting my life uh on a personal level we probably had to get the boat out of the water things like that you know I don't have any specific Recollections but these are just those um quick flashes in your memory bank that you can just get a glimpse of those things uh and David was the one Hurricane David 1979 it eventually made landfall um after being a very powerful hurricane over portions of the Caribbean it came up the Southeast coast and kind of died out Etc but it never made direct landfall as a hurricane in New Bern and so there was this kind of you know rise up of like all this commotion and talk about it and then nothing happened oh okay so next several years later hurricane Diana in 1984. now I was in
the eighth grade that year uh at a middle school of course in New Bern and my science teacher Mr magiolo I think that's how it's pronounced I have to go look it up it's either magiolo or maggiola but I remember his first name was Lo he was a great science teacher and was very much into the weather so he's not just a teacher to earn the paycheck he was really into it and that
was the next puzzle piece I I very much know that that uh his excitement about the weather really rubbed off on me and when hurricane Diana in September 1984 was coming up the coast it formed from an old frontal boundary and was moving up the Southeast coast um that was the big turning point for me and he was tracking it in the classroom
um you know would have the NOAA Weather Radio back when there was a real person that would read the weather now it's a synthesized voice I don't know if yo know that but it's true and so you know you would hear this Voice come on and they would have that that different Timbre in their voice it's just the way the radio did it where the hurricane Diana advisory number four whatever and it just had this weird you know science fiction feel to it something ominous is coming something scary something we all have to take notice of but it's real it's not an alien invasion it's not War of the Worlds it's it's not Star Wars you know it's real you know and we should be a little concerned but nobody's panicking it's not nuclear war you remember we're still in the Cold War era the latter years of it in 1984 and
that was you know part of what I grew up with um the threat of the Russians and first strike and you know the the whole idea remember there was a movie that came out called the day after and it was about nuclear war in Lawrence Kansas was the focus there Jason Robards was in it the Brits made one called threads this was kind of the modern era ending part of the Cold War and that kind of loomed over a lot of us there was the Libya situation in the Middle East in 1985 I think it was and this is all important because there's a distinction between fearing something like that like nuclear war that the generation before mine had to deal with even more so obviously pre-1970 you know with the Cuban Missile Crisis Etc and in the age of the atom that is a big problem and I would have nightmares about it and you know we all grew up with that uh those of us born around that time frame and many decades before I don't know how the generation now looks at things maybe it's terrorism who knows what else uh maybe fear of my iPhone not working that's more Weighing on people's minds than nuclear war but the distinction and I know I'm off on a little bit of tangent here but the distinction between worrying about something like that and worrying about a big hurricane coming the nuclear war thing was always like in the back of my mind it would give yo this fear in the pit of your stomach hurricanes were exciting nuclear war not
exciting hurricanes exciting yo understand that that's what I'm getting at here so as Mr maggiolo plotted that hurricane over the days and we listened to the NOAA Weather Radio it got closer it got stronger and then he
started feeling concerned and we could see that I don't know which of my classmates also noticed it but the concern not only as a science teacher that he knew what was coming but also as a father a husband and a homeowner and now that I am all of those things I can certainly see where he was coming from uh believe me and but I could see that even as a 13 year old uh and so it changed a little bit from wow this is really exciting there's this hurricane coming we might get out of school maybe that's what it was hurricanes meant no school who knows yo live up in the Hudson Valley or wherever no school from snow woohoo right hurricanes mean no means no school down south maybe that's what it was but he was on top of it and his concern about what would happen and then he talked about it how yo could hear the the trees cracking and he really gave a vivid description as to what we could expect if Diana now approaching category 4 intensity as it came up towards the Carolina coast if it made landfall around New Bern that it would be a really really big problem so the excitement kind of tempered a little bit to more concern and I certainly remember asking my parents about it I can't remember specifically what we talked about but it was a it was a big deal this hurricane Diana now there's something else that happened around that same time that's also pivotal in this whole story especially chapter one here as we call it in the beginning right what else happened in the early 80s we had the Advent of two very important
technological media breakthroughs Turner Broadcasting and then the Weather Channel both of those are also giant influences on how I
became who I am today why because 24-hour weather was now at my fingertips
I didn't have a computer a good friend of mine who it does all of our programming for the website Etc his name is Jason he had a computer one of those early day personal computers what was it back then probably a Commodore 64 or something maybe that was later anyway we didn't have the internet we didn't have computers yeah maybe he did I don't remember but we had the Weather Channel and we had CNN and The Weather Channel of course was for me
