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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
[Music] surge greetings to you hello again welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I'm your host Mark suth great to have you along with me as we journey back in time now
finally getting to 2014 a very big year for so many reasons

I can't wait to tell you all about them we'll split this into two different episodes because there is just so much to tell you so we're going to start in
January uh the very beginning of J uh January 2014 I started with a little field trip with my son Cole my second oldest son we went over to the Atlanta Georgia area to take a tour of some of the Walking Dead locations flew the Drone around a little bit getting some more practice um with that Phantom 1 so

that was a good way to start the year I think we actually left on January 1st first um but I'm going to tell you sort of and this is related to everything cuz I was trying to learn to fly that drone I needed every opportunity I could get
you know I can just go out to a field somewhere but when you do it sort of operationally where you're really trying to capture something that's where it counts more I think so the reason this
is relevant starting with our little Walking Dead tour in Atlanta and surrounding areas um I do I think we
left on January 1st always got to be home on New Year's Eve if I can cuz that's just a big deal um so we went
over to um the USS North Carolina the
battleship and remember this is back when drones were brand new people didn't freak out about them as much as they do now I don't think they freak out now so now now there's just more regulations because maybe people did freak out about them too much back then I don't know but we went over to the USS North Carolina it's a battleship that's parked in the cape Fe River area big tourist attraction down here and uh we parked in the parking lot they have like a um grassy area out in front that goes up to the Cape Fear River itself on the river banks and I wanted to get some shots of the battleship and kind of fly the Drone out and around and whatnot um nothing too close you know wasn't going to be Reckless or anything so um we did flew

it around a little bit and again I don't
know what I did but on the other side of
this like Lagoon thing that they've got built where the battleship is stuck into somehow genius me crashed the thing

into a tree but this time unlike the
lynville gorge thing you know uh
debacle it didn't fall in the river or

the Lagoon or whatever it came to rest on some rocks and it was low tide so I

got lucky so we could see it oh there it is like it ran into these trees January 1st some of those trees over there actually like ghost trees old Cypress looking things but anyway it crashed not broken but it certainly you know it turned off and was kind of on its side on some of these nasty um like Gunk covered rocks
Barnacles or whatever but it was still there not in the water so you're just
not going to believe maybe you will so
you know all right what do we do I thought all right let's see if there's somebody nearby that has a boat and they can Ferry me over there I'm like how am I going to get out of that boat though and get on these rocks I mean it was just off the water that would be really hard to do you'd have to have a grappling hook yeah that's not going to work and time's ticking we wanted to get on the road and get to Atlanta and the next day and the next day after that do the tour stuff of The Walking Dead locations there was this website called Walking Dead location .c told you all where to go whatever so we drove around

uh another part of the property and it's
hard to describe but that area has like
it's Marsh but but it's like these really tall reads of grass and not

bamboo um and it's not exactly Marsh uh
it's not Mangrove or anything like that but they're just these tall sort of sharp in their Brown and winter like
Marsh Grass but it's really thick and it
almost looks like cane a little bit but again it's not bamboo um and so we walked through that

I think we parked on the side of the road or whatever walked through that and
remember it's January uh 1st and made
our way down to these rocks got the Drone we were muddy as all get out shoes
were just glopped I mean it was awful and um got the Drone but what's really
like lucky about it all again it was low tide and so the tide was starting to come back in slowly but also the fact that it was January had this been the warm months it's forget it it's not happening the drone's gone the high tide will come up the Drone will be flooded and it's ruined it's it's brackish water there the Cape Fear River but had have been the warm months there are alligators
that live over there and yes even in the winter that could have been a problem cuz they hibernate and if you disturb them I'm sure they'd be pretty peed off
right so ah man I just like this drone
thing was starting to get on my nerves like I I can't keep crashing these things um spoiler alert it doesn't end
there all right you'll see or here so
got the Drone off we go we did our tour
I flew it around this prison that they had built for one of The Walking Dead
Seasons um when they were in that prison if you guys know the show and I didn't get close enough though the the the first drone the Phantom 1 just didn't have a big range at all and the battery was like 12 minutes if you're lucky so
anyway that's what we did I did that's how I started out 2014 and it really got exciting more exciting I mean that was pretty exciting but it really started to ramp up in in my world the hurricane world and winter weather
it was almost like um Mother Nature knew

that I wanted a change okay I got to Branch out Steve Steve sinko had really

encouraged me um I met him after Sandy I

think we met in 2013 uh up in New Jersey but he was
really encouraged I mean a couple other people were too you should go after and go out and cover winter weather stream it live maybe use a couple of your CS if you can you know these nor easers are a pretty big deal and I think you'd have
an audience for it and especially with social media and especially back then
Twitter I had YouTube i' been on YouTube as you guys know since' 06 you should know that it's in one of the episodes when we talked about that I think I joined in October of 06 um and so posting on Twitter would
really help Twitter grow and uh and maybe some Facebook stuff too Facebook was more popular I don't know I mean it's got more users now but Facebook and Twitter were my really my two go-to social media sites YouTube was uh a
third in third place right now it's kind of all mixed but anyway yeah the idea of going into winter storms became a thing in 2014 so couple of things to note

um I working with Carrie and Houston he

was helping me to uh really get more involved with the
Verizon product line and we knew that I

