it's a category 2 hurricane out here did the Western eye come ashore yes it did it came right across right down over top of us right there there is the hurricane landfall project truck it's all set up strapped down we're going to turn all the switches on in just a little while standing outside of the Chevy Tahoe we are getting into the eye wall of hurricane jeene right now core came in on Shore here along the Southeast coast of these little bullet cams right here
that we will use to record that

surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway it's me Mark suth back with yo now for some more adventures in 2015
we're going to cover March April and May in this episode some very exciting
things happening in my life personally during that time period and of course professionally with the hurricane track project all kinds of stuff as we head towards the 2015 Hurricane Season which
of course would be affected affected with an a right um by El Nino we'll talk
about that more in the next episode as we get into the hurricane season but we're still in the winter months getting ready to get into spring uh you know basically exiting the winter months I just got back uh from New England that's what we talked about in the last episode and that epic winter storm up there by the way those epic winter storms kept on coming in 2015 I alluded to that a few
times in the last couple of episodes it was just one of those one after the other Winters for the Northeast and as I
have also mentioned a couple of times at least Boston had snow piles that lasted
until July I couldn't keep going up
there uh I went up twice that was enough it's very costly and you know it also takes a toll on the chevit Tahoe that I was using back in the day you get that salt and other chemicals that they use to keep the roads clear and deced and
whatnot that starts to have an impact on the vehicle and it was already getting pretty old there more than 400,000 mil on the Tahoe by 2015 and you know not going up over and
over and over again was probably a good thing plus like I said it is expensive and my funding from The Weather Channel was pretty much used up and I wasn't
really sure if I was going to renew with the weather channel for 2015 uh basically up to them um it was

interesting trying to negotiate that I'll address that more as well in the next episode as we approach the 2015 Hurricane Season but yeah my funding from the weather channel would soon be running out and it was time to focus on
hurricane season anyway we had we had these cams these new Ustream cameras from Logitech that worked with Ustream on that platform we had three of them and they worked really really well in the different tests that I had done in January and in February so we get up to March and things generally were quetting down if we take a look at my Twitter going back to March 1st not a lot going
on there was apparently some hail at least in the East there is some hail out in California I was tweeting about that
and apparently a llama or more than one
llama got free and was running loose in Arizona I don't know weird stuff right I guess that was at the end of February into early March but not much going on
in March in terms of um active weather

uh I took my son up to Durham to see a
Duke game in person that was March the 4th just kind of waiting for things to
progress through March and we get into April ail and Conference season the national tropical weather conference down in South Padre I would go to that but just kind of scrolling through my Twitter here uh we get through the first week of March and I start teasing that I will be at the ntwc the national tropical weather conference April 8th through the 11th that year and I posted a picture in my little tweet here about the fact that I'd be at that conference from it was a still image from Herby in fact I'll save this we will make this the first picture of this episode and
we'll put March M and the letter number 15 for 2015 so

March 15a this is picture a and it's a
screenshot from the Herby test in
2014 that's pretty remarkable looks like a jellyfish up there in the stratosphere
check out the picture if you get a chance I would talk about that and more
at the national tropical weather conference but the other big thing that was going on in uh March was finally after several

years of dealing with changing my
financial situation with the loss of the major Lowe's partnership in 2007 it took

all the way up about 8 years now to reorganize my finances I had my contract with the Weather Channel that was a good injection of some funding for my career
obviously my business but also personally you know I made a salary or whatever you want to call it you know there's money for me in there not just travel and I was able to restructure my

personal finances and we put a down payment on a house in 2014 and it was ready in 2015 in March so we started moving into
our new house it was in a nice area of Wilmington uh up near I40 and um next to
a wellestablished neighborhood called King's Grant and that was very exciting
I had an office built into the house um plenty of room for my gigantic family that was also getting bigger we'll get to that in just a little bit here we're going to add one more and we'll be up to seven kids and yes for those of you that are new to the podcast and you're like wait did he say seven kids that is correct we're almost there we'll get to that in just a few minutes or so but yeah March was exciting because I'm moving into a new house moving the family in I felt very proud of that um

