[Music]

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 Jean 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
[Music] surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I am Mark sth your host great to have you tuning in once again this time around another trip to the desert Southwest I had not even been back from the Norbert Mission but a few days and
it's time to start planning to go back now I'm going to tell you this this being out there in the southwest during
the monsoon which I do a lot now all these years later I mean anytime I get the chance but even back then in 2014 that had just been a huge dream of
mine and the ability to do so uh from a

funding perspective by working with the Weather Channel cuz it's expensive the gas the hotel you know the equipment stuff you I got to pay for uh plane tickets you know when I go out out there for odal which we're going to talk about in this episode you know that's very costly and being able to live that dream
of mine of studying and observing and you know telling stories about whatever documenting you know the the interaction of a tropical Cyclone with the Southwest it was just fantastic and I
remember getting back from the norber mission and just thinking I I can't believe I did that like it was absolutely stunning Utah Nevada Arizona

the hours and hours that Carrie and I spent on the road all those adventures together the sites that we saw you know
just all of it and and being able to work with the Weather Channel being on The Today Show and streaming live from
Snow Canyon you know and there's flash flooding and and it's in the desert Southwest that's what was so unique to
me because normally especially during the warm months right it's hot and dry
that's what most people think of when they think of the desert the desert Southwest hot and dry sometimes 100° or
more and dry and you get the monsoonal flow and that certainly brings periodic bouts of showers and thunderstorms occasional flash flooding but a Bonafide tropical system coming up out of the Eastern Pacific magnifies all of that so
much that I just felt like I've I've got to go out there and being able to do so
especially thanks to the partnership with the weather channel was huge and to
be able to do it again just you know
about a week maybe less than a week after I was just there this time for the remnants of hurricane oal wow it was just like all right like
are you serious this is incredible so
let's set everything up first let's talk about odal on the heels of Norbert not
too many days later we had odal now un
likee Norbert which never made landfall
odal did make landfall along the Baja
right down there near Cabo San Lucas and it was intense category 4 hurricane peeking out at 140 mph Josh morgerman was down there in Cabo with one of his Chase Partners pretty incredible video that he's got on his YouTube channel and he's talked about odal at various conferences very
intense video from Cabo now I knew all

along that I was not going to be going to the Baja I told the Weather Channel that even in our early meetings you know look I want to I want to go to the Southwest when these things come up into that area I'll go to Bermuda I'll go to Cancun maybe kumel something like that maybe Jamaica the Bahamas but not the
Baja and it wasn't so much I mean I think it's 50/50 50% I didn't know anybody down there I didn't have anybody that could go with me morgaman works alone and he's got people that he already works with that are in Mexico you he's got his own thing and so and I didn't know him back then and we wouldn't meet until 2015 um I think it was 2015 uh and I just wasn't familiar with
the area at all and then the other 50%
was I want to study the impacts in the US you know not to dismiss the Mexican
impacts but I am based in the United States and if this is going to bring a bunch of moisture and cause flooding and other May him that's what I want to focus on so that was my plan and I as I

talked about and and of course in the last episode Norbert gave me that
opportunity in a professional sense uh
again I lived in Nevada I've talked about this a few times for 3 years 86 to 89 don't recall anything significant when I was out there so this the Norbert
uh deal was was huge and to be able to
do it again for OD deal which looked like it was going to be a an even bigger problem that was really special to me so
very important The Weather Channel was going to enable me to do this I didn't have to worry about the funding and very much like the Norbert mission where Carrie helped out I would have a lot of help for odal and boy would we need it
so again let's look at OD deal first and then we'll set the cast of characters up for you all right so a deal starts out
in the East pack doesn't look like it's going to make landfall in the early forecasts from the Hurricane Center maybe it's going to parallel the Baja Peninsula much in the way that Norbert Did But as time goes on it looked like
that Ridge was going to break down over the Western us Northeast Pacific and allow odal to track closer to the Baja
and lo and behold it does just that coming ashore down there near the southern tip Cabo San Lucas Area very powerful hurricane as I mentioned Incredible video there from Morgan and
it rides the spine of the Baja and it
looks like it could actually cross the warm Gulf of California and into Northwestern Mexico and the remnants maybe even somewhat intact that's hard to do it's hard to cross the Sonoran Desert up there um and just the area of
Sonora in Mexico and make it into Arizona as a viable tropical storm it it
does happen but it's rare but the fact
that the National Hurricane Center put uh the post-tropical symbol if you will I'm just trying to look through the different images here looks like it stayed post tropical just waiting to see oh there's one finally um
I'm just kind of looking ahead on their Graphics here and you know what I'm going to make this as I do my little picture things we're going to make this picture number one because this really
does set the stage and you can see why I was so amped again coming in on the heels of the Norbert Mission which I felt was successful it was a lot of effort I got to see what I wanted to see covered a lot of territory and all that got some experience under my belt I thought all right we'll do it again in 2015 or 16 or whatever no you'll do it
again in about a week so you'll see on this first picture here uh where's the little save image thing I know they've got it somewhere on here

yes so this will be odal pick number
one and we'll save it there bingo all

right save it thank you uh as you'll see
be sure to reference this picture um it's worth your time and effort you'll uh you'll see why I was so pumped up because the 2 a.m. Wednesday September
17th advisory odal was still a 50 mph
tropical storm in the northern Gulf of California forecast explicitly as they
say to be a depression so that is a
tropical Cyclone it's not post-tropical yet a tropical um depression at 11:00

p.m. Wednesday in South Central Arizona
not too far south of Phoenix Tucson area
whatever that was like wow very very
rare so odal was going to become this
big National story and I remember ABC News my friend
Rob Marciano was with ABC News in 2014

he used to be at CNN and I had worked with him and the CNN crew dating back to
2008 and uh for several years until I went over to the Weather Channel um and uh he was with ABC news

now and I remember he he and I talking on Twitter about it um and like all
kinds of people going out Kantor was going out like this looked like it could be a really big disaster high alert the whole bit like everybody CNN's Anderson Cooper was going to be out there like sat trucks everybody the whole mobilization of networks were going to descend upon Arizona Reed Timmer I remember him tweeting about being out there like this was going to be a big deal so odal

talking about big deals odal um really
was an attention grabber and I got all

my stuff together which really in North Carolina wasn't that much because Carrie

took took pretty much everything back with him to Houston after the Norbert
Mission you see so that allowed me to
fly all I had to do is bring my laptop
and uh my iPad my iPhone maybe a GoPro

or something and my clothes put them all in a roller bag I'm on my way so let's see when I was going to FL uh plan on flying out start tweeting about it first on the 13th of September talking to Greg
Postell he's at the weather channel of course uh at the time I think he still is and um Dr Greg Postell by the way yo