needed maybe an extra Hot Spot we're going to eventually need another Logitech camera and we're going to eventually need to get all this stuff to
uh work in a smaller case you know we had transition from using well we still had a couple but we were going to get away from using the old first generation system and we were going to start using these Logitech Wi-Fi cameras more just needed to figure out how to do it especially the power supply and uh so somewhere in January of

that year 2014 on his commercial account he added

a new iPhone I think it was the SE I
remember it was green kind of small I had an iPhone 4 my first one it was on my account through Sprint so Carrie got a Ione SE

and another hotspot on his account sent
those to me or told me to get them at the Vari yeah that's what he said he said get them at the Verizon store in Wilmington I was I think part of his account like as an associate or whatever so that was easy to do and I was ready to go and what I would would do is

stream either from Logitech or I could
use the Ustream app on the iPhone SE and

stream from that and I could upload stuff from that other iPhone the SE and then have my personal phone my iPhone the 4 you know for phone calls home whatever it was just starting to grow a little bit grow the technology so the first major you know like okay I'm officially going to cover this was in January of

2014 as I just kind of skim through my
Twitter history here here as I said it's
really interesting that just reading back
through everything the winter of 2014 was quite a doozy for the southeast I'm sitting here this like January 6th talking about
all kinds of stuff with winter weather ice storms it's cold I was complaining about the cold you know like little snarky comments man I wish we could have global warming back that kind of thing it was just strange you know like very

um like it served it up to me on a silver platter hey you want to cover some winter weather here's plenty of it I mean we really started out quickly uh

with this winter weather stuff in 2014
so moving from January 2nd that was my
first tweet by the way my first tweet of
2014 uh I was replying to weather Brad

which of course we all know is Brad panovic up in Charlotte let's see what he was saying um so he said 3177 million

Americans are affected by winter every year not sure why we obsess with how many individual how many indiv how many

an individual storm affects and I said it's winter it's supposed to be cold and snowy that was my first tweet whatever
so there you go so I uh I Grew From there that year um and we get all the

way up as we talk about the very cold
and so forth to a winter storm and this
word polar vortex started coming into the vernacular that year and um we get

all the way up to January let's see here
the 7th here I'm posting a picture of a hole punch cloud and let's see yep so then uh we get some

severe weather of course in southeast North Carolina it's either stormy and warm or we get ice storms and some snow you know not so much anymore but we did in 2014 so finally we do get this big

winter storm that's going to set up for um the year you know the the the
first big storm of the Year for me to cover so forth and so on so what I was

going to do this is going to be in eastern North Carolina and I remember I'm still kind of working
with CNN um you know on this like they gave me their American Express card account whatever um I don't really I was trying to think about this again as part of my show prep where I just kind of meditate okay what the heck was going on almost 10 years ago um I know I had that

relationship still with CNN but I just don't remember that much was happening as we started 2014
um I maybe somebody left I I just there's not much Twitter about it it just seems to be missing info in my brain it's like where I guess I didn't do much but you know they didn't it's not like I worked for them so they can't fire me but the relationship was still
there I thought I don't know but there wasn't much about it that I was talking about at all um there was a lot of talk
about the Weather Channel and how they were naming storms and so forth a lot of controversy about that the Weather Channel naming winter storms that was a big to-do in 2014 so anyway we get up to uh this

first winter storm and it's like January
21st let's see oh yeah yeah there was
this whole big deal about um Direct TV

dropping the Weather Channel that was a big talk you know of the town there
interesting um so finally towards the end of January here trying to find where it is um we get a pretty big winter
storm that's going to take shape in eastern North Carolina and the worst of
it looked like it was going to be in the Northeast part of the state Elizabeth City that area so we'd still have some
Shenanigans as we call it down in my neck of the woods Wilmington but the worst of it the bullseye looked like it's going to be Elizabeth City so
January 27th it's time for me to head out I packed up the Tahoe the original
Chevy Tahoe all the weather gear on it and uh that included a couple of these old first generation remote cams they
did get a little bit better I do recall
that in I think 2013 into 14 we were

going to transition eventually to the Wi-Fi cams but we did at least shrink a

lot of the different components of the first generation cams down we were using
a smaller battery a smaller laptop these
um what do they call them notebooks like from Dell Dell had these very small little notebooks so he didn't have this big old honking laptop it was a much smaller notebook so it had less power
requirements and we didn't really need a VCR anymore because Ustream would record
into their cloud system so in 2014 we
still had the first generation but it was modified it's like 1.1 or 1.5 or
whatever 1.2 however you want to call it we still had a couple of them and the boxes we were using were black I don't know why I switched from yellow to Black and they were kind of smaller overall um I can't remember the actual
Pelican case number like the serial number for it or not the serial number but the um what do you call like the im2100 or whatever um but anyway they
were smaller and uh I had a couple that
I was taking with me to cover the storm
up in the Elizabeth City Highway 17 Northeast North Carolina Corridor but I did stream from the