you it's a big accomplishment to have a career that took a big hit in 0708 yo
know with the loss of lows and you know the economy just really took a huge turn at that time frame anyway for a lot of people so at least I wasn't alone right and just coming through that and having the support of different people to help keep me going so I didn't have to just walk away from my career or this project
and just start something completely different I didn't want to do that I wanted to persevere and I really really appreciated all the people that got me to that point and so here we were moving into a new house it was great also in March a lot of um public Awareness stuff
I was invited to the Charlotte weatherfest I'll save this picture this will be picture B it's kind of neat that was on March the 21st up in Charlotte at
the UNC Charlotte area and uh they do have atmospheric science and um related
at UNCC Charlotte and so I went up and

as the little poster that they put together for their social media campaign said meet your local TV meteorologists
like Brad panovic very popular TV
weatherman and well-renowned uh meteorologist from the Charlotte area WCNC right I believe that's right um
help launch a weather balloon all right uh and learn about ham radio swiftwater rescue boats you know it's a weatherfest they get all the Weather Geeks together it was outdoors I was going to bring the Tahoe up set up a couple of tables and
show some video some Hands-On talking to
people you know they can touch some of the equipment that I brought with me these new cameras brand new camera boxes with the Logitech cams in there so that
was pretty cool being able to do that I love the personal appearances all always good to do that and I had a good time doing that up in Charlotte tweeted about it in fact I was pretty excited if yo know that area I um I guess I was wrapping things up and I was headed back from the Charlotte area WT Harris Boulevard and I tweeted that I believe I
just set a world record I made it from WT Harris Boulevard to Marshville
without hitting a single red light on 74 East and I was like for real like I really did that so apparently that's a big accomplishment um so what else just kind

of reading through my Twitter here again that helps me frame up what my life was like way back then and um and I've got
pictures too on that portable hard drive that I've mentioned from time to time but it wasn't too long like 3 days later the 24th finally got to go to East Carolina University and I was supposed to do that in February but they had um snow and ice and whatever remember it was very busy on the East Coast with deep cold air coming in and storminess from time to time so my talk at ECU that was scheduled in February got pushed to March so I went up there on March 24th again I went and spoke to their geography and Earth Sciences folks they do not have meteorology that I'm aware of at East Carolina but I did go up and speak to their geography students it might have been like a club or something and again I have to emphasize that it's it's so much fun to be able to do that and you know talk about the project what I've done the challenges what I've done with my degree especially as an entrepreneur and um you know it's got its ups and downs and it's real world stuff so being able to go in and present to different groups whether it's a conference or these presentations that I do at universities always fun to do I really enjoy that a lot speaking of that it
wasn't long after that I mean I was really busy man oh man we move into a
new house and then I hit the road I mean I'm up in Charlotte on the 21st the 24th
I am at ECU and then a really nice one
I'll save this one as picture c um I was very excited about this I got invited with Greg Nordstrom's help to the severe
weather Symposium and this is picture C for you it's a shot from the Chevy Tahoe I'm going to Starkville Mississippi to present at the severe weather Symposium
in Starkville it was a big deal they've done it for a number of years and I was there and um it looks like it was number
13 the 13th annual I'll post that picture is picture d uh it's a multi-day event and they

have different people come in mainly speaking about severe weather you know supercells tornadoes hail high wind that kind of thing not necessarily hurricanes although certainly hurricanes are part of severe weather and that would obviously be the F the focus of my talk uh but what an honor it really was amazing to be able to be a part of this I got to meet some
incredible people including James span
and uh my friend Greg carbon who I knew from National Weather Service Wilmington in 2015 was he was at the SPC and I
believe he's retiring from the SPC this year 2024 that I'm recording
this podcast so very busy in March with lots of travel
and uh going on out there to speak at
the conference the 13th annual uh in
Starkville Mississippi very exciting stuff for sure um I remember I was talking to them about basically you know