got to give credit where credit is due um I was interacting with him on uh Twitter I'm going to make this this picture number two what is the picture the picture is a uh GFS image and again
it's awesome that Twitter saves all of these all these years later uh I was interacting with Greg on Twitter he was posting this uh shot of the precipitable water vapor anomalies and remember an anomaly is a departure from some kind of a Baseline and in this case the Baseline was your normal water vapor uh
precipitable water what we call pwa T
and um they were just like off the charts almost four standard deviations or what do you call this four Sigma so you know it's four times the normal amount right and this is an incredible picture I'm going to save it this will be picture number two odal pick two and

we are saved uh yeah so I'm interacting with Greg like I'm probably going to go out there I said he's like okay stay safe so forth and so on because I'm telling you this looked like it was going to be a really big deal Southern California um Southern Nevada and certainly Southern Arizona to the extent

that Tucson officials in Tucson I remember them saying they were trying to get body bags
and like that was helping to send a message too you know you kind of put that out there and more oh that's pretty serious after all it was in Tucson in

the Pima wash I think it was p
that the woman was killed who drove across that flooded aoo just you know a week to 10 days
earlier or whatever it was when Norbert was coming and they remember that tragedy and this looked like it could be um you know like a true National
Emergency honestly like Tucson Phoenix
could just be inundated with water some of these models that were coming out it really did look that bad so I was
planning on going out I would fly and uh

join up with uh Carrie and Todd a good
friend of the project that we had known from when he lived in Washington state and then he moved down to Louisiana eventually getting over to Houston he and Carrie became good friends and we all would work together for a few projects actually and then Paul my good
friend Paul Bowman good friend and colleague to the project contributing lots of ideas over the years um so it looks like I flew out on
the 15th how do I know that cuz I tweeted on September 14th tweet or quote tweet whatever we'll
be flying to Phoenix tomorrow for weeklong coverage of the flood threat from odal in the southwest us this could
be significant for the region absolutely

so um and I also mentioned on the 14th
again just looking through Twitter here 18c GFS takes now or what is now
powerful odal up the spine of the Baja
and then into the Gulf of California with cop copious amounts of rain for Southern Arizona so yeah it was literally on the radar of a lot of people right and I even posted here I'll put this as picture number three uh I I
literally looks like I took a picture of my laptop of the forecast cone and it

looked like it was just about ready to enter Mexico there but later on as I showed you you know in the first picture that I posted um it was going to potentially
come into Arizona as a viable tropical

Cyclone being a depression so I flew out on the 15th and again I didn't have to take much with me at all and this time around
Carrie would drive with Todd from

Houston now the benefit to that is Carrie again had all of the equipment that we had for Norbert he had the drifting surge cam uh the one or two
whatever it was um Logitech cameras that
we had put you know inside of a Pelican case and all the other gear that we might need and he would drive it out there Todd would accompany him and the two of them would meet Paul and me in Phoenix or Tucson I think it was Tucson that we had meet up and I would fly into Phoenix I had never flown into Sky Harbor before and I was looking forward to it so off I go and oh this is a good one this will be what are we up to picture number four um this is a tweet that I did on the 15th I'm obviously in Charlotte because that's what it says it geotags it 3:15
p.m. September 15th 2014 from Charlotte North Carolina it is one of those model plots the spaghetti plots for odal and

uh you can see clearly that it's going to come into the desert Southwest all of the different models showing it so yeah this was a real big deal I got to emphasize that a lot that the hype level
to this was really really big because of
the flooding potential people were very
worried about [Music]

it

all right so we're back stories from the hurricane Highway uh talking about hurricane odal and in this segment I am

very excited to have my good friend
friend of the project from many many years ago Paul Bowman I found him he
does exist still and uh he's out in in
AR in Arizona nope he's in see I'm
Arizona's on my mind Paul I can tell yeah he's in uh we're going to go to Arizona in the story but let me introduce Paul uh he is in parump Nevada
the high desert of parump how's it going Paul it's wet lots of rain it's going good going well I should say yeah so the desert's wet as we are recording this in February of 2024 the high desert is a little wet you know I was noticing that on the your nestcam out there um that
backyard area where the old man walks through it was pretty wet today it's actually flooding yeah it's it's we l standing water we had some rain about a week ago then it stopped and that's all it takes to set up the stage for the ground to not absorb any more water right well that's a good segue into
speaking of not absorbing water we were very worried about did you like that transition that's a pretty good transition that's good you you've done this before I could tell thank yo that's a pro at work um uh it it looked like there was going
to be a lot of water coming for a Arizona via hurricane odal and I don't

recall how we came to the agreement that
you would drive it's not that far uh but
that you would drive from parump to Phoenix and Be My Chauffeur for the better part of a week you know because um this would be 2014 so just kind of give us some background was air internet still a thing back then no we had sold it we sold it at that point and I was uh kind of in a semi-retired state having a good time kicking around just waiting for me to make the call but you made the call I asked my
wife and she says yeah get out of here right okay well you had helped out also in Ardmore Oklahoma um uh for the Herby
launch just a couple months earlier or yeah something like that in in June um so you had worked with us uh in the field already in 2014 and of course if you guys remember Paul was very helpful in 2011 developing the first rc plane with a a GoPro the first for us not necessarily in history nobody has to know that right right um and then he helped out uh in some of the ideas that eventually led to the Herby the hurricane research balloon and yo actually came out to North Carolina for Hurricane Irene uh all those are episodes that are in the can already so if you recall those episodes that's this guy the same guy Paul Bowman so yeah so

you're going to come out to uh Phoenix and pick me up at Sky Harbor and again
yeah exactly yeah maybe if you retire again never know um September 15 2014 is

when I flew out how far is it from H parump to Phoenix do you reckon H maybe
eight or nine hours depending on whether you drive like a teenager or an adult right and and you come down 93 out of Kingman and all that after you get through Vegas 9 much is it 93 or 95 93 I

never get it right there's a 95 I think somewhere and it's not I 95 it's like a Highway 95 perhaps somewhere in Nevada but it's 93 um and it's a two-lane with these little passing zones and there are so many crosses and memorials on the side
of that it's like death Highway it really is bad it is turning into an interstate 11 they're slowly widening it yeah yeah they're getting there about 40 more years right exactly um so yeah yo
come down yes the speed of uh ofert

right yeah yeah geologic time the
government's on geologic time so yo braved uh death Highway and um it's

actually a beautiful drive honestly um but you came down picked me up at Sky Harbor I had never been there before flying into Phoenix um and I remember it
was pretty warm probably upper 80s low
90s when I came in I came in in the evening I posted a picture on Twitter I'll save this as one of our pictures I don't know what I'm up to now by the way Paul I use Twitter to help me remember things it's a great framework and of all the stuff Elon has done since he took over at least the Twitter archives are still there and any media that yo posted that's still there in its format of when you posted it it's not degraded or some small version of it and so all these pictures that I've posted all the way back as far as I can find they're all there and I save them reference them
yes it is exactly so anyway thank you Mr
musk for leaving Twitter archives intact
that it it hasn't been redacted um so
I'm flying into Sky Harbor and I Tagg Jim Kantor on H Twitter here uh and I

can't remember it's really amazing I should ask one of my friends here he's a pilot for a major airline as they say a friend of mine here in Wilmington it looked like I was posting pictures from the plane now Paul you might know this in 2014 did we have internet capable
aircraft 10 years ago a few I guess near

