[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 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
[Music]
surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I am Mark suth your host great to be back with you as we continue our
trip back in time looking back at 2015
still now we're up to the month of June hooray the start of hurricane season that year and you know even though there was not a lot going on in the 2015
Hurricane Season overall I mean it was forecast to be quite a bit below average
and it certainly was due to the big El Nino that was developing in the Pacific
there was still a lot going on with us
our hurricane track stuff my family yo
know so my personal life my business life professional life things are still very busy just to recap all the way up to where we are um you know had a conference and uh in South Padre Island

I had a baby in May you know we're working on projects developing new camera systems these Logitech cams look like they're going to be the new thing we have three of them we did some winter storm stuff in the winter months uh you know been very very busy
now we are up to the beginning of hurricane season June and again it's
forecast to be quite on the low side for overall activity nevertheless we want to
be ready so what am I going to tell yo about in this episode I'll give you a little bit of a rundown here um well
we've got the start of hurricane season so we'll talk about that I'll tell yo about it from my perspective and um we
kicked things off with me going to Houston for the Ready set go I think is
what it was called or something like that I'm sure there's TW TW about it and I'll get it you know accurate uh but it was a hurricane Expo uh probably the biggest one in the country over in Houston at the George R Brown Convention Center Carrie and Todd would be there
with me and I would get to meet hundreds and hundreds of people that would stop by our booth we had a nonprofit or not
for-profit Booth uh amateur radio public
awareness really weren't selling anything I wasn't a vendor and we were there for public awareness so we didn't have to pay anything and we were able to actually drive the Chevy Tahoe the
famous hurricane track Chevy Taho into the George R Brown Convention Center and that got a lot of attention a lot of photo opportunities for people and so I'll tell you all about that uh and then it was very shortly after that that we would head up towards um I originally thought Amarillo to test the weather balloon Herby again we started that
project of course in 2012 did a couple of test launches in 2012 the inaugural
and then we did the little piggyback project with CNN and the ill- fated Jagger balloon project thing with CNN
CNN International we did get the payload back if you haven't heard that episode or whatever you're like what is he talking about make sure you find it um so yeah we started the Herby stuff in 2012 didn't do anything really with it in 2013 I don't really remember why yo
know but we didn't and then we resumed testing in 2014 with a very successful launch and

Recovery that's so important you can launch it but can you get it back yo know uh I think there's a certain multi-billionaire who also does some testing in Texas that works on those problems launching and then getting it back anyway you know who I'm talking about um so far we had had a 100% success rate on getting our payloads back and we wanted to continue that streak in 2015 2014 of course was
Ardmore Oklahoma and Paul Bowman came out to help Carrie and myself with that
one so we wanted to do it again and I was thinking maybe Amarillo somewhere up in the Panhandle there nice and flat um you know and and we were excited about all this and then also in June we'd get our first inseason named storm that would be tropical storm bill and I was thinking
you know already well we had Anna in May and that visited my area of Southeast North Carolina and then we had bill in June I'm like really we're going to have a slow hurricane season yeah know we'll get to all that so yeah June was packed full of all kinds of stuff lots of travel for me and uh we've got the new baby Daphne in our family she's you know going to be a month old she was born May 1st so June 1st she's a month old and
the Seth household is alive well with all kinds of stuff going on Dad working in the hurricane stuff and busy with family activities summmer a US school is going to be out and then we're going to see what happens with the hurricane season all right so let's go back and look at Twitter here a great sort of um

framework from which I can build these episodes going forward it really has been helpful to use the Twitter advance search and I can literally see everything in chronological order and as a reminder I also have the trusty handy
dandy portable hard drives that contain
all of the what we call the camera roll
from my various iPhones over the years I try to dump those camera rolls onto
these portable hard drives put them on my Dropbox got to save all this stuff for posterity and it's nice to go back
and just look at all these different pictures screenshots some I tweeted some I didn't
so you never know when I post these uh on Discord and on patreon as little
addendums little extras for you um yo

might see something that you never saw before that I never made public for whatever reason maybe it caught my eye this time around and not so much way back whenever it happened all right so
what's going on on Twitter June 1st hurricane season day one is the first tweet that I made on June 1st so that
works and I was linking to an article or

a blog or whatever on Facebook that is no longer active for whatever reason so I can't click on it and tell you what I was saying and then I was also tweeting on June 1st sort of teasing out the fact
that uh a week from June 1st we'd be testing the Herby payload and the weather balloon project for from Amarillo little spoiler for you we did not end up in Amarillo you know all this is subject to change of course when we make these plans um but yeah we were going to go do that and I was talking about that on Twitter and um I guess I did a Blog now

what's interesting I think in 2015 I was still doing my hurricane

Outlook and discussion videos and they must have been
private um so I would produce
them it was a weird way that I did them back then like a couple of different cameras and I would have one camera looking at a at the screen from a mirrored laptop it was very convoluted I
don't know if I started using my telestration program I should look it up
on YouTube and see what I was doing back
in 2015 but I think I made them so that they were only available in the app cuz you remember I was selling these apps or
the app hurricane impact on the Apple

Store the you know the App Store and on
Google play um yeah the the app sales
were okay very cumbersome to keep up with all the updates that had to be done and I am going to dedicate maybe the next episode is probably time to do it just talking about the app and why I got
rid of it and and how difficult it was
to maintain it and how it kind of helped to lead to patreon and where that went

because it was like 15 or 16 one of those years that I I jumped into patreon
and um yeah we need to talk about all that cuz it's a very positive thing from what was a very headache based situation with that app
you know everybody said I needed an app and not everybody knew how difficult it was to keep it maintained and so anyway
back to the point I believe back then
because I was asking people to pay a few dollars for the app and I wanted there to be exclusive content so any video discussions I produced I populated those
into the app and I didn't make them publicly available yeah we were using YouTube and I probably did have the telestrator software even in 2015 it's called ink too it's just a strange name but that's what it's called ink the number two Go ink to go there's
all kinds of good stuff out there nowadays but that's what I used then and
I think that's what I was using and that's what I use today all these years later to do all the drawing and the telestration that I do when I record my videos as they say I do it live I record
them live and put them out as they are you guys know that anyway I was doing that back in 2015 but again I think they were just in the app I mean because I never tweeted oh here's today's YouTube video at least I'm not seeing it anyway
I certainly was doing the blog because we were still using Wordpress to populate the website back
then and um so there's that all right so
let's go on and see what else I was chatting about um and certainly as the
first day started in hurricane season um not much going on in the
tropics to worry about you know that would come later not really to worry about but we had bill later in the month
so June 4th a nice tweet here uh driving

to Texas I'm headed out there to meet Carrie and Todd and I'm listening the inter to the interstellar soundtrack from Han Zimmer and that must have been cool driving down the highway listening to that soundtrack that movie came out in 2014 I do believe and um I'm a big

fan of course as you most of you know by now of Han Zimmer a big influence on the music that I create uh but yeah I was listening to Interstellar you got to do something when you're driving 1,200 miles or whatever it is and um I do
believe this first picture here this next tweet uh I'm going to save this one this will be picture number one for this
episode all right so we'll put a j and
then a one for June well you know what probably should put June I don't know what that noise was um did you hear that it's like another computer in my office making noise so this will be June
picture one so June 1 whatever uh what is the picture well I hope you'll look at it as I'm referencing it now the old
Chevy Tahoe at this point in time June
4th 2015 this should be a trivia question as
a side note our good friend of the project and just a good friend of mine personally too um it's too bad we're not
a publicly traded multi-million 100
million doll company or something cuz I would pay this guy half of that I
absolutely would the unbelievable Mike
Cornelius does so much for our backend
and um you know with coding things and just coming up with stuff uh
anyhow he um has made it so that we can
do basically like transcripts and we can search for stuff and it's not that hard to do but I don't know how to do it okay that's the bottom line and he does and you could find little nuggets and we could do trivia and here would be one of the trivia questions right here maybe we'll do a little game show we should do it live on YouTube make these all public and don't get me started when I get an idea look out anyway the first picture
is of the Chevy Taho odometer and it's
at 39 $95,600

back there like shut up trying to record here so that's the Tweet there 395 629

as I'm driving to Texas all right so uh

June 5th um I uh tweet that tomorrow in

Houston it's the Ready or Not Not Ready set go why did I say that that's funny
it's ready set go nope sorry it's called Ready or Not hey either way Ready set go that makes sense all right uh it's the Ready or Not hurricane workshop I'll be there with the latest equipment that we use in hurricanes stop by um and then we're going to so that
was over the weekend and then on Monday um that would be like the 8th I
guess we're going to be testing the weather balloon I mentioned again so let's see here we get to the George R Brown uh place and set
everything up this will be picture number two and um it was early in the
event so you only see like one guy there believe me there were thousands of people that came out and um learned

about hurricanes and visited the vendors and you know met with different First Responders and government officials and took classes and it was very well done I
think they still do it you know Jeff Lindner um John Dawson from the fox
affiliate there um um in Houston what is
that 26 or something like that I think it is something like that uh you know different personalities in the Greater Houston area amateur radio Red Cross FEMA you know Texas do the different um judges that run the

different it's weird how they do that in Texas the county judges and it's just an
amazing opportunity for people to learn
about hurricanes because you know Houston's such a huge population area the petrochemical industry the diverse cultural aspects
from you know Hispanic to uh Asian to

regular Texas white folks right it was like the mix of everything there was so
important and we would learn that yo know really like again just a couple years later when Harvey would come knocking and so events like this were very very important and I was glad to be a part of it so check out that picture you can see the top and you can see Todd he's the gentleman on the right in the photograph June 2