like today's Facebook and social media addiction to ask my parents trust me when the tropical update came on uh with John hope you better not be in my way at 10 before the hour it came on at around yo know 10 before the hour uh 50 minutes past the hour 10 before the hour whatever way you want to look at it if you were in the way between me and the television you better move because I would knock you down trying to get it to the channel it was like channel 41 or whatever on cable and I would watch the Weather Channel with John hope and Jim Cantore um there was a guy that used to be in our local market from uh eastern North Carolina named Mark Mancuso he went to the Weather Channel The Weather Channel siphoned off a bunch of local talent as John Coleman and others began that
network uh I think it was 1982 that it came into being um and Mark Mancuso left and went to the Weather Channel so these are all people that I remember learning from and of course cantoria still today John hope passed away several years ago but I learned a lot and that it was on 24 hours I'm telling yo that was awesome and it fed my obsession but it's not just feeding the obsession I really did learn a lot because the Weather Channel was much more than just a news Outlet it
was also an educational portal because these on-camera meteorologists that's one thing that Ray-Ban and John Coleman and the people that put the Weather Channel together did a great job of and they still do today is these are all certified meteorologists it's not just a bunch of news people there's nothing against news people but it's not yo know all due respect to Al Roker and Willard Scott as far as I know they are not degreed meteorologists these were not weather personalities these were meteorologists and you could see that it translated through and to a 13 year old weather geek and science nerd I learned a lot so there we were plotting Diana all of us together my class for those that cared um my teacher my family The Weather Channel feeding that information some of it on CNN of course and then of course they would send people out into the field both CNN and The Weather Channel and being able to see that coverage uh all the time whenever was awesome now Diana did something very important it made landfall as a weakening storm down in the Wilmington area Cape Fear region where I live now uh and brought some impacts to New Bern Heavy Rain bands some wind but not a direct hit landfall so that whole still remained right you understand that that what is the big deal that question never got answered still so we had David in 1979 Diana 1984 close no cigar that's
like all this hype all this build up and nothing happened compared to what we know now can happen right so I think that drove more of my passion like oh
what is this all about what is the I want one to hit it's kind of what it came down to I saw the images on TV I thought man that'd be really neat to go through you know just hope it doesn't mess up my house right be careful what you wish for um so those that's another puzzle piece The Weather Channel CNN Etc um uh another one in the early formative years of my life the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and you might be wondering what in the world um Jay Barnes author of North Carolina's hurricane history as well as Florida's hurricane history was the director of the aquarium for a number of years he retired in a few several years ago and I think it was him uh that was responsible I'd have to go look but I know that he was director there for a long time and it may have been his programming that brought this film to the aquarium each August called A lady called Camille it was a
documentary about Hurricane Camille in 1969. that is another big pivotal moment
and actually moments plural because as a child backing up a little bit surely in the late 70s early 80s somewhere around there I can't remember the first year those memories I just can't seem to what year was it I can't remember but it was definitely early on we would go to the aquarium and um I'd have to look and see when the aquarium was built and all that maybe ah if I ever do a book we'll put that in there but I know we went to the aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and they would show this film in the auditorium and it was literally a film and it was all about a lady called Camille and um it well that was the title of it sorry I got sidetracked there it was all about Camille I was thinking about it I had a flashback and um it was literally a motion picture whatever it was probably 16 millimeter you know and they would show it on a reel uh a reel-to-reel motion picture projector and on a movie screen and that is on YouTube I highly recommend you YouTube search A lady called Camille I watched that as a child at the uh aquarium and it really
resonated with me because again it was this story about a legend that was a
hurricane and it was this really big deal in American history it killed over 250 people um that legendary footage very little of it some of it was at night and it's that old film you know it's grainy dark almost like that found footage genre of movies that started coming out in the late 90s like The Blair Witch Project shaky grainy dark and it makes it more mysterious you see it that's the thing here that's the I think that's what we're getting down here to the core of the apple as they say it's the mystery of the hurricane what we don't know about them that
they're shrouded in darkness a lot of times they make landfall at night uh they're scary in in some sense gotta get some water here all right um they they they leave a lot to still be learned about and that film really embodied that whoever produced that it was a civil defense project um it was so well done because it was like a movie but it was real you know all those images um that are in that film that stay in my head even today haunted me but in a good way if that makes any sense and so anytime we got to go to the aquarium and I saw that film oh my gosh it was like Wow and that fed my yearning to learn