Asic as it is now but yeah yeah well now they got starlink on some of them and the other one is like ViaSat or whatever but I guess I mean there's there's no doubt that some of these pictures like I literally said here back earlier in the day on the 15th that's the storm near Ponka City Oklahoma and hello from 31,000 ft clearly I toasted that from
the plane that what a nerd right yeah I

mean back then it was like a big deal it's probably $50 to get internet or something yeah I think it was like 12 but yeah for a few hours um anyway so
I'm coming in for a landing and there's this beautiful um kind of dying off cumul animous cloud with a big rainf foot yo like that term I've used that around yo before rainf foot or rain shaft rain curtain and kind of rain things um it's

beautiful man it's over I call it the Phoenix Valley I don't know if that's the geographic correct term but we're getting ready to come in for a landing it's a big Valley down there it's just beautiful out there Phoenix Scott stale all of it that whole area the sun was going down a tag can Tory and it was like oh wow look at this welcome so to speak uh to Phoenix and um I landed yo

picked me up as I recall I didn't have a lot with me because Carrie and Todd were coming from
Houston they were already driving and he was bringing the cams we had those Ustream cams oh gosh Ustream yeah yeah
Ustream that was new we had that Logitech Broadcaster um and remember you held that in your hand for us while we were out in Ardmore trying to recover that payload from that tree you were the cameraman holding the Ustream broadcast Caster with a little wire on it actually it had a battery so you probably didn't have to have a wire and remember we were streaming live from the woods that when Carrie assembled that pole to get the thing out of a tree oh yeah that's right that 40 foot he's like I'll be right back like where's he going fabricates a scaffolding right that was amazing so yeah we were using the Ustream broadcaster um we had put one of them I might might have had two by this time but we had fashioned it so would they would sit inside of one of the Pelican cases it's technically called a storm case that's the brand name from Pelican
um and uh he was bringing that he was bringing the drifting surge Cam that we had tried out during Hurricane Arthur and of course he was bringing Todd Todd P A friend of the project for a long time um he was originally from Washington and as I talked about in the first segment he lived in Morgan City then he eventually went into Houston he and Carrie became good buddies and then they were coming out to Linda Han because Boy The Weather Service Tucson
Phoenix the Hurricane Center national news media you name it everybody was thinking that this could be a catastrophe for Tucson maybe maybe for Phoenix we were talking one two three inches per hour of rainfall and in the
desert yeah that's a big deal
yeah so Paul comes in grabs me from the

airport and I think we get going pretty

like right out of the gate uh and going down to Tucson because that's where we're going to meet um Carrie and Todd

it's only a couple hours from Phoenix to Tucson something like that bad Drive yep and um I think that yo

had you must have had a radio in in your
uh you had a 4Runner right it was white if I'm not mistaken yep gosh that thing was actually so com I can remember yo still have it actually my daughter dri it now so really it's 20 years old wow
it's showing every inch of 20 years old but well but but I mean mechanically I bet it's still doing fantastic absolutely yeah so you must have brought your radio with you your handheld because it's now September 16th and I tweet just heard over ham radio in tucon
so you and I were obviously there that a thousand sandbags will be readied in the area in anticipation of the flooding
interesting yeah I had I had the car completely rigged radios cuz you know yeah radio geek and all that it's my hobby so yeah we picked that up it looked um pretty ominous I think we met
up with Todd and Carrie at a Hilton
Garden in in Tucson and the plan was we need to find

the wash at least part of the plan a
Royo a Royo dry wash you name it um I

like that R Royo that's cool by the way
uh we wanted to find the one where the

woman was killed a couple weeks earlier during Norbert and if memory serves it
was called the Pima wash I think that's what it was called and we went over there because it was expected that a lot of rainfall was going to come out of these mountains and let me jump on the Google Maps real quick and see what those mountains it's like the Catalina Foothills or something like that yeah I don't know the geographic names too much but I do know it's Puma County I believe so Puma watch makes sense right so let's see perhaps I think it is let's see Tucson
the the Catalina Foothills mountains
whatever and the worry was that all of

that rain would come down out of those mountains the subo can
Canon all these washes and rivers and whatever come out of these and it just
dumps into Tucson gravity takes over
yeah and that this wash could fill up again and be a really big problem it already had killed uh somebody a woman she drove through unfortunately made a very bad decision but you know so what
she's still not with us and that's really sad you know even if you did make a poor decision you still have to yo know I've got sympathy that's just terrible her family you know still dealing with it so we went there found
it Cantor was there and I think yo might remember this remember they had an an an an Entourage I can't talk remember they had that Entourage of black SUVs oh
yeah and in fact looks like a government operation yes it did I'm gonna pull
these up I put them on Dropbox I don't know if I can share the link with you my connection is kind of flaky I hate to try to right right yeah um odal

where's my odal folder here I'll look at them yeah with the bad weather in the
west uh the connection out there so your
your internet is microwave these days yeah the two of the two of the three providers use a microwave hop over the mount ptoy into Vegas yeah and mount poy is getting tons of snow right now so about radio there's attenuation and kind of messes things up start missing packets and stuff well you took a bunch of pictures do you remember this would be a good little like oh you remember that cuz I don't remember do yo remember what digital camera you had and that you brought with you because yo took a lot of good pictures you had some kind of a digital camera probably was I wonder if it was my Canon I have a T2i which is old now it's a rebel you know what I bet it's baked into the image in the metadata it might be metadata that'd be neat to see it doesn't matter but I just think it's kind of neat if there's any depth perception or depth the field of the photos is probably the cannon yeah there's a little bit of depth of field and you were able to zoom in um but we're in Tucson we found that's funny

this is gonna be like oh it's too bad I can't scre you took a picture of a of a hole with ants around it an ant hole I

did yeah I'm gonna send you a text with it this I must have been hungry oh or they were hungry look at that that's your picture these are not my pictures that is funny man uh I may have just sent yo everything that was on the chip oh yeah yeah when this was all over no no so everything's on the chip yes but this is during our trip this isn't like some other time this is all in sequence yeah yeah while we were out there you get the picture check your

phone oh that is so funny Paul's Wild

Kingdom the ants of Tucson why would I send yo that yeah except it looks like they're moving their larvae out of the nest anticipation of weather sure yeah yeah you were documenting all kinds of stuff for us um so these pry well focused the
pictures are out of order sort of I think it's just the way Dropbox did it um we're going to get to some of these in a minute we went down to the San Pedro River uh but we'll get there oh look there's a Toyota Tacoma how about that coming across this highway we'll get to it so we go to down uh into
Tucson and like I said cantor's there with his Entourage his producer I think it was Steve pedak they're all out there
um there are other media types out there it was a building-sized satellite truck remember that thing yep um yeah here we
go so we're going to set up the drifting
surge cam in that wash that was the idea
so Carrie and Todd arrived on the 16th
the night of the 15th into of the 16th whatever it was I'm sure they were dog tired but you know such as life on the road with hurricane track that's the hurricane Highway for you you're always tired um and we all meet in Tucson and
our first order of business let's get down here set up that drifting surge cam
in that wash we'll put a huge chain on
it run the chain around the girders of this little foot bridge that goes across and you took pictures of all of this yo did a really good job kind of documenting what it all looked like uh there's like this huge concrete cul
embankment kind of deal there's this foot Bridge it's got you know flowers a little teddy bear makeshift memorial for the woman that's right I remember that yeah yeah and it was cloudy it had been
raining a little bit there's some yo know standing water nothing significant um but still kind of humid you know for
Arizona and we turned everything on and
remember Paul the drifting surge cam had
two eyes if you will on one end that had