the life of what I had done with my project and then really some kind of geeking out things like especially about the Herby project what we were really hoping to do do with the hurricane research balloon and the stratosphere the meteorological data that we could collect and a lot of these folks are meteorological students MSU Mississippi State very prominent in the broadcast meteorology field and so it was just amazing to be able to go in present and then collaborate um and be a part of the group I felt very well received you know because remember my degree is in geography I do have meteorological training some math mostly statistics
little geometry but none of the physics and I did take one physics class but meteorology and geography are related it's kind of like being a PA versus a doctor I guess that's the way I look at it um and so it nice to be able to be so
well received at this conference there
the severe weather Symposium as it were in Mississippi so we round out the month
of March uh all the way up here to to
March 30th and again the biggest thing
for me is how busy I was on the road
doing these talks uh and it's really remarkable as I think back like my goodness I was gone a lot and then as we get into April I'm going to be gone again uh this time I'm going to fly out to Houston and meet up with Carrie and we're going to go to the National Weather conference or national tropical weather conference I should say the ntwc down in South pad Roy Island Carrie and I would hit the road and uh go to that conference Mike Watkins was going to be there a very exciting time indeed down in South tax Texas at the ntwc
we'll talk about that I'll tell you all about it after the musical break

here

all righty back with you now stories from the hurricane highway so now we're up to the end of March and the early part of April 2015 and there was college basketball going on the NCAA tournament this is interesting one of the rare times that I tweeted quite a lot about sports usually
I stick to weather on my Twitter once in
a while something about Duke because I'm a big Duke fan always have been ever since I was a child and um so here we
are early April it's like uh April 5th 6th and the national championship is coming it was interesting because Kentucky had been undefeated if I'm not mistaken all the
way through to the final four and then
they played Wisconsin and they lost going into the National Championship it ruined their season I think they were like 39 and one or whatever and it was Wisconsin and Duke
for the national title on April 6th and
Duke won so there you go uh Wisconsin
had a npoint lead in the waning minutes Duke clawed their way back had a bunch of freshman and uh Wisconsin I think had a a Player of the Year candidate I don't remember the guy's name but um he was pretty important and um very well
revered fella and Duke won so I was very
happy about that that was April 6th and
then it wasn't going to be long at all after that I think it's literally like the 7th that I'm going to get on a plane
and head to Houston for the 2015
National tropical weather conference and
uh Carrie was going to go with me this would be the first time that he and I would go together so I was really looking forward for to that and we would do a lot of planning and talking all this time together just coming up with ideas I mean that's pretty much all we did on the phone sometimes I'd have a headset and then eventually a Bluetooth earpiece thing or whatever um and I
would go on walks all around my neighborhood and just chat with him uh Greg Nordstrom I would do that with him as well Paul Bowman Jesse bass you know
we don't have a corporate headquarters so you know in today's world we have zoom meetings and whatever but even today I like to talk to people that are you know part of our backend team our partners our investors our community different people I'll talk to we'll talk for a long time and we just come up with ideas we brainstorm so this was going to be a really unique opportunity I was going to fly into Houston on the 7th Carrie would pick me up and we would drive down to South Padre Island uh it's about a 7-hour drive something like that and um go to the National tropical weather conference and you know I I
would present U Mike Watkins was presenting I took one of these new Logitech camera systems with us we set it up in the on the balcony of the hotel room and um just kind of kind of had it
looking out just doing testing testing testing testing always testing always
trying to figure out you know the proverbial how to build that better mouse trap and um so let's look through Twitter a little bit and kind of figure out what were we talking about in
2015 as I record this podcast here in
late March of 2024 you know we're talking about basically 9 years ago you know so a lot
has changed so what were we talking about well um Dr kbach put out the

seasonal forecast the April version and
that's sort of the real kickoff to we're thinking about for the next hurricane season uh April and so that he does one in April then in June and then they get updated I think in August and then there was two we forecasts that looks at ensembles and all that kind of stuff so the April 9th forecast from Colorado
State University and Dr Phil
kbach um basically looked at this coming

El Nino in the Pacific as a big

hurricane quieter I'm going to make that word up it was going to really put the kibos on the Atlantic hurricane season it looked like and so it was the lowest

