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

surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I'm your host Mark suth great to be here with you again as we continue our look back at the year 2014 this time around hurricane Norbert

in the desert Southwest of the United States I can't wait to tell you all about it I was so excited to go out there there for that but before we get there let's just recap where we are in
the 2014 season I'm looking over here at the Hurricane Center website uh just to recap too real quick about how the season as a whole turned out kind of jumping ahead a little bit but this gives you a perspective of why the East pack was so busy and you know
the fact that it was busy versus the Atlantic so in the Atlantic we had Hurricane Arthur that was my last episode The previous one to this one and of course that was along the North Carolina Outer Banks parts of Southeast New England and then up into Nova Scotia it was a category 2 hurricane at one point then we had tropical depression 2
that was late July and then we had hurricane Bera and hurricane Bera would have been July 31st so the very end of July and it finally petered out around August the 6th and it really didn't amount to much and then that very
difficult name I even mentioned it in my Twitter here that we'll go through in just a little bit the C name for 2014 was cristall and that's just sort
of a dramatic way to say it but cristall and some people call it christoble who knows I mean that's always been a tough one they should retire it just because it's difficult to say um but this was 2014 and its iteration of Crist ball and

so we had hurricane crall next after Bertha and that was toward the end of August uh August 23rd and that one was way out let me just see to make sure I know where this was oh it wasn't way out anywhere it was east of the Bahamas um just looking at the animation of the uh different images that they've got from the graphical uh the track map that they've got with the 5-day cone so it started just east of the uh Turks and K Coast north of Haiti in the southwest Atlantic
and and creas the ball looked like it was going to potentially come up into the southeast United States maybe impacting the Outer Banks of North Carolina as I just kind of Click through these different frames but as you guys probably know these troughs come through
and it swept CA ball on out to sea and
so that it was not going to be an impact at all uh except for maybe some waves and stuff like that for eastern North
America as you know as a whole and certainly not for eastern North Carolina really no big deal so we had cras toall then we had tropical storm dolly that was September 1st through the 3D a very short-lived event and really just not
much consequence at all then we had hurricane Ed Ward and Edward was let's

see here that's the one that I was thinking of it was way out in the tropics Central Open Atlantic it was a hurricane but it never really amounted to anything we didn't have to really worry about it so Edward was um
September the 11th through the 19th so
several days of you know Edward being
around then we had Hurricane Fay and then Hurricane Gonzalo and that one my friends is what
took me to Bermuda we'll talk about that a couple of episodes down the road here and then we ended the season with tropical storm Hannah and that was at the end of October the last 3rd of October October 21st the 28th so if we
count them all up the 2014 season gave us 1 2 3 4 five 6

hurricanes and we ended with just 1 2 3
4 5 6 7 eight name storms so very very

low on the name storms count and most of
the name storms six of them were hurricanes so that was kind of interesting and uh Gonzalo was pretty strong I think it was the strongest of the Season made it to category 4 again we'll talk about that in a future episode but it's the Eastern Pacific
that really lit up in 2014 because of

the warmer inso the it wasn't El Nino
but it was certainly a warmer Pacific and you know a big reason why the Atlantic didn't produce much it was just generally cool in the MDR relatively to
average the main development region just wasn't very fertile I guess and uh dry

air uh the cooler sea surface temperatures and the warmer Eastern Pacific especially right off the coast of South America what we call the inso Region uh
1.2 in fact I've got a picture here and
this will be this episode's picture number one to reference on patreon and
uh be sure to check that out I try to save these pictures off my Twitter feed so cool that those are still there uh picture number one it's really neat that again that it saves all this stuff in its original format too um was a picture
that I posted from the Noah nesda site of the sea surface temperature anomalies it's funny it looks like 8bit Graphics it's like really chunky looking and that's not an artifact because it's 10 years old sitting on Twitter that's what it looked like back then now the graphics are smoother and their higher resolution all these years later but anyway what it shows is from July 21 4
2014 and you can clearly see that the
area between the Equator and 20° north
latitude in the Atlantic The Tropical Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean was generally average to below average there's Blues all around in there that's on the legend of the the map the chart that's below normal so we had below normal sea surface temperatures in the Deep Tropics above normal sea surface temperatures in the subtropics so between between 20 latitude and 40 latitude we had warmer se- surface temperatures and that's just a flip of what gives you an active season because you've got upward motion and the warm air and the lower pressure and all of that up in the subtropics with drier more sinking air more stable air strong Shear all that kind of stuff in the Deep tropics and if you look at the picture off the coast of South America all the way up along the
coast of Mexico up to the Baja of California uh very warm anomalies 3 4°
Cel warmer than average and all of that helped to cap the Atlantic season but I'm telling you boy the uh East Pacific
season we started with Amanda that was a hurricane and that started in May May
22nd was the start of hurricane Amanda
and we kept on going all the way down to V the vstorm Vance October 30th so the

2014 season kept on cranking and we had

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

hurricanes holy cow I forgot there was
that many man 14 hurricanes in the

Pacific the East Pacific no less yo
know basically what does it go out to 140° longitude or something like that um
14 hurricanes and one of them was

Norbert and boy I tell you that one
caught my attention and I was going to go out and uh be in it like the remnants
of it not you know down in the Baja or anything I would do International stuff but I was still you know my first year with the Weather Channel so the funding was there to do stuff I I was you know pretty keen on Bermuda maybe the Bahamas
maybe Jamaica maybe Cancun not so so much the Baja I just didn't feel comfortable with it and I was really more interested honestly it's not just a comfort thing I really was interested in
how tropical Cyclones impacted the desert Southwest I lived out there in Nevada for 3 years from 86 to 89 and I don't remember that we had anything memorable during that time span
but we had Monsoon moisture from time to time and just the overall environment of the desert Southwest it's truly like another planet it's amazing when it's hot and then when you put a bunch of moisture in there tropical moisture coming up from the Pacific I just thought that's got to be absolutely incredible and you get flash flooding it disrupts places like Phoenix Tucson La
the LA Basin Southern Nevada you think about Las Vegas and the tourist attractions there and then southwest Utah even into New Mexico Colorado all
that moisture out there there are streams up from the Pacific and you get some major calamities from it and I thought all right I would really like to go out and experience and document something like that especially the flash flood side of things but I had to get
there so looking back through my Twitter
and again using the the Twitter advanced
search uh I'm starting on July the 11th it's a few days after I wrapped up the Arthur mission and on um July 11th I am promoting on

Twitter that Monday I guess Monday let's see what day Monday because it doesn't tell me exactly what day it just has a date this is July the 11th but I don't know what day of the week it is I mean I guess it really doesn't matter I mean I think it was like the uh the 11th was a Friday I think that makes sense and I would be on weather brains on Monday for what it's worth all right so there we go it settled it was a Friday July the 11th I was tweeting about being being on weather brains on Monday and I would talk about Arthur and of course working with Jim Cantor and The Weather Channel and the deployment of the drifting surge Cam and how all that turned out always a fun time and uh very exciting to be on weatherbrains with James span and Company and I mean other than that July
was just kind of lackluster you know after Arthur anyway um you we had some thunderstorms from time to time in southeast North Carolina to kind of keep me busy and in fact we had one that dumped so much rain in my neighborhood that I remember we had some Street flooding and the uh the
sewer system or the the drainage whatever uh started backing up and um
there was an eel an eel in the street
and uh I remember I showed my kids and they were just like freaking out they were like that looks like a snake I'm like nope it's an eel it's all slimy something like a foot long or whatever kind of fat you know and it's got not fins but whatever that I guess gu it's like a fin on the top the dorsal side or whatever and little flap things on the side of you know like flippers or whatever you've seen an eel it was they're disgusting but whatever um that
was the highlight of everything after Arthur really in the month of July of
course other than being on weather brains that's always awesome uh so we get through July we get to the end of the month you we had Bera in the Atlantic and Crist ball would be coming and so forth but it just a lackluster season in the Atlantic Basin but of course the Pacific just one after the other name storm and then hurricane and major hurricane just cranking them out
now one interesting thing maybe uh at the very end of July on July 30th for
whatever reason I decided to join and post something on Instagram good old Instagram and my very first post was July 30th and it was a picture of a couple of hurricane flags that were in my office at the house that we were renting and um that was it I was just
like all right my first Instagram pick Bland but hey it gets more exciting from here 495 weeks ago that's when I posted that
it's what it says right on my Instagram very first post honestly I really haven't done a lot with Instagram so much going on with Facebook you know CJ
helps to handle that now we've got our YouTube channel several people help manage that we've got our patreon we've got Twitter and uh the hurricane track Insider site I think my hands are pretty full this podcast hurricane Highway episodes you know Instagram is hard to
keep up with if you really want to make it steamroll but for what it's worth for
prosperity purposes July 30th was my
first Instagram post I post every once in a while but it's pretty rare so we get through July we get to the early part of August and something really
really cool is going to happen I get invited to go up to Baltimore and be a