Logitech camera from the Tahoe on
Ustream and that's really important to note that I was really promoting that a lot looking at these tweets I tagged
James span we all know him span I'll be
out covering it live probably talking about the winter storm from the Tahoe beginning tomorrow morning until it's over and then I put a URL on there back in the day it was ustream.tv Hurricane track of course and uh other people I would tell them yes I'll be out there live on Ustream live on Ustream really promoting it a lot put it on Facebook going be live on Ustream I could embed stuff or put links anyway in the hurricane impact app we had renamed the
app from Hurricane track to Hurricane impact it just was better that way um so
forth and so on so yeah went out up into

the Northeast part of the state got to Elizabeth City had a yard stick with me even to kind of you know show how high the snow was getting um got a GoPro
setup out there probably the GoPro Hero 2 and uh stayed at the Hampton in in

Elizabeth isabeth City and unpacked all
the stuff that Carrie had um set for me
over at the Verizon store I picked it up in Wilmington had a nice Verizon bag and

uh unpacked everything I remember at the
Hampton Inn I was like whoa look at all this cool stuff and it started snowing and I was all excited and for the next several days this is like the 28th now I'm finally getting ready to leave I go
up there and uh I left on the 28th of January get up there to Newburn up to
Little Washington as we call it uh and
you know they got the stripes on the road where they're salting everything or whatever I get to Elizabeth City and I
do my thing I cover my first winter storm officially and I remember it
really started cranking up as I'm looking through everything here lots and lots of tweets that's for sure um
walking around Elizabeth City sort of doing what I call a Walkin talk a nice
band set up over Elizabeth City so I'm out there streaming from the Logitech
cam because I've got the hot spot in my pocket and the Logitech itself had about a 2hour or so battery and it was just really cool to be able to do that yo
know just walk around in the snow no traffic out there they had about 5 Ines in Elizabeth City on the ground and I
went out and drove around the next day found an 8 inch uh snow depth in a nice
flat area along Highway 17 posted a
picture of it on Twitter even put the lat long and stuff on there screenshot from the iPhone and uh made my way back home to
Wilmington you know so that was my first real like not hurricane event that

was in eastern North Carolina Northeast North Carolina uh a winter storm whatever The Weather Channel named it I don't remember um PX or something I
don't know doesn't matter but I was out there and I did it and I took some different pictures people sledding down a hillside near Edenton you know like

Steve was right it wasn't like millions
of people were tuning into what I was doing it probably wasn't even thousands but the engagement and the interaction
on Twitter especially was in the thousands lots and lots of engagements over time and that was important all right hurricane track dude
Mark suth he's covering winter weather now cool so more people started following couple people might have even bought the app you know I checked that later I didn't get emails every time somebody bought one but uh you know I was doing something outside of
hurricanes and it showed that it could
help me to practice things hey I got to walk around in the snow showing things on the Ustream cam the Ustream cam worked great operationally cuz remember we didn't do diddly in 2013 but right at out of the gate there in January we're doing great in 2014 so and I will I found a picture
here let me just as I do this right now save this it's a great picture I'm going
to title it Tahoe snow yeah that's a great picture I'll post this and you should look at it right now uh over on Discord where I
posted this episode or on patreon that's the Tahoe uh it really needed a car wash
that salt and grime and just whatever on
the roads that Tahoe was in desperate need of a car wash that is for sure
anyway got back home Atlanta had an ice
storm you guys or snow or whatever remember that it was like snarled traffic like epic
unbelievable um and so Winter
2014 was off to an incredible start even

back in Wilmington out at rville beach on the 30th uh I posted pictures from the beach
where there was snow right on rightful Beach you know so yeah winter was a big
deal in 2014 it looked like and and it
looked like it was going to continue and we'll continue as we go along with this episode in just a

[Music]

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moment all righty back with here on stories from the hurricane Highway and we're still looking at the winter of 2014 here in this episode so we end

January and it's cold and I have gone out and covered my first official winter storm and um I'm interacting with all kinds of people on Twitter Jim Cantor whom I've known since 2004 and I I'd say this because I think it's important he knows a lot of people
I'm one of them and that's a nice thing it's a friend of mine but he's got a lot of friends so while it's special I'm not
like his number one dude and I'm just making sure everybody understands that but he is an acquaintance of mine and it was nice to interact with him and that becomes very important in just a little while you'll see so all kinds of uh
winter weather pretty much everywhere in the east Southeast whatever people sledding on the beach I mean it's nuts it really was it was like wow this winter is brutal so far and I'm literally talking about you know winter Blues on here then we had the Super
Bowl um I guess Seattle beat Denver that
year at least that's what I was talking about um Seahawks beat Denver okay
whatever I'm not a big football guy um

what else am I talking about here we get into early February and um we're talking some hurricane stuff Hurricane conference coming up at South Padre Island I'm going to go to that in 2014 we'll get
there as well and then on February 6th
we got SLE in North Carolina according to my tweets then we had some snow mixing in and you know it was just the winter that wouldn't quit um then as we

scroll through my Twitter timeline here very interesting to see how winter is just locked in it really really is oh

here's an interesting tweet on February 10th I said oh boy it seems that someone has has created a fake a fake Twitter account for new han County Schools saying that they are closed tomorrow w w anyway then on the 10th of