April forecast ever For an upcoming hurricane season
that's incredible as I read back through this April 9th I tweeted Dr kbach is PR
presenting now at the hurricane conference and says he is issuing the lowest April forecast ever for the upcoming season and it looks like it was seven
name storms three of them becoming hurricanes and one of those becoming a major
hurricane that's that is hard to Fathom

it is even as I think back to it yo
know once we got that big alino though then it's like really easy to understand but like man April numbers of of 73 and one um and some of

the stats that he was talking about Phil is just a stats guy big baseball fan and
he is very good at statistics and running all kinds of numbers in his head and he just has things like right there ready to go um in 2015 here's a very

interesting Stat or trivial fact for yo

I said on Twitter quote man oh man major

hurricane impacts on the USA lowest now

since the 1800s cuz you got to remember we hadn't
had a major hurricane make landfall a
category 3 or higher since Wilma in 2005

and that was October 24th 2005 so we are all the way up now

to 2015 knocking on the door of 10 years

since a category 3 or higher hurricane which is interesting because we had major impacts Ike gustoff 2008 2011 Irene

Major Impact 2012 Sandy need I say more

and it just goes to show as this as the saying goes there is more to the story
than the category absolutely but just
going by pure numbers and
classifications we hadn't had a major hurricane in the US making landfall in the US since late October
05 so yeah the lowest major hurricane
impacts for the US in 2015 up through
that point since the 1800s wow that's just incredible
so the Pacific look like we're headed
towards a pretty significant El Nino um Dr kbach spoke and then Dr Rick
NAB who was at the Weather Channel former director of the National Hurricane Center of course and he made some interesting observations and comments in his presentation that the irony here was the
National Hurricane Center needed more test cases so to speak in the real world
basically they need more intense hurricanes to at least exist out in the Atlantic somewhere to gauge how well
their intensity forecasting is and then
this sort of dir of significant hurricanes over the years there there just really wasn't a lot of real world examples and you know obviously we want them to stay away from land but just to see how the models are doing CU they would fly Recon out there as long as they are within range those hurricanes and they could be measured and we would know oh okay the models
suggested Category 3 or four and that's exactly what's happening or the models are doing you know a lot of Rapid intensification forecasting the hwarf the gfdl which we had back then now it's
retired and that just wasn't happening you know we really did have sort of a drought of hurricanes to speak of at all

so um just very interesting stuff and
then they were also introducing a new
line of sort of probabilities where would we would have the yellow and the orange and the red so
low medium and high and they were changing cuz they introduced that uh a year or two before or whatever it was maybe 2014 um so low probabilities of development are yellow that we see now people say hey they've broken out the Crayons is 0 to 30% medium is 40 to

60% and then high probability of development is 70 to 90% plus that would

get introduced in one of the updates of course for 2015 um and uh what else the Dr NAB I'll save

a couple of these pictures for you cuz this is neat it's archival stuff from long time ago now so this will be picture for March there we're up to picture e so March 15E and this is Dr NAB and they were
doing their East Coast hurricane awareness tour that year um starting May 3rd through the 8th you can check out that picture then we had a panel discussion with Bill Reed Dr Neil Frank and Dr Rick
NAB Legends I mean that's like three of The Beatles I mean right I think so
certainly a good analogy there let's make this another picture that you can view uh this will be F so March 15th F

picture F uh Bill Reed on the left Dr
Frank in the middle and Dr NAB on the
right um and you know the hurricane conference I really enjoyed
the national tropical weather conference since I started attending in 2014 15 was my second year going because

yeah it was a couple hundred people it wasn't 1,500 or 2,000 you didn't get
lost you weren't any big city huge
Hotel you know where everything just feels like a big Mega conference and I know there certainly are larger conferences than even one or two thousand people but you know the National Hurricane conference I had gone to that since 1999 off and on and he
usually has 1,500 2,000 people plus and you just
feel I don't know just not as connected
so at the national tropical weather conference it was just smaller you know by Design mostly broadcast meteorologists