more about hurricanes even more and all of those together in the late 70s early 80s really was the start then 1985
another hurricane hurricane Gloria out of the deep Tropics very powerful hurricane weather channel on top of it it was headed towards North Carolina once again and now I'm 14 years old and it's like here we go and uh you know maybe this time yeah and I really wanted it to hit I thought I gotta see what this is all about um everybody's talking about it I remember going to some I do remember this I was at some church related uh activity with my youth group at somebody's house and they had it on either the local station or The Weather Channel and there was that crawl at the bottom uh of the screen with information about evacuation centers closings whatever and I just remember again that that sort of tense feeling that I felt our parents felt and the community felt oh another big hurricane coming we're a little bit more into the Modern Age now it's everywhere it's ubiquitous CNN The Weather Channel local media you know everybody's talking about it and another letdown because what happened it went over the Outer Banks now had I bet out on the Outer Banks I could have been in the eye of that thing but not so lucky so or had I been in
Long Island where interestingly enough many many other meteorologists out there and Weather Geeks got their start also because of Gloria um and who knows maybe there's a podcast or a book out there waiting to be written by one of those folks but it did eventually go across parts of Long Island and on into New England from there Gloria 1985 another one that I thought all right this is and so that
you know those two seasons um 84.85 really put the foundations you know if that was the uh that would be literally the the ground floor put in and then something like a big deviation
happened in my life in 1986 we up and
moved to Las Vegas Nevada I kid you not uh my father was in public administration and he had a job opportunity and it was out west which we had actually visited I think in 1985 as part of um a Civitan convention uh Civitan is a public service organization like rotary clubs you have Civitan Lions Club whatever and the Civitan convention was in Vegas I think it was 85 and we all went out there and man I was hooked not because of necessarily Vegas I mean yes it is remarkable even in the 80s but it was the weather out there of course it really got my attention we went in the summer of 85 for this convention and there was thunderheads over the mountains and you know the monsoon I now know of as the monsoon was setting up and we had a dust storm one night I remember that and oh wow we stayed at the MGM Grand Hotel I do remember that and just you know we were there in 85 I don't know if this is like part of like you know had we not been there in 85 for that convention would we have ended up moving but but there's a subset to this yes we ended up in Vegas where we almost ended up and this just shows you man it's like oh Mark was going to be in weather one way or another you can clearly see it was my destiny as they say sometimes I do feel like I'm in The Truman Show remember that with Jim Carrey and one way or the other Kristoff the guy that directed The Truman Show show in the movie um you know directs Truman and keeps him on this island and I you know it just seems to me sometimes too many things happen to line me up right where I needed to be because also in I think it was 1986 earlier somewhere around that period 85 86 we almost moved to uh near Oklahoma City
Yukon the more Yukon area I kid you not he had a job offer there uh almost accepted did accept I can't remember but we were we I know we went out looking for houses I mean we were almost there and we were like yeah yeah my parents luckily changed their mind didn't want my brother and me the member in the 80s the con the economy was depressed and you know the oil industry was dying out there it just wasn't something didn't feel right um probably because we knew many years down the road that several F5 tornadoes are going to go through that area and who needed to go through that right so uh uh fate divine intervention whatever you want to call it I don't know we didn't move to Oklahoma came real close though so instead 1986 boom we move out to Las Vegas Nevada and that's where I went to high school and throughout those years three years we're there from 86 through 89. um I stayed on top of the weather more learning about microclimates you know how the mountains out there influence the weather the monsoon you know snow up in the Wasatch I started skiing and you know as a teenager you know became interested in girls a lot more um developed a deep passion for music which I'd always had as a kid thought I was going to be the next Richard Marx or Steve Perry somebody like that or Phil Collins you know early 80s influences mid 80s I played piano keyboard and so
forth and so on and Vegas was the place for that man I thought all right yo know this weather thing yeah it's a hobby I still watch the Weather Channel but you know between girls high school music whatever played soccer it was athletic um yeah weather was just more of a hobby and I really started focusing more on my music and had taken piano lessons all as a child of course but I bought a synthesizer my parents did for me once we moved out there to Vegas and I thought this is it I am gonna have a career in music and Vegas is where I'm gonna launch it you know it was weird but that's true um and uh so those three years 86
through 89 kind of lost an interest a little bit in hurricanes there wasn't that many um certainly none that influenced the desert Southwest that I can remember some of them do come up out of the Pacific as you know but um no I don't remember any major hurricane issues out there from the Pacific I do remember Gilbert in the Caribbean affecting Jamaica and