keynote speaker at an insurance conference and this was really special for a couple of reasons one I was going
to get to take my wife Rebecca with me and it was going to be the first time since we've had children that the two of us were going to be able to just get away and have the older kids be the babysitters and we' had been out on Dat nights and stuff like that but never away out of town just the two of us not since 1997 when Nathan was born right so this
was going to be a really really cool thing the um the organizers I told them about it the gentleman that invited me up there I think his name was Jeff if I'm not mistaken I hope that's right uh
he was like oh yeah absolutely bring Rebecca got you guys a really nice Corner Room at the hotel I think it was like a Marriott or something like that right at the Baltimore Harbor and yo guys have a great time and uh I'll do the keynote thing at the insurance conference and it'll just be awesome and it was the other thing and this is huge
folks if you've been following for a few years now and uh especially the live
stuff you know how much I thoroughly
enjoy going to The Cheesecake Factory
yes the Cheesecake Factory so where did that start believe it or not my first
time going to Cheesecake Factory was in
Baltimore with my wife it was like August 4th August 5th something like that 2014 in Baltimore I got invited to go to
one way back in ' 0405 something like that I think it was 2005 I was doing a
Sprint PR junket in Orlando and the uh

lady that was handling all the pr stuff Nancy she said hey you want to go to Cheesecake Factory for lunch between these talks that you're doing and I was like no I don't really I've never been to Cheesecake Factory I'm not really sure I don't think I like cheesecake or whatever I was pretty picky really picky back then and I really liked uh Steak and Shake just whatever right I know uh
so I passed and we went to Steak and Shake and I remember she was just like you got to be kidding me um but 9 years

later 2014 now at least I got to enjoy
my very first Cheesecake Factory with my wife and that's part of the reason why I like going so much now and we don't have
one in Wilmington where I live Wilmington North Carolina closest one's Raleigh and um the first thing that I got I do remember I got the factory nachos those are fantastic and I got
this um I guess like a chicken parmesan

and uh some uh pasta with a little bit of sauce on it for a side and of course all the servings are just enormous and I had some chocolate cheesecake of some kind I couldn't remember exactly which one doesn't matter but yes that was the first time

that I went to Cheesecake Factory in
fact let me just see what I posted here it says uh on August 4th I did an
Instagram post sure surely it's not Cheesecake Factory no it's not it says um on Instagram now Baltimore is quite
unique love it here and we're going to make this picture number two uh I'm going to take this right off of if it'll let me I don't think it's going to let me it doesn't let me save my images like it does on Twitter it
says save page Source take screenshot I
don't want to do that well you'll just have to look at it on my Instagram that's really weird Twitter lets me save my own pictures but I can't do it on the web version here of Instagram but it's a
neat shot of Baltimore Harbor by the way um and there's a boat on the right hand side whatever so check my Instagram out if you can go all the way back to 2014 there's sort of a bland picture of
Baltimore on August the 4th but yeah I
went up there did the talk really fantastic to be able to do that and um

have my very first time eating at Cheesecake

Factory

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all right so my discovery of the Cheesecake Factory not withstanding August 2014 was basically lackluster we
had Bertha at the beginning of the month and then we had CR ball at the end of the month the last third or so but it was at the very tail end of August around the 30th or so that something
developed in the Caribbean eventually over to the gulf that would become tropical storm Dolly now while Dolly
didn't have direct impacts on the United States necessarily it sort of began setting the stage for This truly epic adventure that

I was going to have with Carrie out in
the southwest us now I had always had this fascination with the uh Monsoon and I

had never really been able to do anything with it as I said earlier I lived in Las Vegas for 3 years 86 through 89 I really don't remember much Monsoon anything when I lived there honestly and you know now it's 2014 I've
been studying hurricanes professionally for many years uh geographer by degree
you know I understand microclimates and circulations and monsoonal flow and whatnot and so I had really developed this fascination with it and with social media over the years I saw different Monsoon lightning pictures flooding
pictures from flash floods and just the Beauty and the Grandeur of it and I thought oh I'd really like to you know go experience that and document it and report on it see what the impacts are of you know just a regular Monsoon circulation then the prospect of adding

additional tropical moisture from what
was brewing at the first part of September in the Eastern Pacific made it even more appealing to me and that would go on to become that system Norbert uh
hurricane Norbert in the East pack so we
end August we get into the first part of September I start mentioning it on my Twitter um 99 L eventually became Dolly

and Dolly makes landfall like I said near Tampico and um that was on September 1st
that it developed and the moisture yo

know started spreading Inland on the southern part of that big high over the South Central United States you know the western parts of North America basically and it was like all right this
is going to be really interesting to watch especially since the Atlantic was pretty much shut down
mainly because the Deep Tropics were just so unfavorable there was too much dry air the water temperatures just weren't supporting it all that stuff yo know just there was just it was not happening we're basically coming up on peak season and we're not really seeing anything in the model guidance coming out of the deep Tropics that's going to amount to anything so we have we got Dolly it's it's Inland now the moisture is gradually spreading across Mexico and
then norbert's coming and uh just going
over here and looking at Norbert off the Wikipedia page um they call it again whoever authors
these they do a pretty good job very scientifically put together very similar to um a tropical Cyclone report and um

but Norbert was this one in a thousand year rainfall event that's the headline
at Wikipedia for Arizona in early September of 2014 uh norber was the 15th name storm
the 10th hurricane and already it's not
even early well it's just early September the seventh major hurricane of the 2014 Pacific season um and it became

a category 2 eventually peeking out at a
category 3 and uh right off the Baja and

the overall computer model projection
was for the moisture of the system to get pulled into the Southwest United States kind of
combining with at least early on the
moisture leftover moisture from Dolly
and all of this was going to get sort of drawn into the Southwest across the Baja
Peninsula the Gulf of California Northern Mexico and then into Arizona
maybe southern California Nevada Utah
and it just called my name you know it really did I was like all right I'm going to have to go out there for this so I I was tweeting about it just

starting to you know sort of see the the writing on the wall so to speak and on September
3rd I actually mentioned it verbatim I say how the National Hurricane Center literally as I'll just read it NHC makes mention of Dolly remnants and moisture from Norbert as
having an influence on the Southwest us weather in a few days heavy rain possible that's my tweet on September
3rd and I'm certain that I was talking

with Watkins getting his advice
certainly Carrie probably folks on our hurricane track Insider site or whatever
I called it premium Services Client Services back then and um you know on
the C boox trying to get a consensus yo know should I go out there and and and track this and be a part of it and so over the course of a day or two I put a plan together you know I was like all right let's go for it so I coordinated with Carrie I was going to bring quite a bit of stuff with me I would Airline the drifting surge cam because
the original thought was Norbert could
send a lot of swell action big waves all
that kind of stuff all the way up to
Southern California and even tweeted that on September 4th um I said Southern
Cal get ready Norbert sending swells your way could be coastal flooding issues and U I was really starting to tweet about it uh also in September 4th
Norbert to cause problems for parts of the Southwest rain for places High Surf
again for beaches Atlantic question mark

closed so that was the trigger that was the mechanism I'm like all right I'm going to go and then or at least I was as I said also in September 4th I'm strongly considering heading out to the West Coast to cover this rare event might need some pointers from peeps familiar with the area um so by that
night I booked a plane ticket and I was going to fly to Houston and I know you're like why' you what fly to Houston yep I'd fly to Houston with a lot of
gear the drifting surge cam GoPros stuff
like that and uh you know the Drone and
I would meet up with Carrie and then the plan was to kind of drive across the
Southwest from Houston cover the monsoon
just do kind of a running story all the
way out there you know and maybe end up
in Southern California and uh at the coast uh or
whatever just kind of go with the flow so I did it I booked my plane ticket on September 4th and this truly