from around the country local affiliates big name of local affiliates kou KPRC

Houston EX for example Rob pillo from KATC in Acadiana Southwest Louisiana
Central Louisiana you know sometimes people would come down from Charlotte big media Market or Charleston South Carolina Miami you know and John Morales
would come out um and you know mostly broadcast meteorologists and then some emergency managers a lot of them would do presentations and then certainly some of the head people from the National Hurricane Center from the direct dor deputy director somebody on the storm surge unit and we really learned a lot

and not scattered in a mega hotel we bonded better talking
networking telling stories sharing ideas
whatever the case was I really liked
that sort of character of the conference and Carrie and I fit right in we talked
up what we were doing the new advancements of the new Logitech wireless cameras what we're going to hope to do with Herby you know we were going to do another test coming up in June and we'll get to that uh in the
next episode but you know it was just this really excellent camaraderie yo
know it really really was and Watkins did a presentation um you know visualizing hurricane data different tracks different intensities you know through what we call data Vis or visualization and it was just a heck of a time I really really enjoyed it um I'll I'll put a picture of Watkins in here this will be G picture G for March 15th or
2015 I should say um so that'll be G and

then you'll really get a chuckle hopefully Mark being a smart elic I made a meme might have been my first meme this will be H and some of yo basketball people out there will get a good kick out of this it's uh Kentucky coach John caliper with the look on his face when they lost to Wisconsin and I said this hurricane season Kentucky basketball reminds yo it only takes one to ruin your perfect season cuz they were they were like 39 and 0 and then they played Wisconsin as I mentioned and that was it so I said be
hurricane prepared so there you go little picture Mark trying to make a meme whatever um what else did we do I
guess looks like we took the drifting surge cam down to with us Carrie had it

in Houston so I think we tested that
apparently I'm looking here at April 10th um I think we tested that out in the uh Gulf of Mexico a little bit and
uh then things wrapped up and it was
time for me to head back to Houston with
Carrie of course after a great few days of ntwc uh action and Houston started just
getting pounded with heavy
rain and as such that sort of ushered in

my first big exposure
to the Houston flood problem and that
would inform the future just 2 years later you know plus a few months with
Harvey and I got my first real taste of it as the conference wound down
we were looking at the models it's a meteorology conference I mean come on everybody was aware it doesn't just come up out of nowhere we were aware of the
setup and it looked like Houston could get a lot of heavy rain so we're headed

back up to Houston because I had a plane to catch probably the 11th or 12th or
something like that and uh I think
Carrie took me to my hotel and he was going to pick me up the next day and I'd fly out again it's probably April 12th but the plane um the flight and
everything was canceled or delayed so bad and for whatever reason I needed to

be home like the next day like I couldn't
be missing this flight so Carrie just
said you know what dude to heck with it
I'll drive you home we'll do the 17-hour trip or whatever it is and I'll drive you home so I'm to save this picture this is April 11th look at this radar scope shot um this is uh picture I and this is

incredible like Houston was just getting rolled up with heavy rain so flights were delayed and canceled and so forth so he and I did exactly that we left the

Houston area that afternoon and I mean that storm system this low area whatever moved across kind

of with us and it was just torrential frog strangle rain all across
the Gulf Coast from Houston through Lake
Charles the I 10 Corridor right into
Mississippi you know up to mobile and I'll even save this one this will be picture J check this out it was like we
were sort of being followed or we were following it or whatever um it was bad
so this is picture J and you just incessant rain so we made it home

you know Carrie brought me home and um I think he spent the night at a hotel he
had to and then he went on back to Houston God bless him that's the kind of guy Carrie was but it's interesting I
posted a picture and I'll save this one for you too uh and this is a real pictures not that AI stuff or whatever uh So what at K picture K this is a United Plane United um I

don't know what some of our pilot people will know exactly what kind of plane it is and it ran off the Runway and it stuck in the mud and I think it's either at Hobby or at George Bush at
IAH um and I I literally this is April 13th and I said who's glad he is driving home from Houston now I am wow and I

must have gotten the picture from somebody off of social media I should have credited whoever did it I hate it when people do that I didn't take this picture you know that's for sure um cuz
we were driving home so yeah I must have probably was going to fly out on the 12th and it was all rolled up so we drove through the night now it's the 13th and we made it home whatever but
you know this United Plane obviously went off the Runway there and had some problems but this really did sort of like I said inform the future and it was my introduction to this potential of

flooding and and studying that flooding
in Houston you know prior to this I was
certainly aware of Allison in
2001 that was a tropical storm that I
got retired because of all the damage it did from flooding stalling over the Greater Houston area many many inches of rain lots of flooding lots of damage um
but what happened and this is interesting just going through my Twitter it just kept coming wave after wave now we're up to the 17th of April ail and another wave of just crazy like