then the Yucatan and eventually um northern Mexico South Texas Etc The Weather Channel of course covering that so I was tuned into that a little bit um I do remember visiting the National Weather Service Las Vegas uh and meeting with somebody out there talking about Pacific hurricanes a little bit a very this was like probably when I was a junior in high school trying to figure out what I was going to do for a career I did go out to Nellis Air Force Base and met with a recruitment officer and was immediately
denied well you won't have a career in the military because why Well turns out I'm deaf in my left ear well about 80 percent I had that as a as a child and can't be in the Air Force if you're deaf that just doesn't work apparently so because I thought if I go in the Air Force I could be a hurricane hunter and study meteorology in the Air Force honestly yes what am I going to do as a high schooler you start trying to figure that out I had music that was a big pull and you know like I said girls okay sure as a high school boy why not and the weather and music was really starting to win out and um I bought more keyboards and thought you know I'm gonna develop this career so graduated high school it's time to get ready for college and a job and Vegas is tough the Nevada everything about it out there there's only so much of that you can take um in public administration a job opened up back east unbelievably in Wilmington North Carolina for my father so we went and packed up uh in June of 89 and I got my high school diploma at uh Thomas and Max Center on the campus of UNLV and went to Clark High School got it left and here we are summer of 1989 Wilmington North Carolina came by train uh all of our stuff shipped out you know on a big truck blah blah blah and here we were and what did I do immediately right back to the Weather Channel tropics I picked up right where I left off and as fate would have it what would happen Hugo September 1989. now before that
very important I really was focusing yep I'm gonna be a musician uh weather will be my hobby music will be my career um I had a job I'm like 18 years old at this point and I financed it uh or my parents helped me so I can't remember how it worked I guess they probably helped me and I bought a studio a music
studio synthesizers like high-end stuff like what bands would use Van Halen Richard Marx Steve Perry you know professional synthesizers and you know learned how to use them and create music uh I sang not
very good obviously because here I am but um I thought I was gonna make it right if we all who didn't think they were going to be the next Paul McCartney or whomever right especially guys and you know girls follow it too you're going to be the next Whitney Houston or whomever and that's what I thought I was gonna do seriously so Hugo comes along and it's like that pull of the universe again you know it's so weird Hugo's coming it's late September it's all anybody's talking about and this sucker is a Whopper and it looks like it's going to just take out Southeast North Carolina maybe Northeast South Carolina the weather channel is all over it people are out in the field Dennis Smith I remember him he was down in the Charleston area I don't remember where cantori was um CNN was on it they had a young chap well back then we were all young named Jeff flock CNN's version of Jim Cantore Jeff covered hurricanes for CNN as well as Jim Cantore did and does for The Weather Channel and I remember watching all of them and seeing the hurricane coming I was older yo know wiser I had a car and I drove down to Carolina beach all the way down actually to uh to Kiri beach in southeast North Carolina here in Hanover County and went down to this area called the rocks and if you live in this area you know what I'm talking about and I remember the waves coming in were incredible and the wind was already picking up and you know we're under a warning it's you know all hell is breaking loose in town it's a really big deal Hugo looks like it's going to be historic and it looked like it was coming right for Wilmington and I went down checked it out and I remember being there they started closing everything down they came around everybody get out the police over their loud uh speaker you know evacuation time to go you know they were closing down um the island that the access south of Snow's cut Bridge so I got a glimpse of it um you know it was in awe of it went back home and um you know dealt with it at the house with my family as it turns out the Emergency Management director for New Hanover County Dan summers at the time lived on my street my dad who was in public administration here um in the mental health system you know that's part of the emergency support functions why you know wow I
would learn about all of that later isn't that interesting how it all comes full circle so he knew Dan you know they had the hospital mental health system nursing homes fire departments those are all called esf's emergency support functions and anyway you know I remember my dad telling me Oh yeah Dan lives on our street blah blah blah so wow that's cool so Hugo as we know goes in around midnight the center comes in over Charleston the eye moves over Charleston and I had wished so badly that I was there really did of course I couldn't be for obvious reasons it was close though I heard the pine trees in our front yard in Pine Valley aptly named cracking that
night you could hear him cracking the creaking the cracking whatever you know it was the closest encounter yet but still no cigar it didn't make landfall in Wilmington I was like ah um saw the damage it was awe-inspiring it really was you know and it really motivated me to learn more than ever before now coincidentally at that same time I was enrolled at the community college here beginning my college career I didn't exactly stay to the books when I was in high school and so my grades were not right to where they should be to go to a four-year school just yet so I got into Cape Fear Community College and started in the fall of 1989.