February I announce that I'm going to cover my second winter
storm um in such a short period of time
too this time it's going to be up in the

pedmont area so Statesville I40 I77 area

I was talking to some people on Twitter about it here my friend Jim Reed um hadn't seen him in a long time by the way but he and I and Jesse we all go way way back and uh so I was talking to him I like hey buddy I'm going to be doing the same in the Statesville to Hickory area stay warm stay safe so he must have been saying he was going to go out and cover that winter storm he lived in Colombia at the time South Carolina um so not difficult at all for
him to get up there so I'm making these plans I'm telling everybody room is booked gear is about ready my target will be the I40 I77 area
in Statesville North Carolina looks like a possible foot of snow or more all

right so now that helps to jog the
memory and the memory tells me the old
noodle up here yes I was still working with CNN I remember now here we go yes It's All Coming Back to Me um sometimes yo
just got to think and talk and then it rattles stuff loose I was still working with CNN and they had sanctioned this trip so to speak I can use their American Express card and pay for whatever I need to pay for you're good to go so that's what I did and uh
that'll come back in a minute too I got to remember all this stuff I got to tell you so I go on up there and it's interesting too in 2013 that movie Frozen debuted in

the holiday season and of course became a mega hit for Disney and that song yo
know the song I'm not going to even yo know it and uh I said something on here to Mike Ty and Jim Reed all three of us good friends I said to Mike uh cuz he's
down in the Keys in Florida I said send us warm thoughts like my name is Olaf and I like warm hugs I was pretty dorky wasn't I it's all right
and I'm taking the Drone with me which I
was very excited to do I don't know why I didn't take it up to Elizabeth City but it doesn't matter um so I head up
there on the 10th into the 11th and I go
and I check into my Hampton in in uh

Statesville and right there on 77 i4s
not far away nice Junction area major

corridors and I took one of the uh Black
Pelican case cams this sort of generation 1.5 or whatever and I do have
a picture nice yes I got a picture right on Twitter saving that one storm

cases 1.5 there we go I will post this
on Discord and patreon as well you can see both of them in the back of the Tahoe smaller case long cables though
those bullet cams and um the little L
brackets it was pretty easy to just like
tape them put Gorilla Tape or whatever around a a light pole and those things were mounted no problem uh and then yo put the box down at the bottom and figure out what the heck to do with 40 ft of cable you'll see the picture you'll understand but yeah February 11th
2014 The the Tweet is normally used in
hurricanes the remote cams are ready for the snow so what I was going to do is I was going to put uh one out on

I40 just west of

I77 in the middle right in the middle of the median I did it at night I remember talking to Carrie's like this is nerve-wracking all this traffic what if someone sees me you know what like hey man what are you doing or whatever it was it was weird you know but I got it set up and it was streaming live um on
Ustream and by the way Ustream allowed me to set up what are called Mount points I guess a way to put it so I could have multiple cameras out there on multiple streams on my Ustream account just like we do now with Nest so then the second Cam that I had uh I took into

Statesville and put it on uh kind of
near a hill and there was an IHOP on the
right and it was looking down a
hill uh in it's not downtown Statesville
but it was like a commercial commercial area there was a mall there's the IHOP it's a pretty busy street you know if I really needed to dig I could tell yo where exactly but it doesn't matter and I and I knew this was very purposeful I was like oh man this this hill looking down the hill there will be Shenanigans
that's just a great word for that um the
old F around find out as people say it's
pretty inappropriate but that's what they say now back then it was Shenanigans I guess we've devolved at least the internet but yes that was a great F Foo shot something will happen

somebody's going to bleep around and they're going to find out guaranteed Carrie was excited oh that's going to be neat to see the impacts CNN should be
happy they should uh you're good to go
so I was all set up got the two cams running and they would run for a day or two whatever it was and uh back home
there's ice in the trees I mean this was a really big big deal for North Carolina
and a good chunk of the southeast right so I get out do my thing and all kinds

of uh sleet and snow it's happening all

over the place so uh I cover it and I
get the Drone out and uh fly it around

I'm going to post a picture of that as well let me find it uh scrolling up

through here we're up to the 12 of February I am in the Statesville area boy it was cold February 12th 24.4 de
yikes and then back home uh my wife sent
me a picture of this tree that had like didn't break but it was leaning over from all the ice you can visualize what that looks like there it is the very
first weather related drone shot that I
ever posted the age of the
Drone began for me on February 12th 14

on Twitter I'm going to save this picture for you guys as well uh from The Phantom 1 above my hotel area Phantom
we'll call this I think this is cool to do this in real time I hope you don't mind you know not everything has to be perfect and scripted and laid out kind of wing it just go back through history live as it happens so to speak so I saved that picture for you I'll post it and yo should look at it right now go on Discord go to patreon whatever find that pick there it is like exhibit three or
whatever right um yeah that was February
12th 2014 Statesville North Carolina I
tagged Cantor and Brad Brad panovic who

was just down the road in Charlotte here is a still image from the quadcopter I just quadcopter that's great from the quadcopter I just flew here in Statesville uploading video now I think
the video part took forever uh oh there it is try this again quad quadcopter video from Statesville North Carolina as heavy snow moved in it's on YouTube hey let's just click on it and see what happens real quick if it's
really there and it is so I will put a
link to that as well in the uh Discord

and patreon Realms when I post this
episode that's pretty darn cool this is nice it's like our own little way back machine anyway I covered this
storm uh very well I thought I mean I was all over the place um the cameras