picture 2 we'll just call them two three you know it's June all right um and then Carrie rest in peace my good friend what a wonderful friend of the project he was
still is if you think about it right I mean seriously he's on the left I guess they're both kind of tired cuz they're just kind of chilling I was up and around I got lots of energy I love these events so they're chilling and waiting for the crowds to show up hey there they are speaking of crowds the next tweet
and by the way this was June the 6th
that um the the ready uh ready or or not

what the hell was it called oh come on yeah the ready or not
or something like that Ready or Not hurricane Workshop so funny that I can't
remember um so the next picture from the Ready or Not uh
Workshop does show a a good chunk of
crowd and know these are not AI generated sad that you even have to say that um of course they weren't this is 2015 there was no AI to speak of back then anyhow great event I was so glad to
be there always talk to so many people
and you you know how much I love to talk you know swapping stories talking about ideas showing them the equipment that we
use the new stuff these new logic Tech cams we've got the Tahoe there so yo
know showing off some of it you know and what it's been through um talking Hurricane Ike which was s years almost

uh earlier right and what an impact that
had on the region and just you know
meeting children and um senior citizens
you know people of all ages races ethnicities you name it it was just the
people part of this job is remarkable I
love it and just to see their passion their interest and and hopefully to spark a little bit of motivation to just
continue learning and make sure you try to grasp exactly what it means to have
to deal with any hurricane but
especially a major hurricane

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

all righty back with you now stories from the hurricane Highway looking back of course at the year 2015 and the month of June wrapping up the Ready or Not hurricane workshop at the George R Brown Convention Center Carrie Todd and myself s had such a good time talking and talking and more talking uh to so many people that stopped by I cannot say enough about what a wonderful opportunity that was not just for us an exposure to our project but for the people of Houston you know you think about what was going to be coming 2 years later and this

particular gargantuan hurricane Workshop that they had done for a number of years
you know wasn't novel you know they had done it year after year after year because never know when it's going to be your turn to have to face a major disaster and as we all know for the Houston area that would be just about 2 years later with Harvey in 2017 now is wonderful and exciting and engaging as the workshop was and I certainly enjoy
those public appearances not going to lie the technical aspect of going up and
doing a weather balloon launch with our little pay there hery that was really
very exciting to me and I thought all right let's do the the public Outreach stuff we'll put in our time doing that and then let's go do the really cool stuff up in Northern Texas somewhere and
we originally were planning on amarillo but after Consulting Greg Nordstrom and looking at some different upper level data we decided we would do it along the I20 Corridor near
Sweetwater or Colorado City somewhere around there and uh so we wrapped up on the sixth there uh at the George R Brown Center as I mentioned and it's time to head north
now before I get into the Herby stuff and by the way we have a guest coming in

this episode very soon Tim Bruno uh
who's been a friend of the project and a friend of mine personally since such a
long time ago we'll have him tell his side of the story but yes I do have a guest in this episode he's going to talk about his role in teaching us a very valuable lesson and giving us a true Pro tip from a true
professional you'll understand after yo hear the interview with him conversation it's not an interview um none of these
are their conversations right but Tim
he's great I've already done the recording obviously so I know what we talked about and I'm going to insert it whatever that's called in podcast World um when you've already done it and yo know what the content is but he'll tell you all about it his side of the story um but yeah Tim Will Be Our Guest here in just a little while in a very important role you'll see but one of the
things about the whole project is it's run on helium not hydrogen for a lot of
reasons the most important of which safety Hindenburg hello you know yo
know a little spark and it's all over we're a rolling fuel air bomb with hydrogen helium no problem uh but helium
is not free we have to pay for it and
it's kind of scarce as we would learn
and uh Carrie handled the acquisition of helium in 2012 in 2014 but we knew as we would grow this project that we're going to need yo know some kind of an account we can't just hope that some random gas store for

the lack of a better word uh has helium
and you can't go buy it cuz you need research grade helium not party balloon grade helium we would learn yes there are different grades of helium so I was
very excited uh to have an account with

air gas okay that's what I'm getting at here it took a a little convincing they
were like wait you want to Launch Weather balloons into hurricanes and once they understood it it was the local
office here in Wilmington they were all about it and I was really excited about that I was like man I got a commercial account like these big construction companies you know and these welders that are doing stuff and I'm just a little old me with a website about hurricanes or whatever right and I've got an air gas account how cool is that and that meant that I could go to any air gas in the low of 48 and rent or

purchase or whatever you rent the tank you buy the helium that's how it works and um we're good to go and that was just really neat uh and the guy that helped me out his name is Mark Lewis at the local store here in Wilmington cannot say enough about him his enthusiasm his encouragement has helping me out understanding the account management and you know rental fees and
the supply supply chain issues whatever
cuz yeah the helium trade is a big deal if you can figure out how to get unlimited helium cheap you'll be the next billionaire just telling you all right so that was cool we had a air gas account and I bring this up also because I see that I mentioned it to somebody here on Twitter this is WXR JM and I'm

going to Mouse over that person that's Ricky Matthews and some of you probably know Ricky Matthews Private Pilot meteorologist and a University of Charlotte North Carolina Charlotte sorry UNCC Charlotte alumni and I like his
handle his not his handle but his description Ricky's description on Twitter I like clouds but anyway Ricky
had asked me about getting the helium so
let me just see what he asked me he said um I assume you got your helium and uh I said I did air gas
actually right there in wimington thanks for asking if you're up early Monday tune in you because we were going to be launching early in the uh morning on Monday June the 8th we'll get to that in a few minutes but yes helium is a big
deal and so so the fact that I was able to get this account and then load up this um big old tank of helium in
Wilmington and we had a um I think it's
called the uh what was like the unit 300 tank
or something uh maybe it had 300 cubic feet of helium in it I guess and so it's a
big tank it weighs a lot you have to pull the Tahoe up to these dock High doors and they roll it out on a you know

roller thing right and we loaded in rear

end first so the valve is facing towards the opening of the back of the Tahoe and off I go with this giant helium tank
Carrie using my air gas account number
he got one in Houston and put it in the back of his truck and we would have two
and this is important because what we're going to do hopefully for this next Herby test is launch twice once right
near sunrise and then another later in
the afternoon if everything ran smooth
and we also would have a backup if the first launch ended in some kind of a catastrophe which it did so as we get
ready to set up the uh the part where I bring in the recording of my conversation not interview with uh Tim
Bruno let me just set everything up for you so we want wanted to do or I wanted to do Amarillo first flat easy access

I40 goes through there grid system yo name it beautiful part of the country especially in June yeah you could have severe weather but it's either severe weather or a big hot heat Dome usually
no in between and honestly at this point
we just wanted clear easy weather didn't want to deal with supercells and all of that stuff we just needed to test so
Amarillo was my first Cho voice but uh
the upper level wind pattern was such that I changed my mind as you know can
happen and uh we chose Colorado City
Texas which is not too far from Sweetwater which happens to be Sweetwater the wind farm uh I don't know if you say the capital of the world or whatever but it is a big Wind Farm area it it's sweet
water look it up it's a like huge for wind farms and lots of turbines out there and so we left Houston on the
sixth made our way up there uh car Todd and myself we I think just took car's

truck I left the Tahoe in Houston we put my helium tank he had a Ford truck and
so Todd carry and myself the hery payload the helium the two weather balloons you got two helium tanks yo need two weather balloons right everything we needed off we got go and we head up to um The Sweetwater area and

stayed at the Hampton in in sweet waterer and it was not too far let me just look it up real quick if I may on Google Maps just to make sure I have everything accurate um Sweetwater Texas down to
Colorado City probably it's almost like
it hears me I didn't even type S SW of
course the laptop hears me you're saying right and it populated It For Me Maybe I searched it before that's got to be what it is um anyway Sweet Water

Texas and uh to the west of
Sweetwater oh yeah it's just a few miles down the road honestly 5 10 15 20 mi
tops is Colorado City and um I chose

Colorado City because it was less populated and the way the interstate kind of bends around you know cuz I20 cuts across straight and then it has these bins when you get to these little settlements right different cities and there was a park a little baseball park uh something like that Municipal Park or whatever right off of I20 that I was looking at on Google satellite and I thought oh that'll be perfect we jump off the frontage road we go over to this park
and it's called the Mitchell County Sports Complex and we're going to launch Herby right near sunrise on Monday June
the 8th and it is going to it's going to be spectacular I was so excited I love the weather balloon launch testing stuff carries all about it especially so CU he's big- time amateur radio guy right up his alley weather geek science geek Tech geek you name it Electronics nerd ah just this was our day Todd same exact

situation just all about it and we had our audience tuning in of people who have been supporting the project they're going to be watching live cuz we've got the Ustream cam from the vehicle we're
going to have a couple of extra cams on this one from the ground like ground Station tracking you know kind of like they do over over at SpaceX you know it's our little mini version of SpaceX I can't say it SpaceX there we go it's our
own mini version of SpaceX and um we
were so excited so everything was ready but there's

always something lurking you know Murphy's Law right and to help sort of
round all of that out let me feed in and
insert into the podcast my conversation with Tim Bruno as we go through the whole day there of Monday June the 8th 2015 when we learned a very valuable lesson about weather ballooning and how to make a successful launch and Recovery
here's my conversation with Mr Bruno