um met a guy there named Todd can't remember his last name and uh Hugo came and went and I remember he and I um in October just a month later drove down
uh like in the middle of the night for some stupid reason to South Carolina out on the Isle of Palms and everything and there were still houses in the street um you know and and it's like going to Mexico Beach a month after Michael um and even going down there that night we could see you know on the way down Highway 17 in South Carolina the tree damage um you know it was the first study that I had ever done it was Hugo like we didn't go down as just like oh let's go see it it was we had a purpose and we went down at night I can't remember why on Earth we would go down at night but we did and it was the science to the the scientist in me coming out again the meteorologist in me the geographer and those are all real things you don't have to have a degree in them to kind of aspire to be those things yo know what I'm saying like at an early age if you're going to be a doctor and you see something and you go oh it was the doctor and me coming out same kind of thing the scientist in me was coming out it was not just gawking at the damage it was that pull and I remember thinking about seeing all that damage wow what if we had had instruments down here to measure the wind that knocked down all those trees and they were snapped off 30 percent of the way up the Trunks and millions of them you know and that was a really big part of that hurricane and the Francis Marion forest and then the surge that could push houses into the streets and they were still there in October what if we had a way to film that using like a camera that we could leave behind I remember saying that to this guy Todd honestly I really did I said that you know because we knew yeah there's no way you could just sit out here and Film It Yourself you'd be killed I was like man you know that'd be cool if you like left a camera behind and had some way to record all this because there were video cameras in 1989 of course there were they were huge and cost you a kidney to buy one but they existed and you know because I thought you know that would be amazing to film but the heck if I'm going to stand out here and do it you know you'd be killed they had a 20-something foot storm surge McClellanville uh you know a lot of people almost died at that evacuation shelter at Lincoln High School those stories came out and again it pulled me and I thought hmm maybe the weather is something I want to really focus on more because I was back in southeast North Carolina and right where I had where I should be you know it's like you're back this is where you should be and this is where it's going to happen and so that all the way through from you know 1970 to 1989 those formative years is the beginning and Hugo was the one like if everything else was
almost there all those puzzle pieces Hugo was the last puzzle piece period once that was in place you know you pop it into place you know that feeling when you put that last puzzle piece in of satisfaction ah it's finished
the puzzle of the path to what I was
going to eventually do as a career was finished just that one puzzle remember in this metaphor there's a lot of puzzles we're gonna do you never just do one puzzle in life right I mean literally you do many puzzles if you're into puzzles and this was the first one and it was complete because of Hugo because of the Weather Channel because of me going down and seeing it the aftermath in person and even though I was enrolled at a community college doing my Basics yo know English 101 psych 101 blah blah blah you know I thought I was going into the music curriculum eventually I would transfer to UNC Wilmington but that was
the start that was it and beyond that and by the way just so you'll get an idea of where are we going with this on this episode we're going to go all the way up to about 1995 and that'll be the end of the first episode um after Hugo not much you know 1990 yeah hurricanes
here and there nothing major did pretty well at school doing okay whatever continuing learning my music whatever my synthesizers and thinking yeah I'm gonna be I'm gonna do something you know and uh 1991 um we had Hurricane Bob right offshore okay here we go maybe this one will do it nope didn't too far offshore went up into New England you know thought about going after that one ah okay yeah still didn't go chasing yet as they call it um I had a Toyota Corolla by the way that that's very important to point out my parents bought me a Toyota Corolla a 1982 Corolla in Las Vegas we had it shipped or driven back I don't remember how the heck we got it to Wilmington but um that's what I drove a little Toyota Corolla so no I'm not going hurricane chasing in something like that um 1992 was the beginning of the next
puzzle okay if the first puzzle was yo know the foundation of putting Mark's passion together and its career path the second puzzle began the first piece with Andrew 1992. Andrew came along um in August of 1992 and I was now at UNC Wilmington I
transferred from the community college actually I did this in 1991 enrolled at UNCW as a music Major we have a music department it's not widely known and world famous or anything you know like Juilliard or ECU and ECU does have a great music program but um you know Juilliard everybody knows Juilliard um but we had a music program nonetheless and I was in it learning music theory which was boring I wanted to learn how to be Phil Collins or Steve Perry teach me how to sing like Steve Perry it was frustrating trust me and I didn't do well because of that very impatient you know like Yoda you know you you need to learn patience I'm not going to do any Yoda Impressions but as a young learner as a young Jedi in the world of music I was too impatient absolutely and what teenager or young adult wouldn't be right so 9 1992 I'm at UNCW
and uh Andrew's coming and
I thought maybe I could go down to South Florida for this one and it's interesting because I still lived at home uh going to UNCW saved on having to be at a dorm so I could just live at home and by living at home your parents still have that well while you're living under my roof you're not doing such and such and they wouldn't let me um I mean there wasn't like a big fight or anything but no you're not going to Miami for Hurricane Andrew that's not happening that's basically how that went not to mention that I didn't have any money to do so and whatever right it was a thought I entertained the idea of going to South Florida for Andrew I really did it was probably a very fleeting moment but it was there nonetheless um also in August of 1992 I met who