never saw the light of day on CNN why

because do you guys remember how
Raleigh got a couple of inches of snow or an inch or something like that during this storm and it completely coll collapsed
Society fell I mean it was horrifying

and I remember I was in touch with them over email the control room whatever I got these streams going and it didn't matter because Raley was in
Calamity literally and it gave birth I

mean it didn't give birth to the meme I mean the meme had been around who knows how long but it certainly in my mind and
the weather world was one of the greatest starts of a meme
picture that would become a meme in history and it's the meme of that street

in Raleigh I think it was Glennwood Avenue and it's got snow on it and
vehicles that look disabled and troubled
one of them's on fire for some reason in the distance and then there's somebody walking towards the camera shot and they're like on the their phone and that
turned into like a viral meme Foundation people

went and added Godzilla into the shot
they added a caption uh of the person on the phone in the foreground something like it's done because there was an explosion or a car fire in the background you name it people went crazy
with it from that winter storm Raleigh was just rolled up nobody cared from CNN that I was in
Statesville with my snow and my sleet and my Quadcopter it was disappointing
but the Raleigh story was the story like
and if you think back you oh I remember that yes that was that so I stayed up
there shot some video at night and uh did what I could uh covered that storm I thought pretty well and um did a time
lapse that was pretty cool uh from that Statesville cam where people were flipping around and finding out right
and they would they would the snow started they were trying to drive up that hill they would spin out couple people bumped there was nothing catastrophic which is good we don't want to see people getting hurt but there are a few fender benders and you know people struggling to get up the hill uh with their Automobiles and you know all sorts of fun and games that that never led to anything serious but it worked it was an interesting shot and and it started showing me I know how to do this yo
know and the Drone was a really neat tool as well um got another picture for
you this is on February 13th I'm going to save this Tahoe snow covered wow uh

That's a classic shot at the hotel the Hampton in there in Statesville several inches of snow on the Tahoe the windshield poke wipers poking out big big snowflakes you'll see again look at
it on Discord if you can find it
certainly on patreon check out that picture exhibit number four or whatever so so that's the February mid-February
Valentine what you want to call it um
snow uh event and um I was really

talking about the DJI Phantom plus the
GoPro because you had to put your own GoPro at the bottom of it uh and everything worked it was great it was a
success so um we get through that part

of February and I started planning a trip

to Houston and Galveston to meet with

Carrie because we had a just huge huge

idea that was his idea that we wanted to
try to turn into something viable and what that idea was and this is amazing this was car's idea he wanted to develop a drifting
surge cam so you know we had our mounted

cameras and he had the idea that we could build out of a case a camera box

that we set out untethered The Surge comes in and the camera just floats away the on purpose it would be horizontal like the box it wouldn't be a a vertical like we do when we Mount them and so he sent me the stuff and and they're kind of weaving back and forth in time here probably in January
and I built it so he sent me you know ordered through B&H Photo or whatever I don't think Amazon was as big as it is now back in 14 I'm sure it was there but

nevertheless I got the case and um we got an extra Logitech
camera we had a spot locator that we use
for the Herby project it's a satellite tracker uh and then a couple of these
smaller sealed batteries from Lifeline
these AGM batteries these lead acid batteries sealed so you could flip them over and whatever they're not going to leak acid and blow up or whatnot and so
he he he got me all the components and said go for it build a prototype of the drifting surge cam it's a Black Pelican
case halfway between the real large Foot
Locker size and the smaller ones that we were using for Generation 1.5 of the

surge cams it's a lot to unpack here so bear with me so Mark with all of his
extensive nautical engineering education
that didn't happen has to put this thing together so the the idea
was the front of the case like so if

you're looking at it you're going to open it up like a a trunk the left side
would become the front if that makes any sense at all so not where the handle is on the on like the true front but the
left side I drill two holes fairly small
just about an inch and a half in diameter uh equal with each other up
near the top near where the lid would close to just under the lid area uh of
of the the case and on the left side
would be the Logitech on the right side
would be a GoPro and we' use foam cuz
the case has come with foam and it's all dissectable and carvable or whatever yo can shape it to whatever you want it's pretty cool we would embed the cameras in there so they would stay you know they wouldn't move I like that's pretty cool um we'll just pack everything in the foam and the batteries would sit down inside the foam low so that their
bottoms the bottoms of the batteries actually touch the plastic of the case so I did do some Precision measuring to
get everything just right okay I want this battery here I want them centered I started thinking about the center of gravity and how Bast works and the oil tankers you see where they sit low when they're full They Ride High when they're empty you get get it I was like all right let's just think about this logically how am I going to build this so that it'll float but it hopefully won't flip over and it won't sink and so
I built it to the best of my ability and shipped it or fluid or something I can't
remember I think I left the batteries in Wilmington that's what it was and Carrie
bought two identical ones I told him okay go get it was from Batteries Plus X
whatever serial number um product number whatever uh batteries out there in Houston and then I airlin the
case I now again I'm remembering of these things so that was the plan February late February fly to Houston go
meet with Carrie he had a time share right down on Galveston and we would work on this and it was very secret couple people knew about it on the site that's about it uh
I think Watkins I told him cuz we didn't know if it was going to work I didn't want to you know brag about something and it didn't work that's terrible so I
flew out and uh he picked me up I had
the case he had the batteries went to his time share down in Galveston and we worked on this thing and this is February 20th and uh the Gulf of Mexico
is still in the mid-60s it was windy down there Southeast wind uh and here's
my next drone misadventure you ready so
we get up early in the morning on the 20th and it's foggy as heck really thick
fog sea fog but it's only a few hundred feet thick if that and I thought genius
here oh why don't I put the Drone above it and we could look back to the west and I bet we'll see Houston sticking above the clouds now if you know how far Houston from Galveston is it's not that close takes about 45 minutes or so yo
know depending on the traffic up interstate 45 right anyway we get out
there a little bit after Sunrise yo know it's it's like 8:00 9 in the morning whatever it was and uh went out on the seaw wall and
it's windy really windy screaming right off the Gulf uh but not so much that the