Monumental event that gosh it was just so special to me would start to unfold
so um I keep tweeting about it and I got
the plane ticket booked I'm ready to go you know and I'm really hammering this hard as was the Weather Service rightfully so first issue will be a big rain event in New Mexico part of that coming in from dolly also Arizona part
of that from Dolly eventually some of the moisture from Norbert High Surf possible coastal flooding Southern California so forth and of course I mentioned on Twitter that I would would be uh of course working with the Weather Channel they would do um phoners with me

we didn't have a way back in 2014 to get
me on air and uh now in 2024 working

with Fox Weather we do it with FaceTime
and it is beautiful gosh it works so well but in 2014 you know I didn't have
a way to do that I don't know why we didn't try FaceTime um but we didn't and I would do phoners and they would have a picture of me nice cheesy smile or something on the phone Mark suth hurricanetrack.com
and so forth right that was the plan and
I wanted to do like a lot of just really

interesting things along the way put a
few pictures and videos on Instagram I was kind of at the time gung-ho about firing up my Instagram and really making it into something I would stream as much as I could through Ustream I would post stuff on Twitter put a few things up on cbox and on the client services site as best I could so much easier now
obviously um and then take these GoPros
I think we were up to the Hero 3 uh by 2014 at least that's what we had

I think we had one twos and threes and I was going to do time lapse video of
these amazing Wide Open Spaces out in
New Mexico and Arizona and just immerse
myself in this event deep tropical

moisture high humidity in the normally
Aid hot dry desert Southwest I don't
know what it was about it but I was so excited I might as well have been going to Disney World for the first time or something like that right absolutely incredibly excited about it so uh everything's ready to go I'm tweeting to people talking to weather Brad and I even talked about the fact fact that there was something trying to brew um I think we're back up to like 90l or I don't know if it got an invest number but there was something in the models trying to show up off the coast of Florida around the same time I was like uh let's don't let that happen yo know stay dead Atlantic um and I tweeted

a lot on September 4th um and I'm
talking about planning for this field mission is extensive and I posted a big
um post about it on the blog and uh once I I said once I get to Houston there's going to be a lot of driving um Mike Ty I was tweeting at him

a little bit kind of about uh doing some work with the weather balloon and then really getting into and and I mentioned too no her's not coming with us to the
desert Southwest that just wasn't yo know it's not Norbert wasn't going to make a landfall and come across the Baja
and all that as a hurricane and nobody expect expected that and that certainly wasn't what I was you know thinking or
saying to people it was the moisture and uh even one of the um uh pictures that I
had tweeted and I'm going to make this picture number two and you know what I got to just do this in real time and save these as I see them or I will
forget so this will be picture two this
is going to be Norbit inp 2 there we go

uh and be sure to check these out over on patreon it's it's worth your time it's a screenshot of New Mexico and yo
got the flash flood watches all the way in the Southern and Southeastern parts of New Mexico and Western Texas that was
6:55 a.m. on September the 5th I was up

early and that just got me going I'm
like here it is it's coming you know I'm going to fly to Houston and Carrie and I are going to hit the road in his truck and we're going to be good to go um I
also uh tweeted a picture of the High Surf advisories that were up for Southern California in some of the favorite areas and this included Long Beach and over
towards Oxnard and I thought oh man if

this looks like it's going to have a bigger impact from surf in the Southern California Coastal area that's where Carrie and I will end up and we'll put the drifting surge cam in the surf it'll be amazing you know I'll have the Drone like I I felt like I couldn't lose on this and if it doesn't look like the surf problems are going to be the biggest issue or the flooding problem looked like it was going to be the bigger issue then I would focus on
that and do all sorts of stuff with that the Drone you know put the GoPro next to
some flooded Ayo or something a dry wash that becomes filled with water like I had a whole bunch of ideas of how to cover this and a couple of people were

questioning why I was going out there for this like are you just that desperate or whatever and that was a little bit of a offensive honestly because I thought okay you don't know me
and my passion for telling a story that
this is you know not everything has to be Charlie or Katrina for it to be quote worth my time and you know there's a lot

of and I mean I can get do a bullet list of all the reasons it's my job this is
what I do you know and I've got the funding for it I'm not using my personal money I'm not taking money out of my family's you know bank account so to speak the family account and nobody's getting to eat because Dad's chasing rain I was like come on give me a break here like this is what I do you know embrace it let's go and you know I think the most important thing it is an impact
a set of impacts plural from a tropical
Cyclone two of them the remnants of Dolly and what will be the remnants of Norbert because Norbert will impact the Baja more directly it never made landfall by the way anywhere it was all the moisture and rain is an impact I
it's just like it was just a couple people everybody else was very supportive The Weather Channel was behind it and eagerly looking forward to it because I was very very excited about it so um I look looks like I took off on September 5th and um I head out and I'm

like all right we got about 12 hours of driving once uh I land um so yeah it was
September 5th 2014 and it was 10:43 in the morning
that I must have been at the airport here in Wilmington clearly about to board my flight from Charlotte oh I guess I flew from Wilmington to Charlotte but whatever so I'm already in Charlotte about AB board the flight from Charlotte to Houston and then and then begin the long Trek to New Mexico where
flash flooding is possible this weekend so it looks like I'm heading out there over a weekend with Carrie so

um just looking through everything here
you know we didn't have internet on the planes back then uh on the airplanes that was a bummer so I it looks like I
land and um this is also September 5th

I'm just trying to see where I started this now the journey into the monsoon begins I'm responding to Tim heler uh
heler weather a legend out there in the Houston area um so yeah this is 1:38

p.m. and uh central time I'm assuming

and I'm in Houston and it's time to go Carrie picks me up in his Ford pickup truck and we head out and uh I start
streaming on uh you stream it's too bad
that stuff still isn't there archived like YouTube does but it looks like I started streaming cuz I posted streaming the trip West into the monsoon live here
then I posted the Ustream link that was 4:25 p.m. from Texas comma USA gosh I

can I could still feel it so Carrie was driving and I'm looking at data on the
iPhone and I'm going to tell you what this really started also know what two years years into owning my iPhone I got it first in 2012 at what a Powerhouse
Workhorse the iPhone would be for me and
ever since then especially these last 5 years or so probably a little bit more than that now anybody that's worked with
me on a mission we think about Brent
from St John and the Virgin Islands Matt
CJ others Marcel many of different
people that I've worked with and I've and and by the way that's just a wonderful blessing to have all these great people that I can work with I just love it so much but they will all tell you that Mark uses his iPhone and Mike
Pharaoh he would I think he would attest to this the most because he's been with me all the way back to the late 90s working with the Lowe's projects and whatnot he has seen the evolution of everything but I I use an iPhone like it's a supercomputer yo
know like email checking this checking that tweeting videos editing and and today it it's truly one of my main tools

and it's just a testament to where we are and even 10 years ago driving along I didn't have to have the laptop open all the time in car's
truck he had room for it but I would just do it on the iPhone and I was able to look up information like the precipitable water values what we call pwat PW and I was mentioning here on Twitter as we're driving that the precipitable water for parts of New Mexico and Arizona could approach 2 in for the desert that's a lot I said

Norbert influence could be big so we go
on we're driving across we leave Houston
it's I 10 right and uh Norbert is

strengthening you know so I'm timing everything just right and um we're we're

getting along the way trying to get west of Houston towards San Antonio and just get out on the open
areas of Texas and our goal believe it
or not for day one was to get to Los
cruus New Mexico even if if it meant getting there at 1 or two in the morning which is pretty much what happened uh so
we drive on and on and on I'm going to tell you what you know even though I've lived in the southwest for 3 years I keep saying that that just seemed like a
different life this is you know I'm what

44 at this point in time and it's part
of my career you know I just had a better appreciation for the Grandeur of
everything we get out of San Antonio we're west of there towards Bernie I think that's how you say it and um this little town called comfort and on West and it's getting towards late
afternoon early evening and it's just

spectacular you know I can't even describe it it was I was so in awe and
we were just getting started and I think Carrie had a big old smile on his face just seeing me over there in the passenger seat taking it all in enjoying
it like oh wow and and a little bit of convection but it was still pretty dry but knowing where we're going we're going to drive all the way across we're going to go all the way out to El Paso luckily just across the border into new Mexico there's lost Cruis it's not too far so we get going we're on and on and on on that road there and um I posted a

beautiful picture it's late in the day let's see what time this was this will be picture I think number three here so let me just save it as that Norbert pick
three easy to do uh you'll see it's yo

back then it was probably you like yo know okay this is one of the greatest pictures the iPhone's ever taken now look at it I'm like yeah it's okay but it's a picture of the sun low in the sky
it was 7:05 East or Central Time 8:05