[Music]

oh man I have been traveling too
much is this over starlink by the way uh

no this one's actually over my home internet gotcha landline or whatever
hopefully it works it's a lot slower than starlink but it's working so far

well good of you to join me in Alaska
after all these years last time I saw you was during the height of the pandemic in Colorado when you flew out

and showed up for a snowstorm after it was 99 degrees with fire everywhere
[Laughter] and if we hadn't documented it and I made an episode out of it I wouldn't have believed that it
happened anyway well let's talk about
the weather balloon Herby and a pretty
significant contribution that yo accidentally gave to us back in
2015 and so we're up to that point so let's just kind of catch everybody up and this will help you too Tim um we had started in 2012 with a test launch it was a cooler

and I think we had like 15 ft of a cord

between the payload and the balloon and the parachute and all that first time we tried it it was too heavy and it bounced
and it was almost a disaster we had one tank of helium one balloon I ran it down
like a Road Runner grabbed it we were able to unhook everything put some more helium in there there we let it go and
uh we took car's radio out it was this
huge um kinwood handheld radio the one

that we use now in my hand when I'm out there and it does that little beep thing the the the noise that aprs sends and we
took that out because that was going to be back in 2012 our APS aprs transmitter

so that shaved off about a pound and it
made it up we estimate to 94,000 Ft
we found it we did several tests ever since including the ill- fated CNN
Jagger project where the payload and everything separated at 66,000 ft took a few months

to figure out what happened it was this complete disaster the payload was swinging up and over the balloon like this pendulum and whatever so we move
along didn't do anything in 2013 we tested in 2014 in Ardmore Oklahoma Paul
B came out to help out with that that was successful um I think
94,000 or some or 97,000 ft something
like that we did have aprs then this little micr track that Carrie had provided we were making advances and we were Now using these little pelican cases and we reduced it from four GoPros to two and we just got better at it and
uh so we end up out here in 2015 we're going to test on June 8th near
Sweetwater um Colorado City area and even mentioned here Sweetwater Texas people 12 wind
turbines 47,800

so notm is a a notice to Airmen it's
basically just going through and letting any pilots and others that are uh flying

aircraft through airspace know that something is going on that they need to be aware of they could be anything from a balloon launch like marks done to the
president's visiting in town and they shut everything that yeah so they can
have a wide range of effects from yo know you need to stay out of the airspace from surface to say 5,000 ft if
there's you know firefighting operations going on or search and rescue or something along those lines to the airspace is just completely shut down right well we don't shut the airspace down ourselves we're just letting the folks know that between the Surface and 60,000 ft I think it is because above 60,000 ft we're out of Civilian airspace if memory serves um that we will be sending a
large weather balloon and a few pounds payload and it should land here or there
and there's all sorts of stuff I forget what it is off the top of my head but we filed that I think we called Lockheed Martin or somebody there's a phone number that Carrie had and this guy answers and he takes everything down and within a little while it's on the internet and there it is so we filed that on June 7th so we were we were official ready to go so we head out on
June the 8th and we are
set now let's go back a long way just in

case people don't know well who is this
Tim Bruno guy I've seen him on the old
cbox I've seen him on Discord I think I know who that is so let's just briefly
recap all of that yo first had contact with me when you were
a youngster um back in 2004 after hurri
Hurricane Ivan so I'll let you tell a little bit about that uh so the whole family was Mark

originally uh in 2002 I was given one of

his safety brochures by my uh social

sciences teacher in Middle School wow and in 2003 I followed along as
hurricane Isabelle happened to impact Coastal North Carolina gotcha um
and reached out to Mark following that
and actually got a poster sent because that hurricane Isabelle hit on my birthday right my 13th birthday woo
first ever hurricane I don't know if that's a good omen or a bad Omen um it's an omen nonetheless yes and then uh in 2004 following
hurricane Ian uh he had the hurricane

landfall project of suu rodeo set up on the beach uh and that vehicle ended up going through
some pretty significant storm surge captured uh that was the first time yeah
impressive video and and data and weather data yep yep and this was the
start of what everyone sees today that's
right with the the videos from The Sur zones and data coming through um back
then we had to wait we got a webcam image every 30 seconds if we were lucky um and any updates were

hours apart because Mark had to go through and record everything on a video
camera and then upload them to his the sttp right gosh yep file transport

protocol over the Sprint network it worked but it was slow yeah you're and then the the following here is when the live vide uh
started so it was an exciting time for
the the hurricane track team and for me as a young individual being interested in meteorology and hurricanes and living in uh you know Hurricane Alley right so
to speak so you live in havock eastern
North Carolina havlock area not far from Newburn which is where I grew up and not
far of course from Wilmington kind of close to the Crystal Coast and um
your so tell me a little about your dad he was in which branch of the service if
I'm I don't remember sorry uh both my parents are former
Marines that make sense being there in
havlock that was the Marine Corps what was that Cherry Point yep Mar cor Air
Station Cherry Point nice so yeah so both of your parents were in uh the Marine Corps yo said yes so a military family so yo

were exposed to the weather uh just by
living in Easter North Carolina I think your parents supported your interest in weather quite a bit and you guys actually acquired that asuzu you were
going to try to refurbish it but it was a neat little Trophy and like you said the start of the hurricane landfall
project and what eventually now is the size of a little lunchbox to where we can capture 4K video for 30 hours

all starting with an experiment of
everything mounted on the old asuz rodeo and you were a part of that and that's really neat and um you're in the 2004 documentary the very first movie I
ever made tracking the Hurricanes 2004
but yeah that was at the very beginning of what we now have is this amazing project so you go on to do some pretty

incredible things serving your country uh touring overseas tell us a little bit about that and how weather and meteorology played into that and what you did I won't spoil it I'll let yo tell it uh so in 2008 I ended up uh joining

the United States Army I guess that makes me the trader of the family because I didn't go in the Marine Corps I went in that other Branch instead right um but the job that I ended up doing was
the uh I was a field artillery meteorological crew member so basically
um you know the the weather plays a
big impact on the field artillery rounds
so Howitzer rounds and mortar rounds sure uh and what we would do is tell
them what is going on so that they could
correct their fire before they even fired off the first round that way yo have a much higher probability of hitting your target right and not something you know that you don't want to hit yeah missing entirely or yeah
like you said hit something that yo don't want to hit it it really is surprising you know when you think about it because you're like oh this 100 pound
round is getting launched by a a huge

charge um but the weather can throw the round off yeah you know 400 500 600
meters if things are set up right so that's almost 1,000 feet right or a little little over a th000 feet um my my

conversion of meters to feet doesn't quite go that high uh but we during training one of the things
that they taught us was uh launching weather balloons because when you're yep
that's why he's important by the way folks yes well more than that but yes that's the anyway sorry I was waiting for you to say that that's perfect yes weather balloons and so go ahead sorry I got excited when I when you're in these areas and you don't have uh

good weather data because you know here in the United States we have surface sensors everywhere and the National Weather Service does balloon launches twice a day right at quite a few sites
across the country um you know when when
you're in the middle of nowhere that has none of that the weather balloons are critical to gather the data that you use for the models right uh and you as Mark

alluded to this uh knowledge and training later on became important without realizing that it would be important yeah that's interesting because you had training in it I did not I tried to figure things out from the internet trial and error
and so far we had a 100% success rate getting our payloads back not 100% success rate
of full you know stratospheric success
or whatever you know reaching that 100,000 I know the stratosphere starts before that but the goal was always 100,000 ft plus and it took a little while to reach that and we had a a catastrophe in 2012 with the Jagger CNN
project the payload ripping apart at 66,000 ft and all the drama that was
surrounding that so over the years we know we we learned from these trial and error events and we get up to 2015 and now our payload is smaller very small it's a little bit bigger than a lunchbox I I'll put a picture of that for yo guys to see a little yellow Pelican case
it's got a little uh aprs antenna that's coming out this little tracker inside it
goes up to like 250,000 ft from high
altitude science I mean we had come a long way and so we're we're all set I wanted to do um a dawn launch in the

Sweetwater Colorado City area of Texas
car's there Todd's there and um
we drove uh car's truck up to that area

from Houston we left the Tahoe behind so Todd Carrie and myself piled into car's truck and this is important we had two
helium tanks and two balloons a in case something went bad on

the Launchpad so to speak you know or
the first couple thousand feet a bird hits it or something who knows or everything goes great and it's a 2 or 3 hour fun experience and hey let's do it again in the early afternoon why not um we could do two launches you know two for the price of one so to speak so we were prepared and we got out there here's a nice picture let's click on it it'll tell me what time it was 7:36 a.m.
Sun's getting ready to come up so probably 6:36 central time and we are all set
there's a nice picture of Carrie he's got that balloon and um it's you know,
1500 gr Balloon by the way what does
that mean when we say 1500 gr balloon so
1500 G balloon is exactly what it sounds
like the balloon you know weighs roughly 1500 grams um the National Weather
Service for most of their flights uses a 600 gr balloon they're rated to go up to
roughly uh 26 kilomet the, 1500 G

balloons you want to use for a heavier payload or a lot of times if you want the flight to go extremely high yo would use those uh heavier balloons they
hold more helium you know um so there

you can lift more and still get the same bursting altitude out of the balloon and burst altitude means I know it sounds
hopefully what it sounds like but yo describe burst altitude for us please sir first altitude is just the altitude
that the balloon itself Pops at um most
balloons when you go online you'll see that they have a rated minimum altitude that they should make it to but uh in my experience a lot of times they generally go higher than their rated um altitude
unless you have to overfill them with helium because you have a heavier payload or something you know along those lines but uh it's usually a a pretty good you know marker of how high you can expect the balloon to go and a b burst altitude is that's a good thing that's what is expected it's not I don't think people totally understand that when it reaches burst altitude and it pops that's exactly what you're expecting it to do and hopefully it does it within some range that you have anticipated ahead of time