2 3 in an hour rain rates blasting
through Houston you know this is April
17th I'm home carries headed back whatever and I mean dude it just kept coming it was nuts so you know that gets

us up through mid almost to late April now we're approaching the last part of April and um hurricane season's coming not looking

real like I don't want to say exciting but you know the forecast was 7 3 and
one so it's like well I don't know what this hurricane season is going to be like but we're going to be ready for it that was certainly the way I was looking at it so we we end April we get into the
first part of May and something really special in my life

happens

okay now so we're up to the end of April starting the month of May it's May 1st 2015 and like I said something truly
special for me my family my wife and me especially is going to happen my seventh
child a daughter was born Daphne on May

1st and I have to say it was a piece of

cake uh for myself for my wife very easy
birth the whole bit the labor all of it uh I mean and and it was like this amazing like okay seven is enough we're
good and Daphne was the easiest and um
you know from birth through the coming months and years and you know now she's almost 9 years old um it was just
amazing and I was like all right this is cool and I was kind of thinking of it a little bit like hey perfect timing uh my wife will be off for three months so at
least the first three months of hurricane season she's got maternity leave she'll be home I still have a
four-year-old that's Josh kid number six
couple teenagers sure but with Rebecca being home that'll make things a little easier when I have to go out of town yes it puts a lot of burden and stress on her but at least she's home so I was
like all right that works out pretty well thanks dapan um so yeah I uh welcomed into the
world with my wife uh baby Daphne and we
were excited about it and um you know 2:18 in the morning and I joked here she wanted to stay up and catch the Euro good girl first baby born in May 2015 um at our Hospital yes so she was the first child for the month of May in
Wilmington North Carolina how about that little Daphne piece of cake beautiful sweet kid and a wonderful young lady she's starting to turn into even now so

I'm a dad again and we're getting ready to start hurricane season and as if like

okay let's challenge Dr kbo's prediction

of a fairly low count season we start
seeing in the modeling that something might try to
develop off the Southeast coast it wasn't pure tropical you know not a
strong signal anything like that and lo and behold as we get get up to let's see
if I I just keep scrolling up here so May 7th um we have 90 l so you know how that

works right 90 through 99 the letter L
for Atlantic L Atlantic right the invest
numbers so the first one of the Season 90 L pops up in the first week of May
there so I've got baby Daphne and N L
how about that maybe we'll have a baby hurricane um so we get up to 80%

development chances this system's right off the Cape Fair Coast off of Myrtle Beach that kind of thing kind of a hybrid deal which you would expect in May sort of subtropical you know meaning
that the energy is more spread out it's not concentrated that kind of thing and
um NHC bumps the probabilities up to 90%
And we could be looking at um Anna subtropical storm Anna and you know
really the only consideration or whatever these subtropical systems they're just more spread out you still have Heavy Rain yo get the banding some wind some coastal flooding if the situation is you know just so but not a real big threat unless
it sticks around a while and transitions to fully tropical and all that good stuff so uh May 7th there it is I'll
post this radar scope image you can see it just starting to come together there off the coast of North Carolina this would be picture L and I thought all
right we got something to do you know
and so I went down to um Carolina beach

and uh Kiri beach in the southern part of New Hanover County and lo and behold we have um Anna and you know they designated it and it's interesting that Colorado State University predicted an ace I'm reading a tweet here of only