Eastern and it just was like wow like
and I even said you know any wonder why I love this work not always about being in the most intense hurricane and that's how I felt this was absolutely beautiful

and already I felt so privileged to be
there

[Music]

so the journey West continues for Carrie and myself and again it was just
absolutely incredible um yeah I was keeping an eye on the Atlantic as well obviously not turning my back on it and they were this is September 5th now looking at three distinct areas over the Atlantic Basin
you know Basin wide and I mentioned on Twitter that the thing is they are all very low probabilities so even approaching the peak season there of 2014 it wasn't looking too promising that the Atlantic was going to do too much and uh as I move along driving West
there with carrye eventually headed towards Los cruus Norbert strengthening now it's Category 2 let's see when I posted this that would be at 10:58
p.m. uh September 5th and it's up to 110
mph pressure down to
961 so you know norber is strengthening and it's going to be sending those swells and gaining a lot of attention as as well it should um so we we keep going

and uh By the time let's see looks like
we're still driving and it's uh after midnight uh Texas this time and norbert's now a category 3 and I just
figured gosh the more intense it gets the harder it's going to be for it to wind down we're probably going to get a lot of flooding and a lot of rain and just everything I was like it felt like I was going to a hurricane Mission even though you know it would not be truly a
hurricane it was going to be the remnants the moisture it just still had that feeling um so we're driving on and on and on we're almost to El Paso long day on the Road for Carrie and me finally I
tweeted currently in Los cruus from here
we had West on 10 towards Phoenix and um

we're ready to go right so we get up the
next day this is now September the 6th probably I would assume now it's a Saturday and we're like in Los cruus and

we arrived I do remember how amazing this was we arrived at night and it's
mountainous out there that Southwest Mountain look now it's not anything like
the Appalachians which are covered in trees and generally green and whatnot right I could tell there were some mountains as we drove and you could see some hills and kind of mountain looking stuff El Paso and West Texas but Los
cruus we got there at night and probably 2 3 in the morning whatever and we get up uh on Saturday the 6th I believe it
was a Saturday and I I walk out I think we're at a Hampton in or something like that and I was just in awe and again I'm
going to keep telling you yes I lived in Vegas Yes they had mountains yes I know what western mountains look like but it's just like for this this flatlander
guy from North Carolina it's just
amazing to see it really is I'm like wow

we are here and I remember too seeing
what was obvious a deck already
of sort of probably Strat cumulus clouds

you know so they're layered but they're cumulous so they're kind of puffy um and

not too high not too low you know like but but that was the sign that there's your moisture fetch already coming in
from the south across Mexico which is not far away at all and I just got so
excited about it and we took off I
remember I do remember this we had lunch
brunch breakfast whatever you want to call it brunch right at Red Lobster in
Los crusis I used to really like the Red
Lobster but not I'm a Cheesecake Factory guy but anyway uh and we took off and

we're driving on 10 and I'm tweeting out uh looks like the highest chances of heavy rain will be along the southern parts of New Mexico and Arizona today and that's right where we were any heating will Aid convection of course so

we're driving on keep going keep going
right and I remember we get to near

dimming New Mexico in vicinity um we keep going along past that you can see the heavy rain now some of the deeper thunderstorms trying to develop over uh parts of uh Southern

Arizona now that we're uh getting towards and so this is about 6 p.m. uh Arizona time so I guess what
would that be mountain time and it was
just amazing and uh this picture that is got
to be one of my favorites I think I'm going to save this and put it in the
2025 calendar honestly this will be picture number four again the iPhone 4
or whatever I had really wasn't the best
photographic whatever compared to what we've got now but it was pretty pretty darn good so this will be picture number four we were near Bowie Arizona if I'm
remembering correctly let me just click on this it should tell me hopefully it's got Geo tagging in there if not I'm pretty sure it's in some of my pictures that I've got saved on a portable hard drive but I'm I'm thinking this was near the Bowie area you know what let me just look this up like I said I don't mind doing this again it's like I'm just talking to you cuz that's what I'm doing right so let's look it up I want to know know exactly where this was and I'll recognize it is as soon as I see it um

so yeah there's Bowie and I know we were coming along 10 um it turns towards
Willcox yeah it was Highway 191 just west of Bowie that's what I thought so this amazing picture to me

you know there's more amazing pictures out there than this obviously but man I was just so taken AB back and you'll see it you got to look at it on the patreon there picture number four these beautiful yellow flowers desert flowers
whatever they're called um not a bnst so I couldn't tell you you got your mountains and then this rainf foot as I

call it Jesse always laughs when I say that rain foot rain shaft whatever yo want to call it and it's it's it's a thunderstorm and look most people like big deal dude it's a thunderstorm over the desert like so there there's just
something about it and breathing the air out there what the picture does not help
with I mean unless you really think about it and get into sort of a meditative mode if you look at this picture you can feel the air because
it's not dry you know and hot it's humid

it's tropical it is a tropical air mass
part of this is from the normal monsoonal flow yes but in this is the
DNA if you will the remnants of Dolly and a little bit
of the beginnings of Norbert and it is the impact this rain in the desert yo know John Denver mentions it is in one
of his songs you know this like a storm in the desert part of his lyrics and what is that you fill up my senses or something from John Denver remember my dad played that for me years and years ago and that's why he wrote that like a
storm in the desert it it does you can
if you haven't ever experienced it it's hard to describe there's a desert smell
when it rains and it is unlike anything
else that your nose can take in and then
visually seeing that thunderstorm and it Woulda it would occasionally throw out lightning and that light and the Thunder would roll across the desert bouncing off nearby mountains there's little valleys out there dry washes or royos whatever the way the sound interacted it was incredible it just was it was like heaven on Earth I can't I'm doing what I can to describe it oh it was amazing and I think Carrie was feeling it too you know and and seeing me as excited as I was so uh and yeah there it
is the next tweet duh I confirmed it it
was near Bowie Arizona um because I put the Drone up and this is actually a really good picture this might be the one for the calendar or maybe I'll do a split screen on the calendar who knows this be Norbert pick number five I think we're up to yeah you got to see this one
nice wide shot from the Drone of this
thunderstorm dumping rain over the desert ah gosh it was just amazing so we

did all that and and to me it was like an amazing day one the full day one of
being out there oh and I got to mention too along the way somewhere in I think Western new mexic Meo um we uh stopped

at some interchange somewhere it it
looked like something right off of Route 66 sorry about the dog barking and crickets in the office from the lizards that live in here with me it's Wild Kingdom and Marx realm but I'm going to
ignore everything um I stopped Carrie
and I stopped I think we like had lunch or something and brought snacks or whatever we were out there for about 90 minutes just off the side of the road somewhere in Western New Mexico and yo could look down across this plateau and just see the clouds streaming North and I did about an hour and a half of a time lapse on a GoPro or something like that and uh you know for time lapse to work
you have to let time elapse so we just
sat there the breeze hitting us H this was just an amazing adventure as you can tell in the way I'm I'm telling you this so you know we did that and then we get on into Arizona and and documented all this amazing stuff near Bowie so from

Bowie towards Phoenix on I 10 it's not
too terribly far a few hours uh I 10
sort of snakes its way through you get Tucson over there and then it 10 sort of
bends off if you will to the Northwest uh towards Phoenix right and
uh along that way I remember between Bowie and Tucson there was just just these amazing Rock like outcropping

things that just it was otherworldly yo know like around every Bend there was something different just the whole beauty of the the Trek West was so much

part of it I just I cannot emote that to you enough and you know so onward we go
trying to get to Phoenix and uh it's getting towards dark and I guess it had been pretty hot and I was not as familiar then as I certainly am now after being out there many times since this first time about the microclimates out there and how the different valleys are different and yo know the way the mountains influence everything and the way the patterns are of Storms and heat and all that good
stuff and Maricopa County heading into
the greater Phoenix area you it was pretty darn hot uh this day I think we
were uh what was this Saturday afternoon something like that and into evening and