[Music]

okay so we're all set to go in Colorado City we were out at a baseball park kind
of place right next to I20 early morning

there and um we get the tarp set up and
we had everything right or so we thought
we'll get there um you we had these
gallon jug things on the corners it was kind of a windless day you know the one
was real peaceful inflated the balloon it's like 7 ft up and a few feet across
it's almost you know 2/3 the size of car's truck for goodness sakes and it's
going to lift that payload up no problem and we got everything ready and we let it go and uh Todd was taking pictures

and video I had a camera or two doing time lapse we all took pictures with our
iPhones and up the payload goes with the balloon and to the early morning sky above Colorado City and it's a minute or two in maybe a little bit more than that
and um Todd starts I think he's got like a like a a telephoto lens something pretty incredibly strong and he's watching it he's like boy it's really it's rocking pretty good we like okay I mean it's probably some low-level boundary layer winds or something as it gets up above the surface should be fine
and the aprs is is chiming in and we're able to see everything all the yeah I just call it Telemetry data um everything looks okay to me and he's watching through this scope he's like boy it is really rocking

I was like all right well as long as it's intact and so we start packing stuff up slowly and we figure we've got about an hour or so um by the way Tim
what is a typical Ascent rate which yo guess for something like what we did there uh that's a good question um as

scent rates all depend on you know how much helium you would put into your balloon um typically with the balloons that you we would launch you would want to strive for something about 300 meters a minute or you 5 meters a second yeah
um and a flight could last upwards of
two hours you little more little less
depending on where the balloon pops when you have an Ascent rate around there yeah ours was about 1,00 to 1100
feet per minute so a little over 300 M
per minute and um we had learned that back in 2012 and the
balloon size we were doing 1500 Gram as I mentioned and we would fill them up and we always just did it by just kind of noticing everything and then yo would see the balloon fill out and then
gradually if it could lift the payload pretty good you know um just eyeballing
it and if it had a good pull off we went
we didn't use gauges and it was just all just kind of hoping for the best and like I said up to this point we had had no trouble um you everything at least made it to 50 60 something thousand feet and we felt pretty good with that and we had uh launched three or four times and never lost a payload so 100% success
rate on recovering everything so it's up there it's moving along yo know 12 20 30 40,000 ft whatever and
Todd's able to track it watching it with his scope he's just like man I'm telling you some weird things are happening I was like well it's probably pretty windy up there I'm sure it'll be fine and we got everything packed up we're ready to you know see where it's going to go we're tracking it on aprs at the aprs.fi site and I'm tweeting stuff

in fact there it is right there we're at 11,000 ft so far let me click on this
it's moving at 38 mph and it's 1156 ft and it's pretty much right above

us and you can see it right there Tim there's I20 there's Colorado City and
everything looked good so far but as it got up higher um let's see here this is 19,000

ft still doing just fine basically moving right above us let's see if there's something that really starts here we go so now we're 37,000 ft and
it's moving to the east Southeast at 78

mil per hour what does that tell you is
there anything in there that just that data you're looking at here on the shared Zoom screen it's moving at 78 M
hour at 170° you know that's its bearing why
would it be moving faster than most traffic on I20 you know if if they're B obeying the speed limit anyway well yo know at that level you're starting to get up toward the jet stream and uh some of the higher altitude winds you know the closer you get to the ground um the ground actually drags on the Wind some and will slow it down sure uh in this particular case you know the winds were fairly light and calm it was early in the morning yeah um but higher up yo

know around the the altitude that a a typical aircraft would travel right uh you had some some pretty good east Southeast winds there so if anyone happened to be flying through on that day they would have a good Tailwind if they were heading toward Atlanta or there you go the other
airports so things looked pretty good
and um at least on the Telemetry but like I said Todd was pretty like you animated
about it that man it just looks like it's rocking up there and it's
interesting because that tweet there where I did a screenshot of the aprs uh must have been off my iPad or car's iPad this 819 in the morning and
then the next tweet uh says Herby has landed and we
are about to pick it up that's 9:32 so
what happens between the two they're like all right Mark you got some stuff missing there I was really tweeting this stuff one after the other so what we
noticed again Todd watching everything through his scope he said at some point
he thought that it looked like it was going end over end I'm like well that's
not good like that's kind of like what the CNN balloon did in 2012 and it gets

50 52,000 ft something like that and
around 56 uh the aprs data indicates

it's on its way back down and it was in
a hurry I'm like oh man it burst early

like why would that be like H and it's coming down and we've got the aprs
tracker and then we've got the spot locator and that's only going to work to 29,000 ft you know because the tallest
place on Earth is you know Mount Everest and spot locator is a consumer thing for
tracking you know hikers and whatnot not high altitude balloons necessarily that's going to kick in when we get much closer to the Earth and it comes down and it lands and we see it chime in uh I
think on spot first of all uh not too far from Sweetwater kind of out in the
Wind Farm area and I was pretty disappointed I was like oh G it you know
like 56,000 ft that's maybe half of what
we were hoping for very early and so we
made our way out it was not very difficult at all and uh we went out to
pick it up now what I want to try to do here if I can pull this off this is pretty cool Tim I'm going to show you play the video for you hope hopefully this will all come through this is our this this is right off my old iPhone this is our Trek looking for
it you know we get out there we generally know where it is now it's just like a geocache you just got to zoom in on it so to speak hone in on it and you'll find it so there's car's truck there's Todd taking pictures and we get the next one there's Carrie he's got the Logitech camera and we're streaming live and he's got the power bank in his pocket and there's his little phone down there and we're out here look at all those wind turbines back there that turned over hey

buddy all right folks there it

is launched from Colorado
City found out here in a wind farm area

beautiful

wow aome there's like no balloon there's
like no balloon maybe that explains it all right
there's no balloon left does that tell

you anything right there because usually there is some usually when the the
balloon pops there is uh some you know some shred because the string is still attached to the neck of the balloon itself right every now and then you'll
get a a separation that um you know

there may not be the most of the balloon itself will be gone but usually there's at least you know some part of
it well we were stunned we're like well where the heck is the the neck anything
it's kind of like an umbilical cord that little plug that's left over after yo have a baby that's not there it's gone and we were perplexed and you know why did it burst so soon and so forth and um so we
gathered everything and we went back to the Hampton Inn in Sweet Water that's where we had stayed and we hadn't even had to check out yet check out's like at 11: or 12 it's still so early oh we just
go back to the room whatever use the restroom freshen up a little bit go down
to the lobby in the meeting areas and let's solve this mystery so we break out
the GoPros we had two of them we put the chips into the computer and we start watching everything and I was just like

I mean honestly I was horrified I was like well this isn't good so let me go over to this other folder this is so cool it's almost like Forensic Files here for weather balloon shenan
um Herby 2015 there it
is so couple things right off the bat I
did something goofy by not formatting
these SD cards the right way so they did not record the entire launch and then

descent I think we were using 32 gigabyte chips back then and you had to format it's just annoying these little stupid Gremlins that'll get you I think you had to format them either on a computer and do like X fat 35 or or not

30 32 and I just whatever and so I was
like well we don't have the whole thing darn it we got most of it but they all shut off at some point we had to figure that out but we had everything uh to at least figure out what happened so let me see if I can find uh here we go this should be the

first file so one camera looks up the

other camera looks down so here's the uh
upward-facing camera and it's going along pretty good no
problem scroll around now it's getting kind of rough up there scroll around a little bit you know scooting through the timeline little bit more rough and this is like a 20s something minute uh
clip um I think we're recording in 720 or 1080 something like that and you can see the Earth over there to the left we really rocking and rolling now it's doing it even more balloon's getting bigger but it's really wild I mean it is Swing look at that Tim we're upside down inverted
flight and there's the uh the
antenna and it is just cranking up there
something is definitely wrong and we're watching this in utter horror like what in the world and I remember we were posting this on cabox our old chat and you were following along that day and um let me just pause
it before we get to the sort of the climax here that's funny I paused it and we're literally upside down um that is
not the direction the camera is supposed to be looking no not that one there's a camera specifically that's supposed to be looking down and it's now looking up it's it's reversed do you remember this day like how early were you tuned in I know that's a big ask can you go back to June 8th 2015 and remember these details
but I think you were engaged and following along and you know we got out there pretty early do you remember when you tuned in um I

remember pretty sure from the beginning I I was tuned in from the beginning and uh because I remember the softball field and the bloom kind of headed off toward that light that was over there but it wasn't Rising super fast and right yo
know was like oh I hope it doesn't hit the tower you that would be bad the Tower over by the softball field and end the flight early and then it ended up ending early anyway yeah who knew all right so you were you were dialed in we had the old cab boox chat and uh people were you know going back and forth and we were posting stuff uh streaming live on Ustream so Tim was able to watch that as other people were so we're up here and we're watching this video this playback and we see this sort of bizarre behavior
very reminiscent of what happened with the CNN balloon and lo and behold let me
just go back 10 seconds let's see what happens here there's like this incredible jerking motion and pow the

balloon takes off all by itself like ripped it right out of the
uh you know the whole thing is just gone
and what happens next the payload is in freef Fall the freaking parachute got all angled up it's not quite terminal velocity cuz there is some drag I guess
uh but it fell back pretty darn quick to
Earth and landed in that field he can still see the balloon there and we posted that we're like all right yo know we we seem to have figured out what happened but we don't really know why it happened and you asked a
very simple question I'm pretty sure on