would become my wife Rebecca at College at UNCW just entering that into the mix here because part of this series you're going to learn there's going to be some levity we're gonna have some good times with this but you're also going to hear some of the hardships so to speak of how it is to leave your family and go to a hurricane speaking of Steve Perry the song Faithfully there's the line in there about loving a music man ain't always what it's supposed to be you know about life on the road Etc well I never ended up being a music man not as a career as you know duh but um it's
kind of the same thing you know when you're on the road it's hard but we'll get to that so I met my wife Rebecca that year 1992 Andrew's coming again it's that big pull but this time uh I was even more invested in it than ever before and The Weather Channel CNN on top of it of course it makes landfall we now know it was a category five it went into Louisiana the remnants passed over Southeast North Carolina several days later and it really drew me even more than
ever before like Hugo was you know wow Andrew was pivotal in the United States history he had a lot of blowback from people after Hugo about the female response Etc Andrew was even more of that as yo recall and for the first time I got to see how a hurricane influenced politics because the election was in 1992 and
the way that the Bush Administration handled Andrew may have influenced that
just a little bit you know I don't do politics but you remember the whole FEMA thing and it was it was like the response and that matters it does when you have a state like Florida that has a lot of electoral votes to be cast and South Florida in particular and what happened in 1992 well Bill Clinton won right and that ushered in a program through FEMA called project impact which we'll get to later way later down the road but I saw that that for the first time that I could remember I remember a little bit during Hugo but boy it was very prevalent in 1992 uh with the Bush Administration okay first Bush right um Bush senior and um so that was really interesting to me
that Andrew was more than just a weather phenomenon it crippled South Florida yo know the Air Force Base down there Homestead um very close to Miami this the stories that came out of Andrew made it even bigger than life uh once again kind of like Camille uh as did Hugo but there was something about Andrew and some of those stories one of which was the story of Stan Goldenberg the scientists from Hurricane research division who was on David Letterman
um and was in a National Geographic special he's been featured in numerous interviews Google him Stanley Goldenberg Hurricane Andrew Google him and you'll see he was uh he's a scientist still is
at hrd and his wife was due to have a baby when Andrew was coming ashore yo may have heard about this guy and they delivered he had to leave her and the baby at the hospital the baby's name is Pearl and he went back to his house with his children and some other family members and neighbors I think it was and his house was destroyed the walls collapsed and they stayed under a small cave if you will of the wall in the refrigerator and they recorded all of this and it is an amazing story and I thought wow that's really remarkable this scientist was and he flies into the Hurricanes for Noah uh by the way and did back then I
think uh studies hurricanes and his house is taken out by a hurricane something about that was really compelling to me there's also the Brian Norcross story and what he did um at the TV station in Florida helping people staying on the air and being the voice that that kept people in touch and
maybe even saved lives and they made a made-for-tv movie about him in 1993.
um so Andrew was big it was another big deal I learned a lot about it um documentaries were made and and it did something that really changed everything and that is it motivated me so much that I looked into other courses at UNC
Wilmington you get to choose electives right not just Core Music stuff and they had introduction to meteorology professor's name was Rudy Kiefer a German fella Dr Kiefer I signed up for it and that was the key I thought oh you got to be kidding me you know my girlfriend Rebecca my parents and everybody oh yeah you got to take that man it's weather meteorology you'll probably love it I did and Dr Kiefer was the modern version or whatever yo want to call it the next version of my eighth grade science teacher because he was more than just a professor he saw my passion for the weather and he engaged me with it it was just like a major connection and um I took that meteorology course I think it was Andrew was 1992 I took that meteorology course either in 93 or 94. and really was not doing too well with music uh again mainly because of my impatience I wanted to be an overnight success and become a pop star it wasn't happening
so I took this meteorology course talked to Dr Kiefer about my struggles and music UNC Wilmington does not offer meteorology uh my grades and everything were okay especially in anything not related to music um and that's surprising isn't it I was not doing well with music because we literally butted heads um and uh so I applied to NC State and looked at their meteorology program I was going to transfer got accepted uh Mississippi State University I looked at that and broadcast meteorology yo know and as they say I think a big influence was I had a girl yeah I wasn't going to leave my girlfriend Rebecca so I decided oh UNC Wilmington has a geography program I can get a degree in geography and I've said this on a couple of my updates this year I finally figured it out geography is to meteorology like being an Episcopalian is to be in a Catholic it's almost there but not quite you know what I mean it's like being a PA a physician's assistant versus being a doctor a full uh medical doctor very close but not quite meteorology is
a tremendous amount of math and physics and weather forecast and of course geography is like a slimmed down version especially if you go into physical geography like I did it's a slimmed down version of meteorology it really is yo learn about a lot of meteorology yo know so I am like a PA would be to a doctor so I followed that and I nailed it I switched out of Music in 1994 went into geography studied hurricanes as my focus my professors in my curriculum embraced that and I freaking nailed it all of my
projects I took statistics all the physical geography map making thematic Maps you name it even the economic geography which was boring as heck understanding impacts of events and weather on society Bingo there it was