I remember as we're rolling West sun goes down and um the there was a storm

like up over the greater Phoenix area you got Chandler Scottdale west of Phoenix you have goody year Northwest of Phoenix by a pretty good clip you've got uh Wickenberg there's um what else is there trying to
think of all the different areas um Surprise Arizona you know it's just made up of all these different uh not suburbs but just different parts of the Phoenix Metro area and it's a huge City and there is
evidently a pretty good thunderstorm over the area cuz we could see the lightning in the distance and we're riding in on 10 the wind picks up tumble
weeds are blowing across the road yo know sand and little bits of gravel hit and Carries truck and it was you know pretty rock and roll right it was it was like wow um I think we had a little bit of rain but it was just this dry hot wind a little bit muggy but it was definitely drier in this Valley um that

we were heading into the the large flat area whatever you call it where Phoenix is located and it was just like I I

remember trying to videotape the lightning and I just couldn't um and I
kept trying on my iPhone I think I brought my handheld Sony video

camera with me as well um but nothing
worked I mean the lightning was just too fast or a lot of cloud to ground I do remember that so you didn't have a whole bunch of the Crawlers through the atmosphere on this particular thunderstorm but you know it was just one amazing thing after another and these huge tumble weeds were just like you know something out of a movie and there were so many of them and you know the blowing dust and whatever I just felt like wow this is the experience this is great this is why I came out here this is all part of it so we get
into Phoenix and checked into the hotel
and got a good night sleep and the next

day I guess we're up to Sunday now uh I do recall that I did uh an interview

with the Weather Channel on the phone
kind of laying out the plan for the rest

of the coming days what am I going to do
and um I think I had processed the time
lapse from the GoPro that takes a little bit of time speaking of time lapse and
and uploaded that for them to check and check out and hopefully show in the air um and it was just interesting to have me talking about the impacts of a tropical system in the desert Southwest and had always wanted to do that and there I was doing it so that was awesome
and we get started and on this this next
day it's now September 7th uh we were going to Target an area
sort of north of Phoenix around Prescot
uh people's Valley that area and see
what happened and eventually kind of
make our way up more than likely it looked like looking at the guidance reading the forecast discussions all that stuff from the Weather Service Phoenix The Weather Service Flagstaff weather service Vegas our goal it looked at uh like we
were going to end up in St George Utah
Sunday night and uh this was the seventh going into the 8th uh the eth I guess would be a Monday the days of the week don't necessarily matter but that's what we were hoping to do so the whole idea
of going on West to La was out the

window because it looked like there was a bigger flood threat for the Southwest

than really going down and putting the drifting surge cam in the Pacific and flying the drone over some big waves like okay I want to get the more dramatic aspect of a flash flood and
that became my goal like it just sort of

finally manifested itself okay what am I
really wanting to see and do at here what is the the prize if you will like
if something's going to happen and I want to document it and do a story about it and be there to see it what would it be you know I've already seen a good thunderstorm and the Beautiful rainf foot I've gotten the dust and the blowing dust and the the tumble weeds and the lightning in the desert and the heavy rain and all that and the tropical air mass the smell okay I thought sort

of the the whole
objective let's be there however
difficult it might be and witness a flash flood whether it be in a metropolitan area and that's you just got to basically be in the right place at the right time maybe Phoenix gets a big eruption of thunderstorms around it
and you get a lot of flooding well where would that be again I didn't know the area like I do now and I'm not I'm not necessarily an expert but I've really gained a lot of experience in 10 years and so I really wasn't sure how are we going to pull this off well had a couple of tools one of them again on the iPhone

it's a gift and that's radar scope it's gift wrapped it really is you get severe
thunderstorms you know thunderstorm warnings whatever you get flash flood warnings and they do these polygons wherever the warning is tornado warning severe thunderstorm warning and like I said flash flood warning morning and all you do is tap on the polygon and boom you have information it tells you what
the weather service put out and so that was the goal now we're up to uh Sunday
the 7th and I want a flash flood yo
know let's go north uh as I said of

Phoenix and see what we get you got Prescot up there Prescot Valley Chino Valley as I recall people's Valley all that stuff kind of north of Congress and
uh Yarnell which by the way a year
earlier that's where the Granite Mountain Hot Shot lost their lives 19 of
them I think it was they made a movie about it uh starring Josh Brolin called only the Brave and that's where we were headed up
into those mountainous areas kind of close to Sedona but not really but certainly out of the valley into these Mountain areas is and yo could see the convection uh and I'll put that as uh I guess we're up to picture number let's see what we are where are we what picture are we on five or six um
let me just make sure and uh I took a
picture from uh car's truck Norbert

picture five so we're up to picture six now got to keep it straight folks so here's a good picture we're headed north um I don't know if we're on Interstate 17 it's hard to say there's exit 112 off
of whatever three lane Highway this is but in the distance that's the little details the the point and you'll see in this Photograph this is picture number six uh there are clearly some deep thunderstorms way off in the distance
and uh we could see these on uh radar

scope so I posted this uh at 4:28 p.m. so again I think
that's eastern time because that's where I am so it's probably 100 p.m. out there

that's what I'm thinking so 1:28 p.m. local time there's no way this is 4:00 that we're getting started that late uh and I said we have a Target
storms firing in and around Prescot in
Arizona and sure enough the next picture that I posted uh was about uh 3:00 so

it's a little bit later obviously 3:00 local time and we're trying to get up
there and there is a flash flood warning
up for Prescot and uh just west of Prescot Valley and I remember I do remember reading it and they they give you specifics they say you know flash
flooding is occurring and a report from local law enforcement says that so and so Creek is over the banks and flash flooding is going through such and such Campground areas expected Downstream of said you know stream or whatever in such and such a wash maybe through some burn scar I mean it's pretty detailed and I thought all right let's go and you know that's a lot harder I learned so quick that it is really difficult to

drive anywhere fast in Arizona and it's
not because of speed limits or difficult roads Arizona is a big state and it's
hard to get anywhere quickly you know it just is nevertheless we gave it our best
shot we drive up into this area um you know like I said near
Prescot in that region and I remember we pulled off on some dirt road and some dying thunderstorms were up over the mountains nice rain shafts and that's kind of you know we were near a wash a dry wash and I wanted to fly the Drone
up the wash and just see what it looked like you know we didn't have anything else to do for a little while so what the heck and maybe just maybe way up in

the mountains there all that water would start coming down and we would see the
start of a flash flood I thought yo know seeing a flash flood in action would be amazing catching one when it begins with all that debris flow junk at
the front of it I'm sure there's a scientific name for it uh would just be

spectacular and I think I had seen some
from somebody on social media even in
2014 so I kind of knew what I was looking for but that was a real long shot just catching a flash flood where maybe it's going across a road maybe the road's washed out whatever that to me would be my prize and if I could catch one as it happens G that's the gold medal it really is the Holy Grail as they say so I flew the Drone up this wash kind of got a look at the area and it was just amazing out there you would occasionally see a Road Runner these desert lizards the clouds of course made everything everything cooler so it's like the mid 80s there's a breeze fairly
humid and it was just a a continuation
of of This truly unbelievable jaw-dropping experience for me and for Carrie he was TW quite the trooper hanging in there with me going wherever I needed to go being the driver doing so very safely um so I'm going to make this
picture number seven here this radar scope uh shot of where we were there uh

in Arizona coming out of the Flagstaff um yeah it's 3:04 p.m. local time it says it right on the radar scope timestamp so I got to get my chair from clicking like that that's annoying so um
we continue on and uh these storms I
even mentioned this the darn storms they pop up like moles and then they hide again that's the other thing that I learned first thing I learned is it's everything's remote it takes forever oh look look at that storm it's just over there and you know we can drive there in a couple hours yeah more like 3 hours
okay and by the time you get there that storm has collapsed so it was definitely a whack-a-mole situation that was frustrating um so we go on and do our

thing trying to drive we're going to get up I don't even know what highway we're on but we're going through all those mountainous areas and we're eventually going to pop up onto Interstate 40 um um

kind of in the middle part of Arizona North Central Arizona east of Flagstaff
I do believe and um Head West on 40 cut

across you know Hoover Dam all that go through Vegas and eventually end up in St George so a beautiful picture here um

I got to post we're going to have a lot of pictures on this one folks this is picture number what are we up to number
Norbert picture come on uh eight I had to keep it straight so this will be Norbert picture number eight and this is just a gorgeous shot
uh this was what time was this it's definitely later in the day uh near Clarkdale Arizona at uh 344 p.m. so not that much

late in the day let me look up Clarkdale let's see where that is on this map here
Clark Dale Arizona uh pretty cool that I tag stuff like that even when I'm mentioned things so we're on 89A we're not far from Cottonwood just to give you an example of uh of where we were and yeah we're out there in just kind of central Arizona North Central Arizona near Cottonwood between preset Valley and Camp ver Southwest of Sedona and we're
going to get over um to we're on 889a
we're going to take that north um it parallels basically I guess
we did go through Sedona that's kind of cool it um I think that's what we did

and that would have put us right into Flagstaff yeah some of these details not as important there's Ash Fork so maybe we went on 89 itself either way those
details notwithstanding it was brilliant out there and and it's just a different landscape as you'll see in that picture picture number eight remember go see it check it out on patreon just incredible thunderstorm convection over the mountains dumping the rain and you're like that doesn't look looks like New Mexico or something I don't know it's like is that Arizona really where's the cactus and there were we saw Cactus farther south near Phoenix the Saro yeah but we're up here in north central Arizona and we we continue along
finally get out on I40 and uh we head West and um I mean we

must have been east of Flagstaff somehow
because I believe in my picture that yo can see hum Peak here in the distance and that's a big volcano I think it's dormant not quite extinct but dormant
and I believe that's Humphrey's peak in the distance in this picture uh might as well make this picture what are we up to number 10 told you going to be a lot of uh Norbert picks this time around so
yeah Norbert picture up we're up to number nine sorry number nine beautiful
picture from I40 again I think that's Humphrey's Peak there in the distance should be anyway so we go on and uh that picture by the
way was taken 5:00 in the evening and
it's still several hours until we're going to be in Vegas but uh nice storm pops up near
Kingman and I noticed on radar scope
that the flash flood information said um

that it was over a burn scar a burn area
and they say literally in their post or or their information that's on radar scope that that has led to flash flooding near the RV park and we were only 30 minutes away so pedal to the metal off we go we get into Kingman area
and I can see the thunderstorm this will be picture number 10 and I mean you can really see the Heavy Rain there with that rain shaft and that's near Kingman Arizona right on I40 and we get into