40 wow that 73 and one I guess it would
be a low Ace count but there it is I I
actually mentioned it there on May 7th in a tweet that Colorado State predicting an ace of only 40 points or just an ace score of 40 uh Anna won't count towards that
unless it becomes fully tropical since 2015 I don't know what year they did it but subtropical storms do count for seasonal Ace I don't remember when they implemented it in 2015 that wasn't the case so unless Anna became fully tropical the
whatever one point or two points it would generate wouldn't count towards
the 40 that Colorado state was
predicting so uh it Mills around down
there we get up to the eighth here's a beautiful satellite picture wow that is nice this will be picture M M for March

and uh this is really cool look at that satellite picture of Anna you pretty good distance off the Southeast coast you can see sort of the spread out nature to it deeper thunderstorm activity on the Southeast side kind of dry air some sheer whatever on the northwest side but definitely good banding features and all that kind of stuff and it's May 8th for goodness sakes water temperatures the instability all that kind of stuff not there for
this to really become something significant pressure does go down they got Recon out there you know sub 1,000 millibars and um we're up till the 9th of May and I go down to the beach and uh here's a cool picture I took the uh one of the Logitech cams it's funny it's not a drifting surge cam it's just a a uh a live cam sitting in the sand so this will be picture in as in Nancy there's one of our remote cams I just stuck it in the sand streaming it on to Ustream so I went to rville beach then I went down to Kiri Beach Carolina beach again the southern part of New Hanover County and we had 6 to 8ft waves
just offshore heavy rainbands from time to time 30 40 mph
winds um I'm going to just bombard yo with pictures here this is picture o I believe and uh you can really get a sense of the structure of this system it
really did look like it was becoming more tropical in nature that is for sure
and L and behold it comes right up into
the Cape Fear area the evening of the
9th um I'll post this picture it says angry SE this is off of Twitter we're up to picture P I'm going to run out of letters aren't I I got to wrap this episode up soon we're up to picture p
and uh it's a nice little shot that I took from the iPhone of the angry Atlantic as Anna spins
offshore and uh it wasn't you know a big
deal um but it as I tweeted here later
in this see what time this was this was 7:57 p.m. so we're getting towards dark
uh you know what I might as well save this because it's such a great shot a great radar scope archival you know
almost 10 years ago uh picture so what
are we up to r or let's see op p q something like that right I got to remember my alphabet so this is the next picture look at that that's incredible just you it was trying that's for sure it just didn't it didn't bundle the energy you know enough I I don't it
doesn't look like it became tropical but
it did I guess it did because I said let's play find the tropical storm yo know what let's look it up like I said I don't know everything I don't remember everything so let's look it up together uh tropical storm tropical storm

Anna 2015 I guess it was um

yeah May 8th through the 11th so it did get designated as fully tropical how about that just wanted to verify so it
comes in to Southern parts of North
Carolina very heavy rain kind of windy a few power flickers here and there uh this will be the next picture that I will save for you let's see
o uh pqr I guess we're up to it's easy

when you just rattle it off right A B C D so we're up to March 15th and this will be picture R all right radar scope
R for radar scope what a great picture of that system the skeleton the
structure you can see it very clearly and it's right over my area Wilmington and vicinity and I thought all right
okay maybe this season will be an over

performer and you know we had this tropical storm Ona there at the first part of May I'll be ready you will all
be ready the hurricane Track Family certainly Carrie and myself and uh Todd
Todd p and I bring him up because he's
going to you know uh Fe be a big factor

that's what I'm trying to say and featured in The Next Episode we're going to wrap this episode here as we wrap up the month of May um Todd and Carrie and I are going
to go launch Herby out in Texas in the

first part of June but before we get to that in the next episode let's just kind of recap where we are so far in 2015 right so we start

off the year with this new lineup of

cameras the three lch cams in these

pelican cases storm cases again Pelican
is sort of the brand and then the storm case is like the sub brand I guess is the way to like a Toyota Corolla whatever uh you get the idea so we have
three of these they work great how do we know well because we tested them in a big winter storm in January another big winter storm in February and like we're ready to go took one with us down to the National tropical weather conference in March kind of showed it off a little bit hey everybody look this is what we're working on it's going to work and a little testing of the drifting surge cam some more really wasn't sure what we were going to do with that and then of course the hurricane season predicted to be very low overall numbers probably low