the seab box or you might have texted me
and do you remember what that question was uh how long was the string that yo

used the cord between the
payload and the parachute and eventually
the balloon and I was really quick I was like that's like 15 20 ft maybe what was your reaction when I told yo
that um that's extremely short

yeah you were like no wonder no wonder disaster okay I know what happened now right you're like and
he was very quick to point out through his work and I just didn't know you know like we knew some stuff and you told us you're like you got to make that thing a lot longer and do you remember what yo recommended as an example like typically how long should the cord be you know I
guess it's payload dependent but 15 ft just isn't going to cut it uh so I think
originally I stated 50 ft right um but

the balloons that we launched with the radio SS on them we actually typically use uh anywhere from 80 to 120 feet
right and there's a couple of different reasons why yes this is what I want to get into the weeds of why one of them is um very pertinent to
this situation and the other one is
because of data so we we'll start with the data one first so radio songs that
the national we service launches or yo know I launch in the Army uh are very very sensitive when it comes to the air temperature and uh other items that they

pick up if you have the string too short

as the balloon is ascending the balloon gets extremely large I mean we're talking you know the size of a small house right uh and The Sun Shines on that

balloon there's no clouds up there so
the balloon will actually heat up and because of this it'll heat up the air right around it and if you have the string Too Short uh the radio will be
measuring that Disturbed air from the balloon and not the actual air temperature I know that at least 80 feet at least 80 feet
is a good uh distance from the balloon to ensure that you're not getting the Disturbed air um you know you're actually getting clean measurements yeah it makes sense that's incredible though
uh the second reason why which is pertinent to this situation yes is that that um the shorter the
string the less energy that it takes to
swing the payload right so the pendulum
I keep talking about if you were if yo were think about like if you had a a a small string with a little washer at the end of it you know if you used a short string you can get it to flip over your fingers a lot easier than if you had a
string that was 5 feet long you know um
and that's exactly what was happening here is you had this 15ot string so when

it got up into the stronger wind and even at launch you know right after launch you could see on the video where it was swinging around pretty good yep um you you you have this motion and Todd
was picking that up pretty quickly he was seeing that uh the the weight of the

payload tugs on the neck of the balloon now the neck of the balloon is a little bit thicker than the rest of the balloon because they're expecting you know something's going to be tied off to it right but when you start getting those violent motions the payload swings up and the string you could even see in the video the string went slack yeah and then that payload comes you know slamming back down right it's only a matter of time before either the neck of the balloon fails or the stream snaps
yo know go terribly wrong and that's
exactly what happened in 2012 in the June launch of the CNN Jagger balloon project that was also a
15 foot string cord and we can see it

you see the violent jerking motion for about a minute and it reminds me of a child in a swing that they reach that
zero gravity point and then they slam
back down so to speak and the kids most of them kind of like that it's a cool feeling the payload does not enjoy that
at least if it's made out of Styrofoam and that that was the case during the CNN jger project um and it jerked so

hard once it fell on this one particular swing it just ripped that payload apart and everything came out it was spectacular to see from the GoPros but
um it resulted in pretty much a disaster um and it was a miracle that we found everything honestly and that's a whole other story but um so yeah you had
mentioned it yeah you might want to make the uh the cord longer and I don't
remember if we went to Lowe's we probably did and we got another set yo
know another package of this uh cord I think it from Eagle Claw or something like that it's this twine rope kind of
stuff um by the way speaking of that
what like people that fish they know like x amount of pound Tes line or whatever what kind of twine our weather
balloons for sons and in the Army yo
we're talking some pretty is it like dental floss grade or is it like cuz we're using rope but it's not like rope
that you would you know you know like climb rocks with it's this

uh like a 100 pound brake strength rope
or something I think I again it's Eagle Claw or something like that but what are you guys using in in your work uh usually I've used twine and I've also
used uh some kind of uh filament type yo

know it's not super super thin but it's not twine I I don't remember exactly what it's made out of but uh they have
um they're pretty durable but at the same time you do want that you know lower brake strength because if a plane does happen to hit it you want that twine to snap preferably not uh not get
wrapped around the wing and you know cause issues or anything like that so good to know might put that as a little note somewhere let's get some but our radio songs are also right you know you're you're talking like yeah it's like Styrofoam cup basically yep really really lightweight very not much mass yeah we're launching we're launching a much heavier denser payload um so that
is interesting so we're using this yo know rope basically so I think we went to Lowe's and we got another package and we restrung everything and I think we went like 30 ft or maybe more 40 or
something like that and we had another tank and we had another balloon and we charged the GoPros up in the hotel tell I formatted the cards and let's take a look at what happened this time it's a few hours later 2:30 in the afternoon there's
Carrie or me that's me sorry there's the
sunshine and it's later in the day and
you know there we go it's up up and away
and just a much smoother launch and this
pretty cool if I scroll through you can just start to really see how the balloon gets bigger and bigger we get on up there the balloon's expanding and I know this is basic science hopefully people understand that but why does the balloon expand like that just tell us just so we know as the balloon Rises through through the atmosphere you're uh losing air pressure
basically yeah so most of the air is in

the uh the lower atmosphere and it does
not take long you know to to get above
the majority of it this is why when yo go up on mountains you know if you're going up on Mount Everest people have a hard time breathing they have to have oxygen tanks the air pressure is way way
lower there's a lot less oxygen in the air and with weather balloons it's
everything is contained within that balloon so the same amount of helium that you put into it is you know going
to be in there whether it's at ground level or 60,000 ft sure well because the
air pressure decreases that has to go
somewhere and that causes the balloon to expand as it gets higher and uh it like

I said earlier it gets to a pretty sizable yeah there's nothing in the video for size reference you know unfortunately there's no little Lego band or anything but uh yeah they get you know pretty large especially the the
heavier the balloons you know the more that they tend to expand yeah I think get to like 31 ft at burst altitude or
something like that 31 32t huge are they

if you were up there and you could touch it would it be like touching a watermelon you know where it's real taut and hard or is it still I'd be scared to
touch it because it would pop right on me but you know what I mean like or is it still like boring boring like Jello-O
I wonder that I would imagine you know as it gets closer and closer to its uh
bursting point it's going to be more and more taunt because it just doesn't have that extra room to expand otherwise the balloon would just keep going yeah yeah the elasticity has got to be that's just incredible so it's like filling a water balloon you know if you fill the water balloon a little bit it had it's uh
pretty touchy but then the you know the
more you put in it waterwise the the tighter it gets and then eventually it'll get to the point where if you even look at it wrong it pops So speaking of Pops here's the moment and and by the way let's just go back 10 seconds look how smooth everything is I know from the data that we're at 88,000 FT and it's just as calm
as it could be just a gentle rocking no problem I me we did it and it
was all thanks to your advice and there was the burst and
that's what it should look like all that debris the latex and most of the balloon
is still there and we're in the thin part of the atmosphere and so it's falling back pretty fast and then eventually the parachute does start to catch you can start to see it try there
and we come down and we come down we're getting close to you know the thicker atmosphere and our speed slows the shoot
uh I think it's a one meter shoot so about 3 feet wide and we go through a cloud that was actually pretty cool Tim we actually went through a cloud I wish I had um a higher sample rate we were sampling I think once every 6 seconds on the flight Eagle computer
but we went through a cloud and like I said we reformatted the GoPros uh the chips and everything so they recorded the entire time a couple of hours maybe three hours whatever it was filled up the whole 32 gigs and into
the tree canopy we went a success

[Music]

second launch 2 something in the afternoon goes up 88 something th000 ft it was great comes down Way South like
in the Hinterlands of Ranch Country and

uh aprs and spot generally told us where
it was so off we go south of Sweetwater

we get into this thick area of cactus and bramble it's late in the day and

there's no signal out there so we're done streaming on Ustream that was a bummer and uh we just had car's radio was fully charged his handheld he had this big staff like this stick thing um
look like Gandalf with this staff right and him me and Todd we're going to go find this thing so we're driving around out there we get as far into this Ranch area as we can and then it's uh a ground
game from that point on look at that

tell the audience what you're looking at uh I was thinking The Walking Dead potentially you know lost too yeah we could go with that dude it's got big bullet holes in it like what we drove
right past it it's an ambulance in trees grown around it like
how did it get there like what there's

no license plate on it and we just drove past it I was like n let's just keep on going but yeah there's these bullet holes in the back um big ones too what
what kind of gez man you got to know some weapons Diagnostics what what the heck were they shooting at that thing that is a good question those are some big ones something I would not want to be on the receiving end of how about there you go well put but that's what we saw we're driving through we saw that like okay this is interesting so we get out there after a long hike we're going
through all this Thicket and I mean that there were no rattlesnakes or scorpions that we
encountered I think it's a miracle especially since I'm wearing again New Balance shoes and just ankle socks right
and and we we were hearing the aprs talk

to car's radio and it's telling us you know the exact lat long and the distance and the bearing and you just got to make that get as close to zero as you can until you see it physically it's a pretty easy
situation theoretically but this is the
kind of area that we got to go through right and and Tim's looking at this picture huge transmission line by the way those are bald eagles on the top it's hard to tell but they are as we got close we noticed them there's four bald eagles up there massive transmission lines here and in
these big trees uh you see part of the balloon there's the parachute and then down at the bottom uh was the payload and here it is