Kingman and uh it had been raining really hard uh uh and there was some flooding nothing major and again I didn't know exactly where to go you know it wasn't like oh you got to go over to you know 9th Street at at you know Crowley lane or something and there's the water going across the road on yo know Stevenson's wash or something yo know it wasn't that specific but we stopped at a loves in a truck stop area I think it was a loves it could have been a TA whatever and uh we were probably in that area for about an hour and and uh just kind of looking around for any flowing water and I started
getting like a little frustrated cuz I'd seen all this you know pretty dramatic stuff but I wanted my flash flood yo know like I abandoned the Pacific if yo
will and we're going to focus on flash flooding I got to get my flash flood that's like my goal here and we came really close we are in a flash flood warned area Kingman but you know I don't know where this RV park is Google Maps wasn't as good as it is now and and Twitter wasn't
as populated with people as it is now so there were no clues you know there was no guy you know posting on Twitter or if
there was I didn't know who he I didn't follow him whatever um it didn't show up in my timeline of you again there's flooding here come on over or whatever so it was hard it was like finding a needle in a hay stack honestly so we

stayed around that area for a little bit and like I said about an hour got a few shots of this that and the other a little bit of water streaming down the road little trickling sound of the water

whatever but time is up Kingman is no
longer you know the flooding is
subsiding or whatever it's time to go we still got to get to St George Utah so on
West we go into Nevada come across the

from the East the top of the rise there coming into the Vegas Valley and it was
really interesting um I think we stopped in

Vegas and had dinner with Paul at an Outback I'm almost certain of it Paul Bowman good friend of the project of mine known him for a long time since '
05 we stopped we had dinner with Paul let me see what time that was that was an hour out when I when I tweeted that
we're going to get dinner with Paul so that would have been 8:00 so that we we probably met with Paul at 9 something and um and off we went finally we get to

uh St George checked in really late we stayed at a Hilton Garden in but now ladies and gentlemen the

stakes are

higher

Carrie and I arrived in St George Utah
Sunday late at night he could look at it as early in the morning even of Monday
September 8th while we had been traveling I think it's important to note
that every town that we were just in
City Town whatever the next day something dramatic happened one of our first days as we traveled Saturday I guess it was or Friday Saturday something like that uh we went through Tucson and after we went through Tucson the next day so like we had come and gone but then the day after we were there there is a big flood from Norbert some rain bands came in whatever
and a woman died at a wash down there I
think it was the Puma wash it was a national story very tragic she tried to cross the Raging Ayo and she got pinned
in her vehicle and she drowned it was horrible and we went through Phoenix the
day after we were in Phoenix big storm unloaded on them Downtown Phoenix I 10 I remember the videos and everything flooded vehicle stranded Mark and Cary
missed it by a day it was like that was part of the frustration like you know we're always like a day off off or whatever geographically and temporally
temporally however you call it TimeWise trying to sound fancy um the temporal
and Geographic everything didn't line up
there you go uh so I'm really hoping
again not I don't want to see somebody die I don't want to see somebody suffering but if something's going to happen do I want to be there absolutely
okay that's the drive you know no firefighter wants to show up after the fire has been put out you know right I think you guys get it so I'm like all right something
Dramatics got to happen so we get to St
George and all along and by the way I believe Carrie drove every single Mile
and just to refresh your memory we started in Houston and drove all this
way and now we are in St George Utah one
of the most beautiful places in the United States hands down and I had been
through there several times when I lived out there in the 80s but it had really become even more special by the time we were there in 2014 so I'd been reading along the way and the discussion from
Weather Service Vegas and Weather Service out of Salt Lake City really started to set the stage here

for you know an epic conclusion really that the leftover energy what was left of Norbert now had been sheer off yo
know it had come and gone so to speak its closest approach to the Baja all that stuff the the the energy pocket with it the mid and upper level moisture and some lowlevel all of that was now streaming up through Southern California Southern Nevada southwest Utah Northwest Arizona and a shortwave trough which is

basically another word for trigger mechanism in the atmosphere was going to interact with norbert's remnants over the next couple of days so Monday Tuesday and really produce a potential

of a corridor of really focused heavy rain in Nevada Northwest Arizona
southwest Utah fairly small geographic area still a few hundred miles overall
that was our Target so I felt like we were ideally located in southwest Utah

what's around there just so you know yo got uh Zion Bryce Canyon part of that
area an area that we would discover called Snow Canyon absolutely gorgeous in there and just a beautiful area St George the Virgin River goes through there it comes into the Virgin River Gorge you've got M Nevada and uh the

Moapa area Indian you know Native American region just a truly amazing

part of the country so that Sunday the 7th Monday the 8th my

first tweet um let's see what time that was

9 almost 9:30 a.m. because it's

12:27 it just round it up eastern time

and I said uh currently in St George Utah waiting on the heavy rain forecast to move in uh later and the

Virgin River could be affected and and Rise quickly so the Virgin River goes right through uh St George and Carrie was doing some
research on it and they were expecting that it could definitely have a significant rise he was looking at a couple of gauges Upstream there was also
and I saw this in some of the discussions the possibility of burn
debris or whatever you call it debris flow logs that are scarred and just junk

coming down the Virgin River when the not a flash flood but certainly the rapid rise could could feature some burn
scar debris and we wanted to make sure we captured that so we were not going to
put the drifting surge came out for this it's like n that's not going to work but we did have a couple of these Ustream
cameras now I guess this is a good place to sort of bring this in somewhere along
the way during the summer of 14 I'm assuming between Arthur and now

with Norbert those you know few weeks there we had
fashioned up uh a Ustream camera inside of a Black

Pelican case and black was just a bad
idea cuz they absorb heat but you know whatever and it was pretty clever that we'd use like an L bracket and we'd have
a big acrylic lens drill a hole in the Pelican case in its lid and have a little L bracket you know screwed in the
the Logitech would mount on it horizontal look out that acrylic lens or
hole whatever you want to call it it's all USB powered we had a nice golf cart battery or whatever little AGM battery from Lifeline in there I think it's like 45 amp hours and a cigarette lighter adapter it had a splitter one of the splits would would power the Verizon hotspot the other split would power the Logitech pretty simple and the whole thing was in a a little bit larger than a briefcase black storm case or Pelican
case and we had two of these if memory serves and um I mean maybe we only had one but whatever one of them I think we did have two was definitely going to go next to the Virgin River so during the

day on Monday the 8th we took time to

make sure everything was going to be ready we did some scouting and drove around Up to Snow

Canyon State Park which is wow I mean
it's like are you kidding me this is more beautiful than it should be and we were really looking at the different um maps from Google satellite some topographic stuff that we could find online trying to identify these washes
these ayos as they call them and knowing the amount of heavy rain that was coming possibly a few inches something's got a
flood that's the way we looked at it like this is our final stand right this
is going to be it and the vergin river should rise so let's capture that I have the Drone and that'll be neat to catch it aerially and let's see if we can find an Ayo a dry wash that will come to life
so we did a lot of scouting out of places and uh were you know trying to

figure out what's going to happen I remember went to Lowe's in St George and
we bought a couple maybe three cinder blocks because we needed a way to prop

the case cuz it would be vertical like I said it's a little bit larger than a briefcase several inches thick and 18 20
inch tall and it's just got this one looked like a cyclops a little lens right in the middle there acrylic and the Logitech would look out and there you go and we just needed a way to prop it up and then like bungee cord it or
chain it or whatever to another cinder block so that everything would just Mount and kind of Hold Steady at the
edge of the Virgin River in St George so
we went to Lowe's we bought a few things some cinder blocks a chain and we drove
out to the Virgin River at this park and
these thunderstorms are rolling in and I shot some video while I was there on the iPhone and I'm going to roll one of those clips for you now good afternoon to you mark sth hurricane K track.com here in St George Utah that's right St
George Utah this is the Virgin River and we are looking to the southeast and then over to the South as the clouds and the
Deep moisture increases the outer circulation and
moisture plume from what was once
hurricane Norbert now working its way into the southern part of Arizona all the way up
into Utah Nevada parts of California and
this is the Virgin River as I mentioned pretty low right now expecting it to rise quite a bit as the heavy rain comes in here later today and tonight we're
going to set up a camera down here to monitor it and see what happens and we
will be able to post uh video blogs I'm here with uh my good friend and supporter of hurricane tr.com Carrie mallerie and we will be reporting from this area over the next 24 hours or