these acrylic lenses bolted in and then
we used silicone I hadn't learned about 3M 5200 yet that was coming a few weeks
later when I went to Bermuda that's the next episode um so we're using three uh uh silicone and sealed them shut and
then the GoPro would look out one of those eyes and then the Logitech that
was there the broadcaster would look out the other one and there was these golf cart batteries those AGM batteries that would run everything foam in there and then we had that spot locator in case it drifted because that's the idea and then everything's closed it's a black case and we turned it on and as you recall it wasn't even 30 minutes it quit because
it just got too hot and that's when I realized this just isn't going to work period it it didn't matter any insolation incoming solar radiation was going to heat that box up and it just got too hot I remember how disappointed I was because I thought you know man I'm trying to like show this to Jim The Weather Channel this is going to be amazing you know the the case would
literally sit in the bottom of the wash
you know next to this road and if it swelled up again that was going to be an amazing shot and dude even you know how rugged the GoPro is even it shut off you know so you got to be talking about what 140 150 degrees inside that box
probably so I felt like we suffered a
defeat right out of the gate like come
on it's never a defeat just a setback
well I certainly felt defeated because I strive for as close to Perfection as I can get but this you took some really good pictures you see uh Todd and me um
in fact again I know the connection's weird I'll just send you a picture of the screen real quick on the text that works hey whatever it takes man um

there's me and in me and my uh my New Balance shoes um New
Balance apparently they're like hot right now for some reason somebody probably put them on Tik Tok or something like those I totally remember that wash I remember the um yeah the
funnel of the concrete and dumping into the rural and yeah I remember that yep

so it didn't work it's a real bummer it's like all right so what do we do next so the other idea was to try to

find a nice low waterer
Crossing and try to figure out how can we get this uh camera that's in the Box
the um the the Logitech Cam that was inside of a case how do we get that

up like mounted you know like we hadn't done that before where these are pole mounted right right uh trying to get my
zoom to pop back up here it's being
annoying uh there we go got to keep an eye on the time all right we will extend thank yo very much the zoom people telling me how
long I've got um so I think Carrie and

Todd were doing some Recon and then you and I searched around
Tucson and and figured out there was
another wash that was like a really steep hill and at the bottom of it we
got out we surveyed it you took a few pictures it says do not enter when flooded stuff like that and
somehow I think we rigged up the camera
box like against a fence on somebody's
property or something you like I don't know if we should do that and you know we were trying to do some things we'd never done before we got these new cams they're smaller how do you mount them you know I don't I don't know if Carrie came by with some I think he did come by with a ratchet strap and that might have been the first time we ever did that because I think eventually Paul we ended up putting it on the telephone pole I believe that was
the first time we did that he was like yeah let's just use a ratchet strap maybe put an L bracket under it to prop it it didn't slide yeah remember that and cuz yeah you were cuz there was like these iron rod iron fence things like
Stone entrance ways to somebody's property and I was like why don't we just chain it to that they won't mind and you're like yeah you know this is
you know they will mind you know not everybody's into the weather like yo and I think that's I think that's when we first put something on a pole yeah

you know with these new boxes you're right because it was this really nice shot looking down this pretty steep grade of this wash I don't remember the name of the wash um by the way I've been back there since then I don't remember whom with I've been out to the Southwest a lot of times ever since and the iPhone of course geotags when you take pictures and all I got to do is look up that picture it's somewhere in one of my portable hard drives I know where that wash is for for
future yeah because it'll it'll happen in the future right probably happening with this rain event coming through now out in your area but anyway yeah I think that was the first time that we put something on a poll so we did we set it up and uh that camera system would run I

think it would probably 30 or 40 hours or something like that so you know more than a day almost two days and then we
decided let me look on Twitter here we
being me and then you guys just F followed okay Mark um hey you're the
producer that we would go uh out out to some of these river

systems um oh yeah that's right I remember going out for the drives in the evening yeah yeah like where are we gonna like let we've got a camera running in uh Tucson on that wash it's
babysitting the wash as I call it so the rain starts moving in I remember we drove out to like Benson and Willcox out
on I 10 pretty easy to go back and forth through those cities was that that was East wasn't it yeah that goes east exactly yeah yeah remember that and then I was like all right why don't we go down south towards Mexico and uh it

started getting later and later into the day um it just didn't look like it was
going to do much though like the rain was just weird uh it would look impressive on radar but then it really wouldn't materialize um we get down to the San
Pedro River and there's like this Old

Iron Bridge down there I think that's where took a picture of the ants by the way somewhere over there and you know it was up I even tweeted it I said good news to report been all over Benson Arizona near the San Pedro River and while it's up no major issues seen we drove through a
little bit of heavy rain I even tweeted this is now the 18th so you picked me up the 15th so that's H we'll just call it
the evening of the 15th so all day 16 all day 17 all day 18 we're now on day three and a half by September 18th and
there's just not much happening and I remember you know that they had ordered they maybe they said this and they didn't do it because they just wanted to motivate people I don't know how emergency managers do what they do but remember they said they ordered body bags because they thought there could be a lot of fatalities in Tucson and I
talked about this in the first segment all of the media that mattered the big networks the big stars of those networks Anderson Cooper Rob Marciano k Tor Mark
suth hey yeah snuck that in there Paul
Bowman's out there I mean it's a big deal but it never really materialized and it really taught me how

difficult it is to deal with what seems

like a slam dunk oh man this tropical system's coming up could even come into the area as a depression still this is
going to absolutely hit we're going to nail it and it was like a needle in a hay stack called the State of Arizona so like what did you you know
dig back think about you know you're you're the chauffeur you didn't complain yeah hey whatever we got to do but like what were your thoughts on it were yo just like yeah well told you so or no I was I was on the H learning as we did yeah yeah I was on the hunt man we were we were looking for it remember on the 10 and then we we cut left or north and
went into some small town that followed Creek trying to find a flood or something I remember right and yeah it's
no not at all we had a nice vehicle plenty of fuel had all the time in the world and let's go get her but that's the thing there was just nothing to get and that's again gota emphasize this that's great for the people you don't want the disaster to happen at the end of the day but if it's gonna happen I go
back to that right might as well be there and might as well give it my best shot use the technology and you know what we had in 2014 you know we're eons
ahead of that today 10 years later but I remember and here's a great picture this will also be one of the pictures that I save and I put on patreon oh it's unbelievable I tagged Mar Rob Marciano um and let's see he was
with ABC News back then still is today Good Morning America he's the ABC News meteorologist I had known him like I said since the late 2000s when he was with CNN but Paul can you remember how