there's Todd getting

it do that away

we sent Todd over cuz he's got jeans and he had Carry's machete and he pulls it out rips it look at that long cord hi
down there huge amount of balloon
left that orange parachute like a big orange flag over here absolutely absolutely looks like Alabama a little bit with that red clay soil whatever doesn't that just scream
like rattlesnakes especially up there in the sides of that Canyon looking
stuff yeah and then there it is there's the payload Todd looks very happy doesn't he hey thanks for sending me guys so the

reason we were able to right we were
able to get it because told us you needed a longer
cord that was the secondary part of this
and as we watched the video let me go back over to my folder this should work I hope um we were able to watch the video and

see the thing come down uh from the downward facing Cam and uh yeah there it
is Herby 15 where are you and it really

became evident to me like that little piece of information from Tim was so
helpful not only because it kept it from doing the Head Over Heels thing but I
think the other obvious aspect to this was and it's that 40t you know I thought oh my goodness that is such a benefit our payload is 3 to four pounds it's coming down probably 20 25 30 miles per hour it should cut
through at least the top of the canopy and that long cord will at least

get us close enough that it won't I just thought it was going to make our chances of recovering the payload in the future better when we land in some thick trees somewhere because these trees are not too darn thick there's those power lines we came real close to that look at this man right into this thick tree but look
it makes it to the ground because of your advice if we had stuck with the 15ot and we didn't the disaster we never
would have gotten that payload back because it would have been sticking up in the tree probably even still today sitting out there those branches would have cut that string and that would have been that yeah yeah so I just felt like wow what a
what an amazing and I remember just how grateful we all were and just what a revelation it was like oh Tim and were you we told you later on how it worked out were you like yeah you know I did it from the arm me I knew a few things here glad to help kind of you know but at the same time it's like okay I'm glad that was the issue not something else like no you were wrong well I me you got you got the experience that you did you know what do they say if the government trust yo then I think I think we shall too and it paid off and we've not had an issue since um we've done lots of tests even since 2015 and um we go 40 45 50 ft it would

be really interesting we're going to do some stuff this year uh with hail and studying
supercells then we're going to do some testing and then hopefully with the very busy 2024 hurricane season that's coming finally get a chance to launch this payload during the day we did it once during Hurricane Nate but that was at 1:00 in the morning it worked but all
you see is the Earth at night so it's like H um and that was a really interesting um yes to find that one too yes and we're going to have you back to talk about that one and and hopefully I won't have pneumonia during that one but anyway um I had to edit a lot of the coughing out ladies and gentlemen believe me and be glad that I did um but it it worked and uh oh

yeah so what I was going to say it would be interesting to see you know what if we do go 60 or 80
feet why not what could we expect anything better performance do you think it could stabilize it more let's say we go 60 to 80 feet on the cord instead of 30 or

40 it could um you know obviously it

takes just that much more energy to really get the uh the payload to start swinging around uh so you could have
more a better stabilized view um yo

especially when you're dealing with winds like you know a hurricane because
even if you launch in the eye you're still the chances of it getting pulled into uh the eyewall or coming coming

back down you're going to be coming through the bands at some point yeah but it it would be really
interesting to do a couple of test flights on the same day sure and do one with the shorter string and one with the longer string just to see what kind differences there are are we still in a helium shortage I I got to call air gas and find out I've got a couple tanks it's been a couple years since we've done testing but the helium issue seems to EB and flow depending on who knows what yeah unfortunately helium is one of those uh very difficult to find
resources and you know helium is lighter
than just about anything in the air so the only helium that you could get is deep in the ground and as soon as they crack those open you already start losing some of it you know while they're trying to mine it so um it it it has
caused issues you know not only for uh

people wanting helium for party balloons or you know scientific experiments but
also just in general yeah um interesting
because you would think that it's such a you know the sun's hydrogen and helium right and um isn't it part of a byproduct of something in the refining process it has to be captured or I thought I heard something about it on Marketplace or something everything's always Snippets these days and I never get the full committ to memory but I got a guy as they say at air gas here in Wilmington and they always seem to have helium and I think they told me since we are doing scientific work I'm like well I'm not you know private sector science but they always save some for me I'm like well thank you I appreciate that but I don't want to take away from if if somebody needs it for something more important than what we're doing um but yeah we're
going to be doing I think it'd be really neat to launch a much smaller version of
the payload maybe something like what Brent has come up with with a triangle made out of carbon fiber that's literally just like 10 in in diameter
that weighs a few ounces and then yo put a one GoPro kind of in the middle on a little tray and then send it towards a
supercell um and you know maybe a 600 G
balloon way overfilled so that it'll burst at 40 50,000 ft just get as close
to the supercell as you can so we can see it CU you can't fly a drone near the thing the wind will destroy it of course um unless we can ever get a a heavier military drone but that ain't happening um yeah uh and that would be pretty cool
to just to just to try you know just to see that green hail core and get as
close as we can or if we ever could get into the updraft and even get that little payload maybe the balloon pops and whatever I mean you think about a Hailstone weighing uh you know 10 ounces and if we
can get our payload to weigh less than that might be able to get it into the updraft I mean I'm you know veering out of hurricane World here but there's a lot that can be done with these weather balloons um you know what we're doing what there are with the sons each day twice a day uh and for us though the goal is is to put one of these guys two of them actually these GoPros into the eye of a hurricane to the stratosphere and Beyond looking down and then one looking out and just see what we can see nobody's ever done it during the daytime and we would love to be the first after all these years and with your advice I
think it'll help it really will what if we had never known about that we kept losing payloads I might have given up years ago who knows man so you tuned in to the to the the launch and whatever just the right time you were in the right place at the right time in 2015 and and for that we thank you thank you and I I know you know
there's a really smart crew behind all this and I know it would have been figured out eventually may have taken a you know few more flights or some
experiments but that's what science is you know it's just one experiment after another and if something doesn't work the way that you want you tweak things and you try again well you musk does it and you right in front of God and everybody with these starships that he keeps blowing up and eventually I guess somebody will set foot on Mars and they'll have to come up with a new line because one small step for man that's already taken all right um anything you want to add or any advice you would give us going forward as we you know Venture
ahead um I guess the whole did the
Chinese weather balloon thing and I'm being serious here does that make everything more you know like is is Hobby
ballooning under a lot more scrutiny or is it like Ah that's that was all overdone I mean I know they launched a whole bunch of stuff for the eclipse and I didn't hear any hoopla about it so I'm assuming that what we're doing is going to be just fine as long as we keep filing those notm I would imagine so you know as long as those are out then if they see something they'll be like oh well there's a not and that's you know what it's from and your balloon
one problem that you can run into is if you end up with a small hole in the balloon you may end up with what they call a floating balloon yeah so there's
helium leaking out of the balloon slowly zero never it never makes it to the
point where the balloon actually bursts right so then it just floats along and then eventually it finally loses enough helium to fall back to Earth and right uh but it takes a lot obviously the Chinese balloons were not that but yo
know that could cause some issues just in in terms of air traffic and right yo other things cuz you're end up with something like that floating around at 35,000 feet and people are like what's going on is this here yikes we'll have to before we

launch listen real closely do you hear
a that's funny well we'll have to listen out for the hiss or dunk it in some water real quick haha
well D we really appreciate you being a part of stories from the hurricane Highway the pivotal moment when we learned about you got to make the cord longer and you will solve the problem of
Head Over Heels balloons and payloads and all that so man thank you very much and uh stay warm up there in Alaska I know people probably tell you that more than you like to hear but um and and just real quick before I let you go I probably should have asked this earlier what are you doing in Alaska by the way
so uh I was I'm working for the National
Weather Service now um and I was what
they call a a mobu or mobile emergency
unit uh member so we have uh 11 Weather

Service offices across Alaska in the
rural communities and these are different from uh forecast offices yo know you'll hear people talk about wfos well these are wsos uh these hearkened back to the the
80s you know 70s and 80s and there used to be a bunch of them spread across the lower 48 um but up here because Alaska
is so vast and it's a lot larger than
people think uh yeah you know it's about
two-thirds the size of the lower 48 um
that's crazy across so it's rather large

uh and we had offices out in these rural
communities you know to support the forecast offices right and uhu just would go out to those offices Whenever there was a vacancy uh to fill them so I

came up here in late 2018 and we were still launching Balloons by hand at the time so I yo know got to relearn how to tie the
balloons off and launch them all over again including in some uh pretty high wind out in Cole Bay right which is out on the in Alaska Peninsula very windy place um and now we actually have automated
launchers that are manufactured by by solid they're called Autos SS uh so it
does you we load the balloon and the radios on but the launcher itself does
everything on its own it you know fills the balloon launches it transmits the data and it technology it it's really
kind of amazing you know um so now I'm

actually I can't came back up here
because I left in 2020 and I came back up here in 2022 and uh one of the places that they sent me out to was called a net Island which is in Far Southeast Alaska and I
really liked it so since there was a vacancy there I took over as the the
quote unquote permanent person and uh
it's Southeast Alaska is a temporate
rainforest okay so we get a lot of rain

um not so much on the snow side you know
we we got maybe 25 in of snow total this season

and most of it came in two storms in
February you January Boston got honestly
but story for another day but uh the the really nice thing about the snow here is it falls and then you know a week later it it's gone so w
um because it it rains a lot but we also
get big wind storms that come through and uh you there there's actually trees
here so it's almost like going through a tropical storm right except it's a lot
colder sure uh but it it's a really beautiful
place you know mountains everywhere and
then because it's the rainforest there you know everything's Green from vegetation what not wow well good for
you man that's awesome and you're it's peaceful you don't have to the hustle and bustle of the lower 48 yep y a couple of the communities that I went to co Bay only had 45 people