Drone would like blow backwards we were cognizant of it so I turned on the Drone it did its B sound right and it goes up yeah we put it up about 10 ft just making sure it didn't just like take off
behind us from the wind blowing on it and it was buffeting it a little bit but it was okay I all right this should work so then I just like throttled it straight up you could hear it gone disappears into the fog I didn't really
know where it was I like okay going going going it's probably above the
fog you know throttling up up up up up
now we'll assume it's up there now so I let go of the joystick that makes it Go vertical and I slowly panned it around just assuming I'm getting shots that I want cuz I can't see it you back in 2014 yo couldn't see what you were filming yo have to land it look at the GoPro footage and hope you got it and uh I I
didn't know where it was I didn't do any kind of um lateral or back and forth it
should have been straight up above us maybe drifting a little bit so after a few minutes I had to think I got my shot let's bring bring it down I start to try to bring it down and it should have just come down somewhere near us right and it was nowhere to be found they're like huh that's weird uh okay so we knew that the
return to home feature would activate if you turn off your controller and after a certain amount of seconds 8 10 15 seconds whatever it was where the controller is no longer talking to the Drone it will come back to its GPS
coordinates where you initialized it which is where we standing and it'll return to home rth I turned off the controller few
minutes go by no drone 10 minutes go by
no drone it's gone bottom line when I put it up above
the clouds the fog it got out of the
lowlevel it's not too windy flow into
the much higher duh you know I should
have known but it was so windy up there the wind we assume caught it and it just
took off north towards Houston ran out of battery power eventually and just fell who knows where somebody's yard or a road or something we drove around and gave it our best to try to find it but we didn't find it so
that was the second drone in a couple of

few months that I had destroyed or lost
crashed two got them back you know had two crashes got those back um

uh and then two are gone it's like car's
like this is starting to get expensive and he had a spare himself that he kept in Houston I had brought mine I mean he bought both of these as part of the project his um you know like an angel investor would do he's just wants to help out wants to be involved that kind of thing but still we we can't keep doing this these are $800 of pop so we
unpacked his that he had for our next
idea all right we got the drifting surge cam want to try that we got this other drone that he had thank goodness here is the other idea we wanted to take that
Verizon iPhone SE and this is why it was
important that that thing was small and fit it using different GoPro

mounts and then a little 3M sticker thing to you know to adhes it adhere it whatever basically we wanted to put the
uh the iPhone on the front of the Drone between the struts and stream live from
it as a phone you know cuz it's a phone
and as long as you don't fly it up 4,000 ft out of the cellular range we could fire up you stream and stream live from it yeah you see I wanted live video from the Drone they didn't do that back then and so that's exactly what we did we went over to Tiki Island I think that's what it's called down there we we did that short test it
worked it's like all right we got it was very awkward though cuz the iPhone made the Drone Lean Forward pretty heavily so
you had to be really careful and I was very careful he wasn't going to you know all right we're not buying any more drones you keep crashing them so we did a little short test it worked it's like oh this could be huge and then I thought

why don't we film testing the drifting
surge cam so I think it was like the
20th was that the 20th 21st somewhere around there um something new getting
ready to stream live from our quadcopter that's interesting so that was the 20th yeah Tiki Island Texas there it is see I did remember this I'm reading the Tweet here uh anyway so around the 20th or so

that's when we tested the drifting surge
cam Carrie took that thing out of into
the Gulf 65° water temperature he used
to Surf long long ago and you know cold
water what Elsa would say or whoever the cold never bothered me anyway that's Carrie so he went out there with that drifting surge cam we fired everything up uh the live stream the GoPro and uh he took it into the waves had a nice long rope he had some fancy knot that he did on one of the handles you know he knew what he was doing Like a Boy Scout would do and that thing wasn't going to get away from me he tied the rest of it around him so he's Tethered to the drifting surge cam he
goes out into the golf up to about his chest eventually and I'm going to tell you what even you know considering I don't have any nautical engineering any engineering at all somehow I nailed it

with that design putting the batteries right where they were sitting in the foam down in the case created the just
perfect balance of the weight of the batteries
the buoyancy of the case with all that foam everything's watertight we sealed all the the lenses and the holes and everything for the cameras to see out with um silicone we didn't know about Flex Seal or 5200 yet uh 3M product but