music became a hobby geography and weather started looking like it was going to become my career what can you do with a degree in geography you could be a city planner you can work you can go to graduate school and become a teacher you can work for you know different government agencies doing mapping surveying um you know you could eventually go to meteorology if you want to I mean there's a lot of things you could do with that base degree sure but I wanted to do something immediately so I did really well um now we're into 1995 my last year in college still dating Rebecca looking like we're going to get married she's going into nursing and doing really well and
it's almost time to graduate uh my professors everybody knew you know my love for hurricanes Etc um and the internet was really starting to take off in 1995. and I learned about this guy named Dr William Gray from Colorado State University and various websites where I could get almost real-time weather information at the UNCW library and I didn't have a computer yet and I got my degree in geography in the summer of 1995 early summer I guess it was May or whatever and went to work through a placement program from the University at a place called Wilmington Industrial Development Incorporated fancy name for an economic development firm whose job it is um to get business and industry to locate in North Carolina and Southeast North Carolina in Wilmington the Cape Fear region my boss a gentleman named Robert Dunn hired me as an intern uh 15 an hour which in 1995 man that was like but it was a temporary position there was a set amount of it was not whatever it's a temp job he wanted me to write a report and this is a true story my job I graduated on a Saturday Monday morning I went to work at this place called Wilmington Industrial Development the job task oh you got a degree angiography you're into hurricanes perfect I need you to write a report about hurricane return periods and Southeast North Carolina so that I can show it this is Rob Dunn talking I'm you know this is what he asked me to do so I can show it to prospective business and industry decision makers and have them relocate or locate whatever build move into you name it buildings in southeast North Carolina specifically the Cape Fear region and grow our economy I was like cool sounds great right up my alley I knew how to write you know I got a degree I'm from I'm a college graduate let's do it so I got to work I hit the internet and I mean I I worked my butt off this was right up my alley I am now doing something professionally using my degree about hurricanes now the report that I gave him six weeks
later didn't sit very well because it was basically hey Rob um here's your report kind of turns out and I mean I knew this all along but to put it in paper and using maps and pictures and graphs and charts and whatever um you know Rob uh we got a problem North Carolina specifically the Cape Fear region has a hurricane problem turns out it's cyclical and even more so it looks like it's getting ready to come back um so not sure how you're going to use this to lure business and industry here but there's this guy named Dr Bill Gray from Colorado State University wait a minute wait a minute Rob Colorado what yeah Colorado State don't ask me it's just where it is atmospheric sciences anyway he has this thing about you know West African rainfall and something called an Atlantic multi-decade oscillation and basically we go through periods when there's lots of hurricanes and periods when there's not so many and they're just more random and it looks like we're getting ready to get into a period where they're going to be more of them and more concentrated especially on the East Coast what do you want to do and it didn't make him happy and he's like damn like I can't tell this to people uh what about tornadoes it's like yeah yeah we don't really have too many tornadoes here like he really wanted some good news no we really don't have too many tornadoes in in the Wilmington area except those that are spawned from the outer bands of hurricanes um there is a mini Tornado Alley kind of through the I-95 corridor from Northeast South Carolina up through Raleigh Fayetteville exiting or somewhere around uh you know um Northeast North Carolina there's more tornadoes there than in Wilmington that was basically all I could give him he's all right well thanks for nothing yeah basically I don't know what he ever did with that report to be honest with you so that was it I thought wow these bleeping people remember that line I'm not going to use the word but you know the line I'm talking about from A Few Good Men from Jack Nicholson and he's on the stand and he goes you bleeping people and you know the word and it's not bleeping that's what I thought I thought man you believe in people have no clue about our hurricane history do you and no clue as to what's coming because I saw the research from Dr Gray and our history and I read a lot from Jay Barnes and others and I mean I really put my degree to use right out of the gate and it really made the light bulb go off I am going to
start a company and the company's job will be to educate these bleeping people about hurricanes one way or the other and you know if we ever get a hurricane hit here fine I'll study its impacts but I am going to be a hurricane expert I've got a degree in geography I might as well do that so help me God and that's what I did so that summer I went to an attorney and I got a business and I called it hurricane Maps Enterprises a sole proprietorship and the mission statement was to create hurricane awareness as a consultant and as a researcher to help better prepare communities for hurricanes through research education and awareness and my objective was to become probably
the only private hurricane consulting firm in the nation you had the government you have engineering firms that do hurricane stuff like there's one in Tallahassee I know of called PBS and J post Buckley shoe and Jernigan I think and they do engineering evacuation stuff that's different I'm talking about specifically you got private weather companies I understand that AccuWeather The Weather Channel I mean literally a
hurricane specific company outside the government that was going to be me and that's what I did I started the company in the summer of 1995 well companies not Incorporated but it's a sole proprietorship my business and I got to work and the rest as they say is history so there you go that's the beginning that is the first fairly large chunk now
we've recovered from you know 1970 to 1995 in a fairly short amount of time here however long I've been yapping but that's the beginning and from there a lot of things happened and that's what we will talk about in future episodes so
1995 that's it I uh was gonna get married in 1996.