so these storms roll in and uh you can see them coming dark sky the Thunder here and there and it kind of unloads on the area pretty good we drive out towards uh Hurricane Utah great name
right that's going to be picture uh number 11 and uh that's a great picture
man yep uh so Hurricane
Utah uh drove out that way you know just
again looking for flash flooding checking the radar scope whatever and um

we were under a flash flood warning and it was just for General flash flooding but there was nothing particularly um like crazy right it there was no
major flash flooding but I believe it
was this day the 8th and this is what I
was saying man I was like you got to be kidding me I get a text from cantori

and he is like all right
um south of you towards mosquit and
Moapa that area there's a lot of heavy
rain and there's some flash flooding and it looks like it's bad you should get there and I'm just like you know there's
no way like I don't think I can do that
and I remember looking at it on radar scope and seeing some stuff on Twitter coming out of Vegas that it looked like a pretty big deal like there was some serious flash flooding going on and it was not that far south of St George so

you know Carrie and I had done a little bit of Recon in and around southwest Utah again we went out to Hurricane we went over to Snow Canyon there was a little bit of like waterfall action coming over some of the Sandstone it's pretty cool actually but no substantial flooding there was a dry wash that went through there pretty close to the entrance to to the state park but again nothing too dramatic so I thought all right well you know let's try to head south and uh you know see if there's any
story to be had we'll go back through the Virgin River Gorge we'll head to mosquite and we'll see what's up and yo
know why not nothing else to do um and I just felt like we'd struck out again and so we did we drove South it took a little while I don't know an hour hour and a half maybe two hours and we get to mosquite I mean it was wild folks it was
like and I even tweeted that it was like The Walking Dead um there was no power uh the
casinos mosqu has a couple casinos were
dark and it was it was just crazy yo

know the rain and everything had tapered off the the wave of energy had come through St George and elsewhere and so
it was not too difficult to get down there but it was so odd the I-15 was
basically deserted there was no traffic we see these casinos people stuck on the side of the road like it was really

weird and um I think this will be picture number 12 if I'm not mistaken
and it's pretty cool cuz you can actually see the Nevada Highway sign in the shot it's a picture that I took at night there uh I think we're up to picture number 12 Norbert pick uh pick
12 uh what time did I post this when was
that uh we're at the September it's about 8:30 so still fairly early in the evening uh on the 8th there that Monday uh but yeah you know seeing these
casinos there was people standing outside they I referred to them as flood refugees uh lots of tourists you know cuz people couldn't get South to Las Vegas and the reason was I15 near moaa

was washed out it was gone carved up I

remember there was dramatic video of a white van cuz basically the flash flood
came down one of these long grades of

just the way the desert is out there and it was in the middle between the uh the
interstate the Northbound and the southbound four lanes two each divided by this uh it's not a ditch but it's certainly is like its own wash almost a
drainage area the way the interstate is built up and the water funneled in there and just got raging and then it just turned I
guess a corner if you will or whatever found a weak spot however water does what it does and it ate the interstate away and um there was a van that got caught in it and it went off the edge of some embankment or something and the people were okay I guess a little shook up but they survived it was very dramatic cant Tori was tweeting about it it was a big national news story all the Vegas news was on it I mean it was like a big deal and I remember thinking all
of this from the remnants of a
hurricane like that kept sticking in my
head like I knew it I knew it I was like
I knew this was going to be important hurricanes in the southwest are a thing
you know and and I know it is I mean history tells us but to be there and to see it and experience it even if I was a day late or a few hours later in the wrong location precisely it was still all around me and it was just like wow
wow wow wow unbelievable so we saw all these people waiting busloads of people some of these people are from other countries Germany Japan you know whatever England you they they they're coming to Vegas they want to see the southwest and they're they're stuck and
uh the Virgin River Casino uh I'll post this as a picture I think we're up to Lucky Number 13 uh the Virgin River Casino actually I
guess had a generator big fat generator cuz they've got power uh yeah this is pick number 13 and
you can see all these people standing out front you know many of them like I said foreigners like what's going on they had flipping uh reservations
probably in Vegas you know and you know
they're not showing up at their H hotel or whatever so that was Monday the 8th
right early into the early morning hours
of the 9th in fact I posted the picture of the Virgin River Casino uh Mayhem at um says 12:01 a.m. out there

wonder how that works I swear I think this is Eastern Time doesn't matter it was definitely late at night and we're getting ready to get to Tuesday now
Tuesday the 9th all right so this is

truly my last chance my last day cuz we

got to start heading back I was actually going to fly out of Dallas to get on home I'd been gone for shoot a week and

you know in 2014 we still had little kids whatever and that's hard on my wife she's got to go to work and I'd been out there a while car's got to get back and you know work with his job as an electrician a master electrician life needs to go on and most of the moisture
was going to stream on out of the area this little shortwave trough coming in across California was going to trigger one more day and and even the overnight
hours of the eighth into the 9th uh of
heavy rain and that was pretty much it for the most part the monsoonal flow would continue but the norward influence was going to wrap up on the 9th okay

so we looked at some stuff reading the
discussions kind of tired been a long day and I go back to the room we at the Hilton Garden in like I said Carrie stays out in his truck and he's monitoring stuff on amateur radio he's reading on his iPhone you know like a
boss as they say he's like all right yo go get some sleep and uh I'll keep yo
posted I do remember I did have a pretty early morning interview on Tuesday the
9th I think that's when it was on the
Today show with actually with Al Roker
uh The Weather Channel in NBC had yo know a symbiotic relationship at the time so that all made sense they were doing stuff and collaborating with NBC and I was going to be on the Today Show live um and uh I think it was on the
phone I don't know if I didn't have a way to do it with video but whatever
maybe I did it's it's kind of hard to remember pretty sure it was just over the phone and they were going to take the Ustream feed next to the Virgin River live and I remember seeing it on a
bump shot that they call it you know when they're getting ready to come out into or out of a commercial there it was full screen it's like wow that's the Virgin River and the Virgin River was up this is now the ninth but what had happened overnight a lot of the guidance was suggesting more heavy rain coming up
the trough was triggering as much as it could really ringing out that moisture I got a few hours of sleep Carrie monitored everything and and if anything catastrophic was happening he' wake me up I got up early in the morning like crack of dawn did the Today Show interview with Al Roker and we were looking at everything fairly early in the morning and there was a flash flood warning over near I don't know how yo
pronounce this like Ivans or something like that IV ins Northwest of St George proper Santa
Clara area basically in Snow Canyon and
it was like right through that area and it was raining pretty hard and had been
raining sort of a training effect and
that's what I was looking for yes okay that should do it so I I just had this hunch that we got to go to Snow Canyon they got the flash flood warning over that area I bet that wash has come to
life so we drove out there fast and safe
you know always being safe we drive into
the Snow Canyon area and there it was it
was like and it wasn't like you know the Flash flood of all time or something but
the dry wash was in fact flooded and it
was streaming across the road the entrance to the park there and you know foot deep or something like that yo could hear Boulders bumping into each other going across this road and and in fact it was really cool they had the way
the wash came across the surface of the
road was more concrete than asphalt it was like a smoother concrete that would accommodate for when the wash needed to come to life and so the wash crossed
Snow Canyon Parkway I guess it's called and then it went on up against you know this large wall of sandstone and there's a canyon back there a little Slot Canyon called Jenny's Canyon and there's all this kind of slick Rock and these little holes that have been gouged out over the eons from either wind or what we call
aolan processes or and sometimes Andor