green it was out there it literally like
Hawaii it had that emerald green color it was I mean vibrant green

yeah yeah it it had that desert smell

which I like but you said and you know
it's fine that it smelled like smell but
but it had a rodent smell remember because you you said that the animals pee out there yeah it smelled like rabbit tinkle to put it for lack of a better term right um that begins with p and ends with is um yeah I live in the desert every time
we get the first rain it's like oh ammonia right exactly you know the rest of the time is fine so but there's this interesting smell though like it really is and I couldn't get over it it it's just and again I mentioned this in the first segment that John Denver wrote that song you fill up my senses and he talks there's that one line you know he says like a storm in the desert that is exactly right and this picture pict again one of the pictures that I'll save for patreon and I'll put on Discord as well here I'll send you a shot and it's
it's hilarious because the Tweet right before it I say um is this picture basically Tucson

or Hilo Hawaii you know because the low

clouds I that looks tropical that's not Arizona that's Hilo Hawaii that's a wahoo somewhere you're on the rainforest side what are you doing oh yeah yeah remember that but that was amazing dup points are like in the 70s everything's
green it's wet but there was no major

catastrophe it just didn't happen um we

searched far and wide put as much effort into it as we could you remember though there was that one night probably the night of the 18th and we're getting close to the weekend that we had yo been out there several days now we're come coming up on the weekend and yo know everything's going to wrap up but we had like that's probably the night of the 17th into the 18th or the 18th into the 19th doesn't matter that much but I do recall and there's this really interesting radar image where it looked like and I'm going to send you a picture of this too you'll get a chuckle it literally looks and it's the way the beam interacts with the mountains so it
looks like an ultrasound scan when you're going to have a baby and goodness knows I've had enough of those and I even drew a baby in the ultrasound

that's what it looked like to me on radar scope and it says it's an ultrasound in the hashtagged odd radar
images it does you threw that in there because it looks exactly like an
ultrasound and like I said I've seen seven of them what's that oh it's a foot never mind right yeah yes it's a foot it's a foot um in the Arizona uh
mountains blocks the beam but Paul you can see
that picture I sent you look at all those oranges and yellows in there yo would think it would have been raining cats and dogs totally it just it looks
very dense it's a strong radar return right but it just wasn't it was so weird
so you know it was night when we got when you took this right yep that's right it may have been all verga yeah I it says 4:32 p.m. so it was
getting towards evening yeah it's still pretty dense or they had the G turned up too high on the radar it's interesting because I think this is from my iPad because of the way the just looking at the aspect ratio of the picture yeah oh yeah says iPad up in the upper leftand corner that was on my Wi-Fi anyway
that's kind of cool um but we went South

uh Carrie and Todd followed everywhere we went in uh car's truck and we went
South almost down to Mexico and we finally found like yo

remember this it was this little stream that had come across this low water crossing how can I forget it was nothing
and I was like so excited oh I got out I'm filming it and it's like humid out there it's just raining a little bit it's late at night I mean it's probably 10:30 11 o'clock at night and we're driving along and I see you're driving
and I'm looking out like you know a kid in a candy store or whatever I'm waiting for just oh where's the flooding or whatever and I see an animal and my brain which

is trying to figure everything out and the guy that works in my brain we all have one youan they made a movie about it from Pixar called um inside out right with all the different emotions and the people that work inside your your brain and your personality well mine was trying to figure all this weather stuff out I'm tired I'm probably very anxious because I've put all this effort in nothing's happened I see this animal and I'm gonna go ahead and tell you it was clearly a skunk but the guy in my brain

was not able to look it up fast enough and I know we were streaming live it was on the Ustream feed and it's not archived anywhere unfortunately but I holler out I probably scared Paul in the next week Hey look it's it's a thing
it's a thing and you're like it's a skunk yes it's a skunk and he's like it's a thing it's a thing I was so that that dude that tells you how desperate the situation was I
was gonna ask you like you know yo don't get out much do you mark right but but you and remember I wanted to I gotta I get a picture the kids will love that I was always about the kids the kids will love this and you're like you get out and you get pissed on you're not getting back in this car that's right you're walking home I'll strap you to the roof I was ready to jump out I was like oh yeah huh and you you said something like they've got a serious range on their little squirter thing there yeah they they have some projectile capabilities oh my gosh I was
so excited to see that skunk I mean you would have thought like is this guy just never like you said he never been out of the house what we don't have skunks in North Carolina that I'm aware of maybe up in the mountains hey look we don't have them in Wilmington period so yes I got excited

about seeing a skunk um down in Southern Arizona man we
were like we were down there near like AO or whatever that place is called let me see look let me look on the map all I know is your excitement level was like you saw Sasquatch right yeah it was off
the off the charts and you remember Carrie and Todd were like what's he all excited about it's it's a skunk it's a what a skunk oh okay yo

want me to shoot it no no just leave no no no no leave it alone it's waddling off we went down I know we weren't over in Sierra Vista that's a different area we were down near like

Patagonia um and bille almost to nagalas

not quite that far but the Rio Rico I
think we went down like I mean we were way down there dude looking for anything
I remember asking you if like make sure you have your passport if we go any further south oh gosh and then of course
you have to do the Trek back to Tucson but let's talk about a couple of funny things that happened um the flood never materialized and that was great I mean there was some flooding but it was not the Calamity that that everybody had feared it wasn't biblical right and um
they definitely dodged it though because odal came up out of the Gulf of California there had a lot of moisture but it's just really hard to know oh
that's what it was dude I think we went over by the way I just kind of I think we might have even gone over to hila Bend and I think we were down near AO
AJ in this town called why wh y like why

but whatever yeah because Tucson out that way is not that far and you remember how like
persistent I was almost stubborn like
we're going to look and look and look but anyway so let's let's move away from that the flood didn't really materialize whatever our camera that we set up the first time ever uh on on a poll and I've
looked through your pictures and Mine by the way nobody got a picture of the camera on the pole or setup or otherwise I look through everything oh man um yo got a nice picture of the teddy bear that somebody put up for the the woman that had perished but yeah yeah I didn't see any pictures um anyway uh

so um do yo remember uh just making sure our time is
good that Zoom doesn't cut me off um do you remember when we went to Texas Roadhouse and it was you me Carrie and
Todd and I just thought it was funny how
Carrie pronounced salmon that he would always say I want a salmon salmon
yeah he would always get the salmon Sal
salmon and it's the way he said it yeah he was like I'd like to get the salmon
and french fries no seasoning he never wanted seasoning and he had that little bit of a you know when he talked just a just a hint of a little whistle right oh
salmon you know but he didn't he said salmon and no no seasoning on those guys