um yeah we'll talk about all this in future episodes of course but my future was in front of me I was ambitious I had a lot of energy and a lot of zeal I met with different Emergency Management people Dan Summers one of them here in New Hanover County very much behind me encouraged me would help any way he could I met with him often I met with um Jeff Hardin the meteorologist at WECT
the NBC affiliate here in Wilmington numerous occasions George Eliot who was a meteorologist here as well he went on to work at The Weather Channel by the way um and uh other like I said other Emergency Management people Sandy Sanderson up in uh Dare County if you guys know him he's legendary um and just you know sank my teeth into it uh as best I could watch the Weather Channel more than ever before learned everything I could and was ready to go ready to take this business and do something with it that was going to be Innovative impactful and different and be the premier hurricane expert outside
of the typical organizations like I mentioned the Weather Service AccuWeather The Weather Channel whatever I was going to be that hurricane guy yo know in the united staff and I hope just I was so ready to go believe me I was I dreamed about it I obsessed over it so that's where we'll leave off uh summer of 1995 just one little quick tidbit as
we wrap it up there as 1995 progressed that job was um six weeks like I said with Wilmington Industrial Development I started the business um you know had to figure out what I was going to do my first idea was to create a hurricane tracking chart that was unlike anything else out there I wanted to make one that was the size of a movie poster because I knew if I was into the weather my goodness she got a company called The Weather Channel on cable that has millions of subscribers you know cable does and they watch the Weather Channel religiously everybody knew who Jim Cantore was there has to be a need for a really kick butt hurricane tracking map a poster size like the movies I wanted something that left a big impact you know and like movies hurricanes have um a trailer right with oh there's a hurricane coming it's coming soon and then it's released the hurricane is here and then there's the story afterwards how the hurricane affected the economy very much like a movie the promotion the happening and then the money that it made in the course of a hurricane it's the money that it cost right and so a very similar metaphorical comparison there I wanted to treat hurricanes with the respect of a major motion picture it's a big deal let's talk about it let's get it out there and that was going to be my first project produce a big hurricane tracking poster cover the whole Atlantic Basin all the way out to the coast of Africa I was going to do that um how was I going to do that that's what we'll cover in the next episode next week um so late in the summer uh my job was up my internship finished I did my report for better or worse sorry Rob for the bad news but we all know what happens from there the Atlantic Basin did turn warmer the Amo flipped to positive we had a very busy hurricane season 19 name storms yeah it happened Bill
Gray was correct my report was correct and I tell you what everything else I could not have been in a better location because of what would happen next and we'll cover that in the next episode all right thank you for tuning in I do appreciate it more than you know uh uh this whole thing with patreon your support your encouragement you know I've done this for a long time now um more than 23 years I mean I got my degree in 1995 so we're talking about good amount of time here going back to when I was a child and look at everything we've accomplished you know like I say you think you know the story we're going to really get into those stories with this episode uh these episodes including this episode to start all that and you being there listening really means a lot to me I appreciate it um you're more than welcome to share the link to this if you want to however yo you know I'm not really making it available to the public it is an exclusive um uh benefit to being a supporter but if you know people that you think would enjoy this you may share it if you can figure out how to do that you can download it and share it I don't mind and maybe you can encourage them to also support what I'm doing and our collect active effort on patreon and our crowdfunding because at the end of the day you guys hear many decades later well not too many but after I started all this it's more than two though um you're helping to make it possible you really are your financial support it's very similar to public radio and similar to being a non-profit organization without the non-profit organization bookkeeping headaches that you have to go through you are supporting something that's important to you and that means a lot to me my family all of us and it helps me to be able to do something like this for you to benefit from so I appreciate it alright so that's it for this episode stories from the hurricane Highway chapter one in the beginning that's a wrap I am Mark suddath hurricane track.com I look forward to talking to you again next week [Music]
please
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thank yo