Hydro logic processes big floods whatever and during the Ice Age maybe even who knows some glacial activity and then there's also lava tubes in there because this was all part of some volcanic activity many many eons ago
right so there was this flash flood and
we were there so he parked his truck and I got out and it was like a kid running into Goofy's candy shop at Disney Springs or something yeah you know or Ralphy on christm Christmas day in the movie A Christmas Story where's my BB
gun um careful kid you put your eye out
and I was careful I didn't want to fall into the flash flood and be washed into the bushes it was not dangerous I mean unless you were just truly an idiot or something so I was
just like wow it's raining and I am

absolutely just like this is it this is what I've been wanting so I get the GoPro I'm filming it from all kinds of angles the water level would rise a little bit it would come down a little bit like it was living and breathing it was amazing you could hear the clacking of these Boulders like I said and they would bump each other under that water it was a very distinct sound and they would go across the Acoustics of it was just amazing and occasionally a car would come over the rise behind car's truck he
had emergency lights on Amber lights and just warning people you know yo probably don't want to cross this and we we're not author ities we're not going to tell people they can't but yeah yo just hey don't go Barrel through yo could get in trouble there certainly could flip your vehicle and you might have some problems and uh I think there was only one SUV that dared
try uh and they went on across and they almost lost it so I think one of the most remarkable things about this event seeing this flash flood as it was happening was the fact that I could actually get a stream out on Ustream and

The Weather Channel took it live I remember I called the desk and you know

talked to whoever the producer was and told them where the stream was probably sent an email or a text or something and we had enough of a signal out there in Snow Canyon State Park that it was live
on the Weather Channel and we probably
babysat that thing for 2 hours and uh
you know I followed the the current down just a little bit went over towards this big wall of sandstone there's waterfalls
streaming out ah man it was absolutely
to me it made everything worth it it really did and the fact that it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere not affecting people you know nobody's house is ruined that made it even better it really did and uh I shot lots of video
lots of GoPro video and I remember sort
of the icing on the cake I didn't quite get the beginnings of a flash flood but another branch of this flash flood came around behind us right next to the road
is very small about I don't know 2 ft
wide and it was coming again it was enough water that it just kind of branched out and sort of paralleled uh Snow Canyon Parkway and I caught that at the last few seconds before it met the main stream and I just remember how excited I was like oh yeah and uh I got

it I got my flash flood and you know we were like all right we got to get going cuz we have a long long drive we got to get to Gallup
New Mexico today and this is like 9 10
11:00 in the morning when we finally wrapped up and off we go and I remember

uh uploading some video tagged cantori uh of course we went back over to you know uh the Virgin River and uh
picked up the camera and it's like noon 1:00 in the afternoon now and um I flew

the drone over a flooded Virgin River it came up a few feet nothing dramatic nothing crazy again no homes washed away
so you know all good stuff and then hey providing a lot of moisture for uh that region they needed it uh but it was time to go we had done all of our stuff uh
that I could possibly do put in the best effort I could for my first attempt and off we went and boy the drive back

trying to get out of that area you we could not go physically down 15 through

Vegas and then get on 40 and then hul butt to gallop that way nope cuz Interstate 15 was rolled up so we took

and it would become the route that's
eventually what I called it I just didn't know it yet we took the route out
of uh St George um I'm trying to get up here on Google Maps I can tell you exactly what it is uh it's uh I-15 for just a few

miles and then just outside of Hurricane Utah you jump on N you go into hurricane

and then you get on uh basically it looks like 59 and it's a little two-lane deal and
it winds its way through amazing mountains uh and you're
going up and up and up you go through Apple Valley and um it's again Utah 59 I

think it is uh you finally get south of there uh towards Colorado City Arizona so you're at the Utah Arizona line and then it basically turns into Arizona 389
you go through the kibab Indian Reservation Fredonia and you cut and
that becomes 89A at that point um and
that cuts Southeast and you go through
the Vermillion Cliffs um the kibab national
forest uh you name it and oh my goodness
it was just unbelievable and as I
remember as we got up into the kibab forest and you're up there 67,000 ft um

thunderstorms you was part of the monsoonal flow a little bit of moisture left over from Norbert probably and it just unleashes I mean it is just like there's hail it's raining is AB absolutely hard as it can and it was just it was incredible and you come out of that you cross the kibab force yo come out of that you get down into this amazing area called the uh kind of like the grand staircase is I think what they call it and you go around the Vermillion Cliffs and now we're getting close to
Sunset uh you a couple hours away anyway
and we're paralleling the Colorado River the beginnings of the Grand Canyon not too far down south and west of Lake Powell and I remember talking to Paul and he was like oh you're going to go across Horseshoe Bend Marble Canyon ah you're going to love it and he wasn't kidding man you go through this little area called cliff dwellers and the road
89A bends around there's the um I think
it's called the apach oh the Navajo Bridge that's what it's called we didn't stop but it's there and I've stopped since then I've been there before and you're right over the Colorado River yo go across Horseshoe Bend Marble Canyon and it's just jaw-dropping it's literally the beginnings of the Grand Canyon they don't call it that it's called Marble Canyon but it is it's still geographically and geologically the front part of the Grand Canyon yo can look down there to the South and West and it it's it's like being on another planet it is and you round the corner and just the most incredible
brilliant display of these rocks that
have been there Cliffs whatever for millions of years just unfolds in front of you as you drive along and there's just open

Plateau oh man it's just unbelievable I I never ever had seen anything like it even when I lived in Vegas I never got out to this area I went to the Grand Canyon but I never saw this area and we
finally get out we're near Holbrook Arizona it's getting darn towards dark now um you know close to it anyway
almost 6:00 uh mountain time or whatever
the heck it is out there in in September
and this beautiful thunderstorms out there big rainf foot we're streaming live I tagged cantori and he's like oh
let's get this on the Weather Channel so they pull it up they call me I do a live
interview while I'm streaming this from the the car's truck it's just like life

is good it is I got to do everything I

wanted to do I put my best effort into to it thousands of miles you know Carrie
was just an absolute Delight to work with go go go go whatever I needed to do wherever we needed to go we did it and
it was it was just amazing I I cannot say enough and we finally get to Gallop
New Mexico who knows when uh and um uh

check into the hotel really really late it was you know another Hampton in Hilton Honors Guy come on late at night
right and that was it next day several

hours drive we go through Albuquerque I remember we went through Albuquerque and had to get up darn early uh to get to my flight in Dallas and make sure I got home because the tropics were trying to perk up now it's September 10th 11th
whatever and we got 92l out there and
like the tropics like I said are trying to tease me and um uh yeah actually I got on the plane on the 10th sorry got my time off a little bit but yeah just east of Florida there is a disturbance that was trying to pop up I'll make this the last picture here uh this will be what number 14 I think yep so I'm boarding the plane

in Dallas we made it and uh it's like 5:22 p.m. Dallas time and I'm going to
fly back I even said it right there on a plane now in DFW this certainly looks interesting I get home at 114 45 then get stuff ready for Florida
question mark crazy
times and that was Norbert and it was

absolutely like a a pinnacle highlight
whatever not a pinnacle that means you've it it was a feather in my cap I maybe it was a pinnacle I don't know was a geographer it was a bucket list there you go it it it it exceeded my
expectations even though there were some times when we like I said we were a little bit late or early on something just your the perspective right we were too early we were always a day early I think that's what Carrie said that didn't matter I saw what I wanted to see I contributed to the Weather Channel I you know was telling a story I gathered all this amazing experience and I was hooked I really was
hooked I was like all right when this happens in the future I'm going to be back out there and when we just get regular Monsoon stuff I'm going to learn more about that and I'm going to be out there and so forth that wrapped up like
I said on the 10th and it wasn't 3 Days
Later by the 13th I tweeted for our friends in the
southwest take note from the National Hurricane Center moisture from a disturbance over Northeastern Mexico and that would become odal hurricane odal that will be the
next one I was right back at out there not even a week later I guess or something like that for Hurricane odal
wow and on that episode which will be our next episode Paul Bowman who we missed when
we were talking about uh the Herby launch in Ardmore CU Paul was sick recently um he will be back I talked to
him recently over text and he's like whatever it takes I'm going to do it cuz he joined me for the odal mission uh out in uh the Southwest again two of them in the month of September and that'll be what we discuss next year on stories from the hurricane Highway all right man this was this was a long one it was Mark solo right no Jesse on this
one just me so yeah that wraps up the Norbert story um I'm so proud of all

those miles so grateful for the time I spent with Carrie again I wish he was here to tell his side of the story he he would back me up believe me but it was amazing he put a lot of miles on that truck very faithful in helping the project along and his Intel his knowledge how to look things up get things done and the trooper that he was really to drive every one of those miles and he kept me safe he really did and the things that we experienced I'll just I'll never forget it so that's it it's in the can uh hurricane Norbert all
right so next time we will cover odal and that too is an amazing adventure Paul was part of it Carrie again and our
good friend Todd we'll talk about Todd as well Todd P all that's all related we'll talk about that on the next episode of stories from the hurricane highway or at least I'll tell you about it all right thanks as always for tuning in I do appreciate it I mean that from the bottom of my heart I am Mark suth
you know that but I have to say it that's how you sign off again thanks for listening we'll do this again real soon [Music]

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