anyway everything worked it was an amazing shot from the Drone of him walking out there and the waves would come and the uh the camera box the drifting surge cam was Heavy enough and buoyant enough that the wave kind of
went through the camera box it was amazing it never tipped over we did
everything we could we put it sideways and it wouldn't tip over because all that weight at the bottom it's like a Weeble Weebles wobble but they don't fall down that was this thing and he was out there about 30 minutes that's pretty cold you a long time to be in that cold water but it worked we're like wow wow
you know the the waves and all whatever didn't sink it it didn't flip it and this will be great you know so let's do it let's deploy this in a hurricane as soon as we can and that was the birth of
the drifting surge cam in Texas car's
idea it looked viable so I finished up

with all that uh flew back home and uh

he kept a couple batteries there of course in Houston and I had mine in North Carolina and um
so that was it like all right we're ready let's what's what's next what can we do so we end February winter is still
just Gang Busters get into March and I
figured all right so March we got about 90 days now until the start of hurricane
season I'm even tweeting here this was March 2nd phrases I'm tired of so far
polar vortex arctic front cold air
advection yes yes yes yes uh so we

progressed through the first part of March and um not a lot is happening in

the weather world no big storms really
you know couple whatever but no Monumental events and we get towards the

end of March and there's some by the way there's some talk I'm looking here on March 7th I tweeted very latest quick
look from the cpci that's the elino folks climate Prediction Center International Research Institute shows only a 50/50 shot of El
Nino during peak of hurricane season so already talking about that on March 7th um looks like March 8th we did have another ice storm in the pedmont of North Carolina but I didn't go cover that one I'd had enough it seemed and I
was just ready for hurricane season to be honest with you I mean seriously so
so we get to the end of March about the
last week and the models and the Twitter

weather Twitter whatever they call it whatever we call it started picking up on the possibility of a bomb Cyclone off

of New England to close out March like a
crippling hurricane Force
low that would just be epic like a

winter hurricane off of Cape Cod and
this is the one that people like Steve
Delaware Steve were like you got to cover those those monster storms in New
England where millions of people live even if it's not on the cape not millions of people live on the cape but people care about it in Boston in Providence you know like it's a big deal
so this started to show up on the radar pun intended as a possibility and I went
back and forth with Carrie about it I don't know man like that's way up there
can you get out here and help I can't I can't get there you not enough time or it's expensive whatever the and he had his job by the way Carrie was uh an

owner um worked with electrician stuff

Contracting um Lone Star Electric I
think was the name of the company he and his partner so he wasn't just sitting around you he had work as well as helping me create ideas and to fund a lot of it uh but he couldn't come out so it was like all right H and I remember I
texted Jim Cantor and said thinking
about coming up you know this looks epic
I got a couple of these remote cams I could put up maybe bring a weather station got the Tahoe and I've got a
drone for some before and after that'd be pretty cool and he responded within just a few minutes and I'll never forget it in my brain it's right there I can see it you know no problem at all he said get your butt up here cuz he was already up there this is towards the end of March they send him up early of course once they sniff something out they get him staged and ready to go so he was up there it's around March 24th
and I'm like all right gosh this is hard to hard today like it's going to be like 12500 bucks Carrie's like I'll cover it I'll send it to you on PayPal I got yo
go do it and I was like and it's like late in the day I remember I was at hogard high school my kids high school and I was trying to pick up my son Nathan my oldest from cross country and
it was like 4:30 5:00 whatever late in
the day and I was really stressing over all this like I don't you know that's a long drive I'm G have to go now drive all night whatever so I committed to it all right I'm gonna go Carrie sent me the money I texted my wife I've got to do this all right whatever you know I'm
glad Carrie's going to help out cuz yo know it's expensive I know I know but it'll help build the brand whatever yo know I'll promote the app Cantor said I should come up fine whatever it's it's hard leaving the family and justifying it for this kind of stuff so March 24th

that's when I set out you know all right I'm going to do this I committed to it I tweeted about it plan to leave Wilmington around 11:00 p.m. tonight for the long hul North and you can travel with me via Ustream that's promoting it promoting it promoting it so I left that evening or night

uh gosh I can still feel it it was

gruelling by myself spent a lot of time on the headset with Carrie talking to him streaming from time to time and I'm going up I get to the North Carolina Virginia border and uh pull off
for a gas stop something to eat whatever
and I see this tweet here it's like
after midnight from Jim Jim Cantor
tweeted he was working with a very popular meteorologist up there Eric fiser who was covering the uh winter storm for
WBZ and he reports for CBS News out of
Boston right so he and Jim are out there
they're friends they're already out there at the chattam bar inn or whatever it is it's a nice luxury uh hotel resort
right there in chattam Massachusetts and here's his tweet that really got me like my my stomach that feeling where

just your heart sinks he says if Euro
follows GFS it looks like Eric fiser and I were
building a bar tab rather than covering
a blizzard on the cape 12:23 a.m. March