and and poor Todd was so tired all the
time he's like yeah I think I'll get the salmon too and you remember Todd didn't like it he did it was not good he said and then Carrie got upset because he said that he goes this is he said this is frozen salmon it's not fresh and the waiter or waitress was arguing with him no it's fres nope I know salmon and this is not he was like he was like we're going to get in a fight at Texas Roadhouse over whether or not the salmon is frozen bar fight yeah I'm like I'm G
to just I'm going to wager that if you're eating salmon in Tucson it's not fresh I think it has been frozen at some point I would have to agree a little far from the coastline yeah right they're not bringing it end from the Gulf of California all those all those salmon run or salmon run videos that we've seen on National Geographic from from the Gulf of California nope none gosh that was funny and uh so anyway we
wrap up everything it was not much fanfare at all um I think you know all the people that
came out all the effort that was put in and really nothing happened again wonderful for the people it just kind of left sort of a I don't know what like you know all this hype and kind of a crywolf scenario maybe you know like but it was warranted because I mean hey what if there was 6 Ines of rain up in the C cinaa Foothills and that's all it takes in an hour you know and then you've got cascading walls of water coming down into Tucson is the University of Arizona in Tucson I think it is isn't it I believe so I don't know I thought it was
in somewhere south of Phoenix by University Drive oh tempy Tempe yeah in Tempe yeah so Phoenix well there's one in Tucson I wonder what that one is Arizona State maybe Arizona State's in doesn't matter I'm too much in the details um anyway it just wouldn't have
been good obviously had the dire

forecasts uh and remember it's all about probability anyway nobody said there was a 100% chance that Tucson would be wiped
off the face of the Earth it's all about probability so it's wrapping up put in our best effort and again got to put up this camera for the first time that nobody has a picture of and and it it
worked and uh whatever so we pack
everything up send it back with Carrie and Todd uh and they start making their way back to uh Houston and I've got an extra day before I fly back my scheduled time was like Friday or Saturday or something like that 19th or 20th of September the the tropics are getting kind of busy back East you know the Atlantic whatever I got to start focusing on that a little bit I even mentioned it on the 18th on Twitter weak low pressure tries to develop off the Southeast coast over the weekend more rain for eastern North Carolina little Breezy perhaps whatever so all right Arizona's a uh a noow so to speak odal

whatever Paul and I have an extra day so
we stayed at a Hampton Inn not far from
the wash where the first camera was mounted on a pole and we got up the next
day grabbed the camera and that was it shows over were done so we had the whole day ahead of us sun came out it was beautiful out there it was hot again yeah like low 90s or whatever which that's you know hot enough for me and I said uh hey I would

like to go out in the desert and actually see and maybe even

touch one of those Rango looking Cactus
what do I mean by that Rango
Cactus the S the sagaro or however yo pronounce it the g is silent come on man you're from the desert Southwest Saro that's i' I've never heard it pronounced that way but then again much yeah yeah so there's a movie called Rango from 2011 industrial Light and
Magic did the animation for it purely animation like Pixar does a phenomenal movie by the way and it's takes place in the Mojave Desert and it's very photorealistic and so forth and so on and there's this one scene where this lizard Rango sort of hides next to one
of these Saro Cactus to elude a hawk and
it's like on the poster of the Rango yo look it up on Google you'll see I wanted to see one of those up close and personal even though I lived in Vegas for three years and Paul you can testify to this Southern Nevada does not have the same desert as Arizona necessarily
completely different completely different yeah right you get a lot of what like low scrub and sage and whatever yeah and um if you get up to a little bit of altitude you'll get the uh what are those plants called the yucka
yeah that's it yep they got those pretty flowers too yeah you can break those off and stab somebody yeah um they make good
swords um those y um Joshua trees too sometimes that's
it yeah lots of Joshua trees you get around 3,000 feet elevation you start seeing the joshuas isn't that amazing so the Saro kind of like the Venus fly traps back East but not quite as um oh

what's that word it's not unique there's some scientific word where there's a species that's very particular about where it lives the the exact word escapes me but uh the Venus fly trap is very selective about where it lives in
southeast North Carolina and the Saro
are similar and again that's what I mean they don't natively grow in the Vegas
Valley or prump you might bring them in with Landscaping but they're not native to there they are native to two parts of Arizona but not everywhere so sun's out
it's beautiful day it's hot Paul and I have an entire day to kill and he's going to be my driver we got nothing on the plate I don't have to do anything for the Weather Channel no updates it's just tourist time and me being the weather geek and geographer nerd that I am I asked him can we please drive out into the actual desert away from yo
know the city and I know it's like well you've been in the actual desert for the last 5 days no no no I mean like like forget all that there's no weather coming I just want to see the desert and so Paul took me out it was on Interstate 8 outside of Phoenix on the south side
of Phoenix and uh Southwest yeah yep
Southwest so you take so basically from Tucson Northwest to Kasa Grande on 10

and then you pick up I8 which eventually goes to San Diego so all along eight it's pretty
Barren out there mostly open
desert um and and that's about it and

all these Cactus are going by fields of them or whatever you want to call it and there's really nowhere to pull off because people are going 75 80 miles an hour and I was Paul P pull off there and the road was just the grade was too much or whatever and there was really nowhere for him to pull off and I was like really hankering ah man I got to get I got to touch one of these and we came up to this interchange which is Highway 84

and we get off it is the Saro one RV

park that's what just shows up on Google Maps and it's like this old I try I
think it was Matt my good friend Matt being know one of the friends of the project I think he coined this term that it's a ghost interchange you know like there was a lies there was a you know what and it's all abandoned so it it looks kind of like a movie set from sort of a a a

post-apocalyptic you know like the sign is blowing in the breeze you can hear it
and a tumble weed goes across and somebody's hiding inside the gas station and he may or may not be armed you know it's like that that was this interchange
and uh I know right like Wow way to go
guys so we get off and it's a really
hard right at The Interchange on the highway 84 and immediately to my left because
I'm looking there is like a a cattle
guard and a fence thing and it's open
and it does not say no trespassing yo
know whatever and I was like go in there can you go in there and he had a 4Runner it's good clearance and Paul drove back
off-road into this area that it's just
nowhere clearly people have driven back there with ATVs and whatnot there's tracks and we drove in you know what a hundred yards and I got out and you got to admit dude I was like yo know Ralph I thought was pretty cool too that pretty right yeah exactly you don't have Saro and perum I felt like it was Christmas day and I'm Ralphie opening up the presents on uh that Christmas Story movie it was amazing the craggy Hills

you know the rocky hills it reminded me of uh the Star Wars uh episode 4 when
they were in the canyon and and that was out in like Death Valley or somewhere where Lucas shot that I think it just it was it was amazing it just was absolutely cool and there was little lizards yeah hey Rango right um little
rats that would run across uh you know an occasional Hawk somewhere it was it was unbelievable and I thought oh thank
you Paul like he really of all the stuff he had done driving me around looking for flooding helping to set this up keeping me safe on the road all that something about that just