wow year round and a couple of the others only had 200 here it's larger um
there's about 1300 people here right yo know and that that's getting fairly large for a a rural Alaska Community

interesting but there there's a lot of cruise ships that come in and out of here because Ketch can's right across way and that's one of the stops for a lot of the cruise lines so if you ever do the Southeast Alaska cruises uh
you'll probably stop and catch a can
interesting well that's really awesome man we're um those of you out there that
have known of Tim for all these years that's the deal that's what he's doing and um his contribution to our
project uh from that information there in 2015 forever grateful for right place right time and we have averted lots of
disasters ever since then so we really appreciate it appreciate your time and good luck up there we'll have you back on again in 20 when we' get to 2017 so a
few weeks from now whatever couple months whatever my schedule as I get through this podcast series we're getting there eventually this is going to get caught up to the present and then the whole podcast is going to be kind of like a video and it's just we're going to change things up always trying to make things on The Cutting Edge and whatnot but we're we're we're trudging through one one Adventure at a time so we'll ask
you to come back to explain how we figured out how we almost lost that
payload um after Hurricane Nate boy we came within like 10 yards 10 feet something like that then it was going to be in this forest and anyway we don't want to spoil it we'll have Tim back to talk about that all right we'll take care up there in Alaska watch out for the Moose or is it me you got moose up there I'm assuming you do I see that Brian whatever his name is talk about moose all the time yeah Brian Brian's a
great guy um but yeah here no we don't
have moose but we do have a bear on the island of course any good salmon by the
way salmon fishing I'm just thinking stereotypical Alaska stuff so forgive me
Salmon's good A lot of people love to go through and fish the salmon and halit and cough and um nice all wild caught

yeah literally fresh yeah yeah right Wild Alaska Seafood isn't that accompany all right well that's enough banter from me uh again I appreciate it very much we'll have you on again soon to talk about 2017 and our almost misadventure after
Hurricane Nate there when we launched her be the only time in history that
someone has launched GoPros into the eye of a hurricane and just because it was night doesn't mean it didn't happen I promise it did it's in a documentary and we'll talk about that to the next time you're on all right he has the receipts that's right exactly all right man thanks a lot we'll check you later
[Music]

yep so there you have it good conversation with Tim Bruno we definitely learned a very valuable lesson during that experience uh Carrie
and Todd and me and ever since the cord
that goes between the payload and the balloon and the parachute and all of that is at least 30
feet and um sometimes 40 we just make
sure it's long enough so you don't get that Head Over Heels action and um so
reflecting back on that second launch
everything went great and we left
Colorado City packed everything up and we headed south I know I talked about this a little bit with Tim but I just want to recount a couple of stories that uh are pretty funny um so we go on South

and sort of track this thing out into the Texas Countryside uh there's kind of
these big butes out there open scrub land and Ranch Land and eventually we did get out of cellular connectivity so
we weren't streaming live we didn't have very much in the way of any kind of a signal luckily the weather was

cooperative it was warm probably mid to Upper 80s no thunderstorms around so that was good and we get down into this Ranch Land and we have the spot locator that's the satellite tracker and that's telling us where it is it's on the ground and then we have car's um
aprs receiving equipment both on his
truck with this High Gain antenna up on
the roof of his truck and he can receive the signals and whatnot inside and they translate into aprs data and then he has
the handheld kinwood radio So the plan
is we're going to get as close as we can park somewhere and hopefully avoid any no trespassing issues which we didn't see any none of that posted no
trespassing cuz in Texas you got to take that very seriously we didn't encounter any of that so we parked somewhere and was kind of out of the way and it's all like dirt trails and you know uh open
like I said Ranch Land I guess and scrub
brush a few trees here and there lots of these prickly pear looking Cactus things and creepy crawlies and what have you so
off we go and it was like you know the Three Amigos or something heading out into the desert um except we didn't have any cute little costumes it was just me and my tennis shoes and my ankle socks and my shorts and t-shirt Todd had jeans uh
Carrie had his shorts they were more like cargo shorts multiple Pockets he had his typical suspenders his T-shirt and his hat and off we went Carrie did have his staff that big stick that he brought as I said with Tim reminded me of Gandalf anyway we we're getting out
there we just got to close in on it yo know and you guys have heard these stories enough now that you understand how it works the aprs tells us basically
where it is you just got to go find it and Visually put eyes on it and you're good to go so uh we start walking down

through this Countryside and there's cattle out there
which obviously would make sense because it's open Ranch Land and we're kind of
going along at a decent pace you know you can't really just take off through this stuff you know you never know there's little small rocks again these different bushes and scrub and Cactus
and you just don't want to come running across a rattlesnake or whatever yo know you got to be you got to be careful so we're going through there and I'm getting stuff stuck in my socks little prickly things whatever stick and um
seed pod things you know the dispersement of seed dispersion of these different plants out there they stick into Wildlife their fur well they're sticking into Mark's socks and they're doing the same to Carrie Todd probably not so much cuz denim denim jeans that he had on they didn't really seem to stick into denim too well anyway those
details I can remember right but we're going along and Carrie and Todd were
kind of out in front of me by a probably 12 15 yards ahead of me and I'm just
kind of going along much more careful I
guess I'm a little slower and and I've got the staff and I'm kind of poking around hitting the ground with it every once in a while cuz I'm very leery about snakes or you know a scorpion probably a
scorpion would just hurt rather than really cause a big problem I guess um
and then any kind of wild animals yo know there could be Coyotes out there there maybe some kind of wild cat um as
I mentioned snakes and cattle
specifically I guess I'm I'm more concerned about a bull than cows maybe although a big cow

is certainly heavy enough to cause damage to you but the Bulls got the horns and the aggression and whatnot so
keep that in mind right so we're walking along and the terrain is getting a
little bit rougher and um it is it's just this Wild open Ranch Land I can't gosh it was just amazing and we're going along and I kind of hear this um like sound I mean I'm going to try to
do it it was like like that hopefully it translates I was like what in the world was that and I turn over my right shoulder I look behind me and probably
not 10 yards behind behind me is this
massive Bull and he's got big horns and

he was black and just staring right at
me and I look over a little bit more to my right and you know a good distance away more than 100 yards away easily are
several dozen cows and the bull uh did

that noise again this sort of you know and I was just like but it was longer than that it was like several seconds and he was a little bit closer

and I kind of edged on you know kind of moving slowly and I was like Carrie Todd
you while I was still watching the bull I was kind of walking backwards and I was like Carrie and he stopped he's like hey I was like hello um this and I kind

of you know motioned to the bowl with my head hey you see it and they stopped and he's like oh all right you know just keep walking keep coming steady you know don't do anything he's probably got a Harum some somewhere nearby and I guess that's some kind of a term for all the females that this this bull is in charge of I don't know I'm not a Rancher but I
was thinking this thing could kill me you know like not going to die in a hurricane storm surge haven't died yet
clearly and you know wind Charlie I
started thinking about all these past hurricanes that I made it through and then and I'm going to get ended by being gored by an angry bull now the
good thing is there were these like
they're not pine trees but they were these sort of pine looking trees um and then different thick bushes

pretty randomly but dense enough that I
could use those as sort of buffers you know we weren't in just wide open flat land that
would have been very unnerving this was bad enough so I was able to use these different bushes and they got thicker and then we had a tree line that was coming up and Carrie and Todd they
stayed where they were and I got closer like just come to us and I said what do I do if he charges and Carrie said yo just hit him right on the nose with that staff and he'll run the other way I'm like the hell he will who are you trying to kid with that nonsense seriously like really okay

so I laughed it off like whatever this thing probably weighs 800 lb if not more
that's not happening I'm not going to hit him on his nose and he's just going to go the other way uh but it's good to
have your sense of humor I guess maybe he was serious I don't know so I kept going and I made my way into these thicker bushes and there was enough of them that this bull and I was able to increase the distance and I guess that's what mattered and he made that noise again

that and uh and again it was longer than
that I just can't do it and and he turned to his right and he headed back out towards where there was a pasture
again out in the distance with all these cows and they were headed towards a big shady area and we headed towards this tree line the three of us are back together and we were all good and uh we
took a little sip of our water I was like all right we we dodged a
bullet haha a bull a bullet we're good

so we kept going picking up the signal

very readily now on car's handheld radio
and as you know we were able to work our way over to this little Ravine Todd went
down uh across this semi- Dry River bed it had a little bit of water in it and up the other side and because Tim told
us about making the cord much longer this 4.17 lb payload and I know it's

that weight because I tweeted it um made
it through the tree canopy it's probably coming in 20 30 mph and uh it came down through the tree
limbs and whatever vegetation there was leaves and whatnot and it was resting on this grass you know at the bottom of this cluster of pretty tall trees Todd was able to rip it down and uh get the the string and everything all the balloon out of the tree wrapped it all up nice and neat into a little package and we left we hiked out of there the
sun was getting really low on the sky it was beautiful it really was and just another sense of accomplishment we got it you know this is uh the fourth test

and we are four for four in getting our payloads back and um it's really neat
there's one of the pictures please refer to it I invite you to do so um actually it was 4.7 lbs I'm sorry I was looking at the uh somebody had asked me on Twitter about it and let me see if I can still see that yep I said um I had
tweeted that it was at now it was now 7,000 ft above the Earth and somebody named Rob H said what's the weight of your payload and I said 4.7 lb so there
you go we obviously had weigh everything but there's a picture I will save it as one of the June episode pictures here and it's an aprs screenshot from the iPad and you can see where it was at