impact but you never know you never know when you're going to get that one it only takes one as they say and that's true don't want to dismiss it at all and there are different impacts rain could be a big impact and we were really seeing that in Houston it messed up my
trip home Carrie had to drive me home Houston got blasted again later in April
and then before we wrap this episode up Memorial Day weekend Houston Eastern Texas like
Southeast Oklahoma Western Arkansas I'm going to post this picture as the last picture probably of the episode and um we're up to S right so
March 15 s look at that it's a radar
scope shot where I guess yeah I'm

focused on Morehead City so you don't see the actual radar but you see all the watches and warnings it's just a little you can do in radar scope so I can screenshot it cuz I wanted to show how
crazy things were so this became
known uh as the Memorial Day flood in
fact um I didn't lie because I didn't
know I was going to do this but we got an extra picture this is T So T will be the last one May 15 T check it out

Houston is just blasted again inundated

not just Houston the Greater Houston area Sugarland laort The Woodlands up to
conro Huntsville Lufkin I mean it was just bad news Big

Time drenching rain major flooding and I
would really start to learn more about this because Carrie of course lives
right there he's in the heart of it and this would really start to introduce me to this concept of one of the top three

to four depending on the year and how things go population centers in the country Houston's always in the top five 3 to four million people densely populated
basically situated on a swamp and an
engineered flood control mechanism I started learning about all this gradually you know by default because they kept getting inundated and it really brought home and and really to the Forefront not to my home but certainly to car's but it brought to light that's a better way to put it that rain is an impact and more so than we

ever really give it credit for and like I said this really informs the future I like that term Watkins kind of introduced me to that term you sound smart when you said it informs the future it did it would inform the future
certainly leading up to Harvey in 2017 but several events between
the Memorial Day flood and Harvey and I

think also around Memorial Day in

2015 that some areas near the Hill
Country got flooded really bad and I
think there was a family that was washed away if I'm not mistaken um at a campground or something
like that I don't know I could Google it but I'm just rain became front and
center if if the Hurricanes weren't going to be there the big time rain
was and it's not going to be long we'll get to it in a couple of episodes once we get into the meat of the 2015 season what little of it there was there would be an impact from a hurricane in the Houston area in October of 2015 we'll
get to that uh you know two or three episode whatever it is down the road a piece here so that wraps up May and yo
know backtracking from there certainly April and uh March before that um and as

I just looked through the last of the tweets here for May uh May 25th I said
remember all that snow in Boston yeah well that's happening in Houston in vicinity except it's rain # Relentless so teasing the next episode here I'm going to leave on June 3rd I know that because I tweeted it and I'm tweeting and this is important and I'm hoping hoping hoping hoping I get this guy on I'm tweeting at our good friend I
known this guy since he was a kid Timothy Bruno uh or we just call him Bruno and
um he's excited about the Herby stuff and I'm going to invite him to come on I just got to schedule it where we can both record a zoom session and he can tell you all about it how I met him his
involvement with Herby and his major contribution that would really help us
in the future that's going to be on the next episode hopefully sooner rather than later and um we'll have uh Tim Bruno join me he's up in Alaska by the way when I'm recording this uh working for some weather projects up there and uh whatnot we'll let Tim tell you I'm going to invite him on and we'll have him on and we'll talk about our Herby he wasn't directly involved but I'm telling you one of the things that he helped us figure out in June of 2015 was a game

changer so we'll hopefully fingers crossed have Tim Bruno join us for the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway all right again thanks as you know as always for tuning in I do appreciate it your feedback I say it all the time right but I really do mean it I love hearing from you you email me you message me some of you text me some of you I see in person
and I like it that you remember some of these details it shows that you're paying attention but it also shows that you're part of this really unique project more than just a supporter yo know you're invested in it you like these stories sometimes you witnessed these things as they happened and it's just great to be able to recount these for you uh like I said also often like
you're sitting across from me at dinner somewhere and I'm just yapping or maybe you're riding with me in the vehicle some of the people that have helped out they've heard these stories ahead of time almost like a rehearsal but I digress seriously it's great to have yo along with me I am Mark suth again this has been stories from the hurricane highway I'll talk to you again

soon