absolutely like scratched an itch inside
of the naturalist in me and I was noticing things like the very small like micro washes where water had
streamed down and I was thinking like gosh man one day this could become a real wash or whatever and you know next to this place was a larger wash that came out of the uh of these Hills and it
just was unbelievable but you brought
your drone remember you had a phantom one I think or a two no was a one yeah there
were yeah that was a long time ago go ahead yeah you I've done a lot of talking by the way which you because I get excited about this stuff but you're you're a good Storyteller Mark but yo brought your drone and you flew it around and you actually let me fly it and um it was just amazing just to be
there amongst these Cactus now you're not supposed to mess with them I think you're you can touch them but you you're not I think they're protected people the people are just people are at the same time amazing and they are also the worst
you know it's like that George castanza would say on Seinfeld people they're the worst or maybe Jerry said it whatever yeah but they would people Dynamite literally they Dynamite these Cactus they they grow for 70 80 years um and
owls live inside anyway they're they're protected you're not supposed to molest them or harass them but I just wanted to touch them like they're so amazing yo know surviving I I would have to think hundreds of thousands of years in the desert to evolve like this and that was just very special so we finished up there I took a lot of pictures you know sent it to the kids the family whatever we headed up uh made our way up 84 and that goes up through otin I think

it's called it's an Indian or o oin AK c

h i n in um it's an Indian Community
it's in Maricopa we go up through that boy Maricopa by the way has grown a lot since we were out there let me tell yo it's amazing um we go up into Phoenix we

go around the periphery on the 202 see
you can tell I know the West because that's how right you call it the 202 right we use the the exactly I need
get pick up on that I know yeah we went around the 202 you connect over to 10
and then this is where it just you guys will love this then you get up to Northwest Phoenix and now you're out there near Surprise Arizona all that area Glendale
all that and you head out on 60 which
also becomes 93 at some point once you get on farther
out there into the open desert the
railroad tracks uh parallel this uh area

there's like a lot of um uh these weird little metal shops or

whatever along the side of the road where like artists make stuff out of metal and steel like windmills and dinosaurs and they're all rusty you know like Indian stuff and it's just it's just a totally different culture it's yard art yeah Yard Art thank you um uh

you know there's Saro out there it's it's kind of like a a a rural uh desert mix whatever and yo
start getting out into some rolling Countryside and 60 goes up into this
town because I wanted let me get to sort of where we're headed here I wanted to go up to Yarnell or at least to where

this Granite Mountain situation where the firefighters had died I don't know if they had put up the monument or the memorial yet but it was in this area Congress Yarnell it's like up this 90
Switchback Road and that's where the the Granite Mountain Hot Shots died the year before in a terrible fire killed 19 of them you remember that I do I do and that's North and whatever of wienberg Wickenberg Arizona so we stop
in wienberg it's a fairly sizable western town I say sizable it's not like 300 people or anything um but it's a
neat little town it has the I think it's
pronounced the yasa hampa river goes
through it and I think it's an Indian term that means like the river is underground or something cuz most of the time the river flows underneath the dirt what the locals tell me and we stopped
at a place that we both liked of all
places no it's not Cheesecake Factory that was I talked about that in a earlier episode 2014 Paul was the first year I had ever gone to Cheesecake Factory that was whatever we stopped at a Taco Bell late afternoon in wiinberg

Paul and I over the years that I had known him many times I'd be on either a Bluetooth or the old wired headset and he would hear me hang on Paul I got to order real quick yeah I'd like to get uh two chicken soft taco oh you're Taco Bell and he would order Taco Bell in pump and it was just like I don't know Taco Bell really yes we liked Taco Bell
so we went to this Taco Bell in Wickenberg and it has become

legendary and the reason is well look you you tell the story cuz you remember it I have told you this so many times I have taken family members there ever since go anybody that goes with me out west I take him to this Taco Bell and w i i don't know what it was but we went in there and the the people were nice the store was clean it was fresh and we
ordered the food we were hungry we've been out for all day we were hungry it
absolutely hit the spot it just seemed it just seemed so good for Taco Bell it was really really good right and dude they had Awards on the wall I'm not kidding folks yeah yeah Awards with the
the customer service right yeah the the manager whatever they would come out into the lobby not the lobby the sitting area and hey how you guys doing everything good and you're like where are we again where are we yeah go dollar

burrito yeah like everything about it
was it was amazing like a festar restaurant and Taco Bell even the soda
the Pepsi was perfect it was like it was
like commercial grade T it wasn't overc
carbonated or overwatered or anything it was just good yeah and I remember back then they had those Cinnabon ball things that you could get for dessert oh my God I ate those and H man it it just it
absolutely hit the spot and ever since
anytime I've been back there to that area I go to that Taco Bell and I took
the family out in 2021 just jump ahead a little bit we all went out to the Southwest over spring break it was kind of half the pandemic half coming out of it whatever and I took him to that Taco Bell and there was just something about the fact that I remember Paul we were sitting there the sun was low in the sky it's shining in through the window and there's a Saro and yeah it's Landscaping Saro but it's still a Saro sitting out there and I'm like and and Wickenberg by
the way is a true western town I don't
know when they were founded or whatever but they got a rodeo there they have a um like a kidss rodeo whatever that's called it's a big deal it's a huge tourist it's kind of like
not Myrtle Beach because Myrtle Beach I'm not real fond of but wiinberg has a

history okay and just to sit there and say and I remember I said to you Paul we
are enjoying the best Taco Bell we've ever had in Wickenberg Arizona that's right and it just blowed off the tongue
Taco Bell wienberg Arizona so it's a
natural it's a natural yeah so we we
left we W up um to the top of this like

Overlook up past uh Congress this is where Highway 93 starts by the way 60
takes off to the West 93 heads off to the Northwest towards Vegas Kingman Arizona first whatever um went up to
where eventually I don't know when they installed it but eventually they put up the memorial to the Granite Mountain Hot Shots and uh we made it to Yarnell that was the town closest to where they lost their lives
and I think I had a red eye and so it was time to take me back down to Sky Harbor at the end of just an amazing day
just to getting getting to see Arizona
you know as a tourist as a tourist and not not just as a tourist though because you remember I was just so a naturalist or whatever you yeah you know like I
didn't I don't have anything against museums we're like hey let's go to the museum let's go no I want to go out in the open probably wouldn't have seen if yo were driving right and mean we're working yeah and and I'm working I don't see it like I do when I'm just being sort of a geographic tourist as they as whatever I think it's a good way to call it yeah yeah so that was it uh you took

me to the airport I got the red eye and
uh I immediately start complaining on the plane uh I got it right here not enough
flight attendants to allow for boarding in Phoenix apply within and hurry

please I I posted that on September 19th
at 11:09 a.m. so it must have been that
you took me to the hotel whatever and we left I left the next day whatever I think so because I don't think I would have driven home at 11 o'clock at night yeah that actually makes sense you would have been home that evening to the wife and kid that's right absolutely and that concluded my uh Grand two trips to
Arizona for two tropical Cyclone events and I was hooked I was absolutely hooked
like I'm going to do this in the future you know I'm going to make it a thing I'm going to learn about the monsoon uh and how active that can be or
you know sometimes it's not how important it is to the region for more than just the obvious reasons and over the the years I would go back several times and um uh I think it took let's
see 15 16 probably was four years later