81,500 th000 FT and um we looked at the

act the actual data off the little microchip that's in there little micro SD card and it burst at like 88,000 and
some change so very close to 90 still
hadn't cracked 100,000 ft yet uh with
this test but you know we're getting close and it was very successful um I
think this is in my folder let me just go check I want to make sure this is there this picture of the ambulance in the woods um it's not there so let me make sure I add it yeah you got to make sure you see this too I posted this on Twitter I said and Tim and I talked about it okay so this is starting to become like the show Lost or the walking dead yikes what the
heck and you got to see this folks I'm really glad I took this picture I'll save it and uh it's pretty like weird

there's this ambulance and it's red red
it's orange and white it's got the blue um medical symbol thing that blew whatever my family probably knows what that is they're all in medicine um something related to healthcare anyway it's in this you'll see look at the picture it's in this tree area like
how did it get there seriously it's all grown up around it and if you zoom in on it you can clearly see that it's got bullet holes in it you know like hey
should we have gone and checked it probably not and we didn't uh we drove
by it and then um I think we might have even I think it was just that we drove by it coming in and out but anyway we made it we got out of there um and we

retrieved the stuff we looked at the data at an Outback in San
Angelo uh we did we went over to San Angelo and went to the Outback there and to this day it was I I swear the best

Alice Springs Chicken I have ever had
seriously absolutely the best there was
just something about it I know all these years later you're asking yourselves how does he remember that I don't know I just know that it was we were hungry yo know know cuz we had been all out in this Ranch Land for hours hadn't eaten
since breakfast whatever that was many many many hours before at the crack of dawn and now we're down in San Angelo and uh we went to the Outback there and enjoyed a great meal and we
looked over the data and the video and it was just amazing Tim's whole idea of getting this thing with a longer cord definitely worked we had a much more steady flight absolutely just beautiful up there at 88,000 and some change feet so yeah that

wrapped up that Herby test and now it
was time for me to head back home uh so

we made our way out of uh San Angelo we stopped in Bernie it looks like it would be spelled borne b o e r NE e Texas but

it's pronounced Bernie and we stayed at the Hampton Inn and Bernie and then we all made our way back to Houston the next day the 9th whatever it was and
then I got back in the old Tahoe and it was time to head home we had hurricane season to deal with whatever hurricane season there would be and uh kept
looking over some of the data from the Herby test and gosh it was just amazing um so now we're up to June 12th

I'm back home in North Carolina I tweeted nothing major showing up in the models but interest along the western Gulf of Mexico should be keeping keeping an eye on the region next week some of
the models were indicating that something might try to develop I will

uh let's see I will save this one for you as another one of the June pictures
I think we're up to like 14 or something like that doesn't matter you'll see them they're in order anyway it's it's uh funny this was 2015 and it's just such a
sort of a sad picture of a GFS snapshot
I did it's got a 108 milar low along the
central Texas coast just north of uh Northeast of Corpus between there and galvaston Bay that was June 13th and uh
this was all the precursor by the way to Tropical Storm Bill and as I alluded to
in my next tweet here this is again June 13th guess I should have just stayed put
in Houston last week may have to fly back for a potential tropical system early next week and um then it became 91
L and eventually it did
become uh Bill tropical storm Bill and

uh Carrie went down to the Boliver

Peninsula and he had a Ustream uh camera
set up with him so he streamed I think
he had one of our boxes so he just took the box with him and went out on Highway 87 down there on the Boliver near High
Island uh this would be the 15th and 16th Etc and
um oh this is funny here I said couldn't resist this is the 15th I said won't be long now and we will have a bill waiting
to be a well who knows but here it is I
was just trying to be silly uh somebody made a meme I guess that they had memes back in 2015 right I didn't make this meme but I did tweet it retweeted it

whatever you call it uh but you remember that cartoon how a bill becomes a law and
it's on its way this journey that it takes and so you got the bill and he's
sitting there on the side of the road with his thumb up hitchhiking and his suitcase says Texas or bust so somebody
was being funny I didn't make it but I did tweet it stole it from somebody I guess anyway June 15th NHC says
advisories on tropical storm bill could be initiated later tonight if current trends of the system continue by the 16th we did have Bill
Carrie goes out and um streams it there

was some storm surge flooding nothing
ridiculous um Carry walked around out there with a handheld Logitech and he did a good job covering Bill to the best of his ability I'm just full of it aren't I we bit the or um dodged didn't
bite the bullet luckily Dodge the bull it me and my what

are they they're not even puns are they they're just sad dad jokes and then um

Carrie goes out to the Boliver Peninsula and covers bill out there anyway I'm going to save this radar picture for yo
uh almost time to wrap this episode up isn't it yes it is um so yeah there's a
radar scope shot of Bill out on the
Boliver and Carrie covers it out there
and and did a good job of that the center of bill was down there pretty much where the GFS said it was going to be you know between Corpus and Galviston so old GFS did a good job um and Carrie

did a good job covering it down there a little Breezy whatever no big deal right
and certainly a big rain maker for parts of Texas it moved in and it actually went in pretty far to the North and a lot of people refer to these as land canes they also say it's the brown ocean effect this is from Storm pulse remember them this is a storm pulse image that I'll save for you as well under the gune

pictures that are associated with this episode but yeah look at that this a radar um deal radar composite and bills

circulation is not far from Dallas uh very heavy rain over Eastern Texas you know goodness knows they needed it I'm sure they always need it and um that uh got us towards the middle

part of June just on the other side of the middle part of June just scrolling through Twitter lots of action back at my place uh thunderstorms I'm in my new house now enjoying my office and my new

neighborhood um oh here we go here's a nice little picture I'll save this one for you I guess I did a screen grab it's
probably what that was it's a lightning bolt from my front yard that's my the stop sign you'll see the picture that's near my house I must have done like I don't know how I got that I think the iPhone back then you couldn't
do the little frame by frame like yo can now I don't know but I got a lightning bolt that's for sure uh but yeah it was just rainy and just you know very typical of El Nino just kind of a a
wet pattern in the South and um these
shortlived systems I mean we're we had Anna we had bill and you know that's two one before hurricane season started that's May that was Anna now we got bill in June mid
part of June and you would think oh man you know that's going to be a busy season but these were all pretty much
like indicators these close-end systems very
shortlived you know nothing in the Deep Tropics kind of stuff not yet you know anyway that it was not going to be uh a busy season as predicted and we did have
the El Nino coming on uh in the Eastern
Pacific and Central Pacific and that looked like it was going to be quite um significant as we moved on so

we close out the month of June and um
let me see here I'm flying again cuz the last pictures that I posted uh where was
I I'm trying to figure out where the heck I was um I must have let me I can't figure

out where I was this is frustrating I'm looking through my own Twitter and it is June 26 27th and I'm flying for some reason
somewhere coming back from something and I have no idea what it was the mystery
where was Mark at the end of June
2015 because I did I tweeted and I'll just save a picture of this for you this will be our last picture the mystery flight where the heck was Mark I mean there's nothing on Twitter about it at all and the uh website blog or anything
like that none of that exists now because it's on Old WordPress um I'm just trying to see if there's any hints June 24th I was in Georgetown South Carolina
because I tweeted a picture of a thunderstorm and then we get up to the 24th 25th for some reason I tagged Jimmy
Fallon on Twitter um I said the abyss a ring saved

a dude's life oh I I think uh was when Jimmy Fallon broke his finger or something says tripped and caught my fall good thing the ring caught on the side of the table almost ripped my finger off and I replied and said in the
abyss the ring saved the dude's life though his hand was in toilet blue water or whatever haha anyway it's time to
wrap this one up with the mystery of where was Mark flying back from I guess
we'll never know that is so funny I
usually tweet this stuff I want people to know what I'm up to and where am I going what am I doing I have no clue where I was flying at the end of June

2015 um I mean I must have uh yeah I

mean I it says storms a seen from my
plane that just landed at ilm that was June 27th 2015 whatever I don't know and

we'll just leave it at that it'll be the the mystery ending of this episode of stories from the hurricane Highway anybody remember where I went at the end of June 2015 you know please let me know in the comments and wherever right cu the heck
if I know that is so weird all right

Next Episode uh we're going to keep moving through the anemic 2015 Hurricane

Season Not much went on overall and we
get towards July August September or whatnot and you would something should pick up you would think um but it it
didn't at least not in the Atlantic Basin to speak of but once we got to
October we did have two different

situations two different systems one in the Pacific that was petricia and one in the Atlantic Basin that would be waen that would really like H you'll see

we'll talk about those different storms and events because they were very very big for the project uh and even though the season
was lackluster there's a lot to talk about and we'll get to that again July and uh August September just not much uh
but we'll we'll kind of recap those as we get into the next episode but the bulk of the next episode we're going to talk about Patricia and I know that made landfall in Mexico no I wasn't there but
it did have impacts on the other side in the Houston area that's what we'll talk about and then I'll tell you all about the waen experience and how that was one of the most stressful and um you know that's the word stressful situations I have ever dealt with hurricane Walkin even though it never made landfall how how does all that work we'll keep on going we'll keep on explaining all of that or at least I will tell you all about it on the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway all right as always thanks for tuning in and listening I do appreciate it great to have you along these Journeys these miles as I'm Tracked Down by bulls and taking mystery flights to

where I don't know uh that's so funny I
am Mark suth thanks for tuning in I'll talk to you again soon [Music]

[Music]