that I went out again and that was for Hurricane Rosa which we'll get to in a an episode way down the road but ever since many times out there I've seen yo and you know what just a little teaser to two seasons probably from now I've
done the desert Southwest kept track of stuff most recently seeing Paul out there and uh Peron for Hurricane Hillary
I mean did you ever think that you would see me and Tracy in your town Tracy is a
good friend of the project and a friend of mine from college days who's a producer in Vegas and I got pictures of that camera
on the pole right that one does exist and we you'll have to tune in two years from now ladies and gentlemen to hear that episode we get to that episode yeah we will we will we're getting there we're almost up to the current time but yeah that this the point is that the my love of the desert Southwest and the interaction of these big weather systems um you know has continued and it
all started in 2014 first again with
Norbert and then and all that effort I put in with Carrie my goodness and yo remember Paul by the way speaking of the norward episode um we were coming back out of Arizona there on the north rim of
uh kind of the East part of the grand Canon I told you where we were and yo remember you told me oh you're getting ready to go across Marble Canyon Horseshoe Bend yeah said and you said make sure you get video of that with your GoPro and I put the GoPro out the window it's like the Hero 2 or something
and oh my gosh that area is the Vermilion Cliffs and all that are yo kidding me you're welcome yes thank yo
that was unbeliev the Navajo bridges over there oh my gosh it's just like stunning it's

stunning the the words don't do it justice and I've been out there so many times since absolutely love it well yo
help helped out a great deal uh well thanks for having me it's always fun back then yeah well yeah you helped out being here and you helped out almost 10 years ago man you kept me safe um Paul
would never I will I will testify under oath in front of the Senate the house whoever I need to no matter how many times can you go a little faster we got this I'm not going over the speed limit you want to drive get your own car that's what Paul would say he was he wouldn't do it he wouldn't do it yo know be like I don't like driving staring at the rearview mirror yeah it's like let's uh let's get there we got to get there whatever Paul wouldn't go over the speed limit he was very safe I'm not like aggressive people know that by now you know but like anytime he
did he did such a good job never complaining you know putting up with my nonsense and whatever yeah it's just it's amazing it good fun man good fun and you made it back home and uh Trish got a break right
and Trish got a break for a week she was probably glad to get you out of the house right that's what keeps marriages strong is travel absence makes the heart grow fonder yes it does so well I know I did
most of the talking D but I really do appreciate you coming on just to add a little bit to it um no problem Amazing
Adventures out there and uh it's all been really fun so thanks for uh including me in the the adventures in the past absolutely what happens with the future you know well thanks again Paul I appreciate it and uh we'll have you on again sooner rather than later hopefully sounds good Mark take care thanks

[Music] again always such a wonderful time chatting with Paul even if I do most of the chatting really appreciate him coming on to you know talk about the experience of helping out during odal a little bit and you know I will say again almost 10 years later now how appreciative I was that he did that and
he was my driver I didn't have to worry about renting a vehicle um and he did
very well he kept me safe and just being able to work with Carrie and Todd and Paul covering that event which could have been a really significant deadly
flood event luckily that part didn't come to pass but it certainly piqued my
interest between that and those two together those events and The Weather Channel enabling me and allowing me to cover those events definitely wet my appetite for you see what I did there wet like desert Southwest it was wet
anyway continue on Mark it wet my appetite or as I said pequ my interest in studying the desert Southwest more
outside of the norm of it being hot and
dry and you know when I say hot you know what I mean it's like like triple digits out there a lot during the war months
but when it changes and you get the monsoonal flow I wanted to study that more document it more in person and then of course when the tropical Cyclones come up from the Eastern Pacific I wanted to be out there for those in the future so that really set the stage for
what I would do over the next 10 years
really from 2014 to present time I'm recording this episode in February 2024 and we think about all the things I've done in that 10 years and I would go back now it's a regular thing we'll get there when we get current basically with this podcast series that's only a couple of way uh years away by the way that we will be current that this podcast series will reflect on the previous year that's
exciting I can't wait for that that's that's getting there though we got to do it one season at a time but indeed from

2014 through through present day I have
been back to the desert Southwest numerous times it is an amazing area they depend on the water so much for
obvious reasons we all do right but as we know anywhere whether it's an arid region or a normally wet region too much
water too much of that vital subst substance can be problematic and I was
very privileged and very honored to be able to go out there on behalf of working with the Weather Channel working with my colleagues and doing something different expanding my horizons quite
literally so how did the rest of uh September end up in case you were wondering 2014 kind of slow um my last tweet of

September I ran the Twitter search on the Twitter advance search where you put in dates and whatever you want and yo can look up all kinds of archival stuff on Twitter I put in I was making sure I
did it correctly through September 30th
but you know the season was slow in the Atlantic when my last tweet of September 2014 was on September 27th like I didn't tweet anything after that for September that's just that there you go that's all you need to know and that tweet was referencing Phoenix
and the desert Southwest I guess there was more deep monsoonal moisture or something because I tweeted think it's time to move to Phoenix all the interesting weather is out there I should have just stti after Norbert and odal that's funny oh well but yeah the
um Atlantic Basin was just under a tremendous amount of Shear again we had that cooler main development region relative to average and the warmer East Pacific so there was more Rising motion again what was I say it was 15 hurricanes in the East pack that year so no wonder you know there's no way the Atlantic's going to get very busy um with that kind of a busy Eastern Pacific
all that energy all that upward motion it just competes with and does other things with sheer that just shuts the Atlantic Basin down however as we start
to bleed into the next episode that would change at least a little bit and for me pretty significantly and for our friends in Bermuda very significantly as we got
towards mid October my Adventures
outside of my normal area of the Carolinas Florida Texas you know the coast my comfort zone which was pretty big you know Texas to the Carolinas I had been in hurricanes and tropical systems all throughout those areas up to this point in my career and uh but I had
you know never gone to the Southwest for something we changed that in 2014
started covering winter storms in 2014 to New England now my first
International field Mission would happen
and that would be in Bermuda for the g-storm a hurricane called Gonzalo and

we will cover that in the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway all right so that's a good way to set that up for you listen as always great to have you tuning in I appreciate it I love your feedback I really do when yo talk about it on Discord some people email me um it's just fantastic and even
on patreon the comments I get on patreon and I hope you like the pictures that I attach I think that's a really neat thing and those will be there as long as patreon is around and their content delivery Network their archival system hopefully it'll be as robust as Twitter and hopefully Elon Musk will keep Twitter packed full of all these archival pictures too and I'm saving them on my hard drive as well cuz some of those are Classics right and I hope you're getting to enjoy those on patreon when I attach them as part of these episodes all right again thanks for tuning in I appreciate it I am Mark sth your host of stories from the hurricane Highway that wraps it up for this episode we'll do it all over again when I discuss Hurricane Gonzalo in berm I'll

talk to you again real [Music]

soon

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