25th and I'm in Virginia side of the road whatever gas station talking to Carrie on the phone like dude I mean should I just turn around
you know that's awful cuz I guess the
GFS had come out you know that evening
already the Zer Z this is what I'm thinking and it must have showed most of the action just far enough east of the
cape to spare them this hurricane Force

bomb Cyclone blizzard and so Jim was
like if the Euro shows that you know we're done we're just building a bar tab as he said that was hard it was hard
it's like that's Cantor man like oh what do I do and we decided just go you know if you get up

there and it's it's afternoon and it looks like it's really going to fade East too fast get a hotel room somewhere call it a day start heading back that's the worst that'll happen you're not going to get all the way out to chat him and then it's like oh nothing happened you still have time to bail somewhere up there even if yo get to Providence Rhode Island you know that's not the cape just yet I liked car's attitude he kept me going so I drove and drove and drove
through the night trying to stay awake he like oh my gosh I'm going to go to
chadam I told kentor I'm coming he's like all right so off I went I pulled
off north of DC took a nap an hour maybe

in the Tahoe there at a rest area got up

drove across the Delaware bridge get to
the New Jersey Turnpike you know the drill heading on up there going going
there's New York I look there's New York all right I can see one World Trade Center off to my right I even tweeted about it I'm getting on up there go through Stamford Connecticut never had been there before never and I remember
on I95 going through Stanford I spelled it Stanford with an N for some reason
just newbie I was new it's Stamford with
an M big Insurance area um some
Pharmaceuticals are up there that we won't talk about but anyway uh it just looked interesting it looked like there there's a building up there that looks like the bridge of like a spaceship and I tweeted maybe I was just getting Delirious in my opinion Stanford Connecticut looks like it's from the future that's what I tweeted what time was that that was 12:32 p.m. on the 25th

now this storm is going to form rapidly
I even mentioned somewhere in here that I've never left for a storm that hasn't even formed yet when I left on the 24th
but whatever so I get on up there further here's something I said to Cantor let's see what it was um notice
Eastern Cape and Southern Shores of Martha's Vineyard in N Tucket uh Island are now in Hurricane force wind warnings
so that's the cape where I'm headed and elsewhere and I was all excited at this point this is now 229 p.m. and I'm in
Richmond Rhode Island gosh you got to love the Geo tagging that Twitter does
hopefully it'll stay that way forever uh
I said yep going to cover uh going to show it live as it happens almost there I mean that that really helped to give me some energy you know I'm almost there I'm almost there so March 25th same day

of course now it is 3:36 p.m. I tweeted
I am currently 20 mil from Cape Cod yo can only imagine the excitement that this is Building inside of me knowing how Epic the storm will be cuz they got hurricane force wind warnings that's a big deal blizzard warnings and I'm going to be in my first
Monster nor Easter all right like really
got the tahos I got wind data you know the Tahoe is the Tahoe you like recognizable couple cams got the Drone
you know for some setup shots and and if there's erosion or whatever maybe some after shots I finally get in there late

that afternoon uh I remember taking this picture it's 35.7 de 354 p.m. I arrive

in Cape Cod I am
exhausted you know just spent but there
is work to be done I go in and uh find

Jim took a little time found him uh he was down at um the uh the

waterfront at a dock fish house thing where they
bring in the fish whatever I don't remember what it's called he was doing some live shots down there and I went
and I went ahead and flew the Drone from the chattam bars in got some great
aerial video of the before whatever went

down I can't remember how I guess the chip somehow I gave that video to the Weather Channel easy to do they had a SAT truck or whatever and that evening he's like can you come
back and do a live interview with me I want to talk about this I want you to show the Drone I'm like desperate for
sleep but you don't say no to a live

shot with Jim Cantor and I'm going to tell yo something ladies and gentlemen this is a moment of the podcast series that is

critical that interview would change the
course course of history it really would

I'll get to that in the next episode but
and I hate to do that to you but that's how this works sometimes that interview
would change the course of history I had to do it I didn't know it would but it turns out it would so I go it's a live

shot he's eating clam chowder on a closeup some restaurant brought it out to him he's just chomping on that clam chowder I'm sitting over there on the wings his producer Steve pedak okay you're going to go in talk to Jim they're going to roll the video Whatever show the Drone and whatever the the quadcopter so I come in I do my shot I think that I was
intelligible sure hope I was oh my gosh

my parents were so proud hey there he is with Cantor you know it was great and I
went to my hotel it was Inland near harwichport or somewhere I can't remember EX exactly where it was it was not Inland but it was not in chadam I wasn't staying at the chadam bars in that's for sure uh I think I was actually at the Hampton Inn um in uh in

in harport or whatever it's called hyas port or something like that it's a little bit of a jog West you know on the cape uh but I got to the room the hotel and I crashed I mean it was like 9 or 10 at night and I was out cold you know
that sleep where you were just dead and I woke up at uh 6 something in the
morning uh it's one of those sleeps where it's just instant right and I woke
up and I remember my adrenaline was just
cranking what's radar scope look like
and I fired it up and I and I got a picture of this too I'm going to put this for you as exhibit 5 or whatever we're up to now when I saw this I was
like oh it's it's it's a done deal I am

covering these things for the rest of my career and you'll see it when you see the radar scope shot on patreon or Discord however you see it make sure yo look at it it's amazing it looked like a
hurricane was offshore you know that banded look whatever it was a hurricane Force low hurricane force wind warnings
and I was a little worried like cuz they were talking about all the snow the drifting feet of it whatever that it had
already begun and I was already stuck and I'm not going to able to get back out to where cantori was I had uh failed
to mention I had put those two cameras out there one right down at the waterfront at this this Dock Place that he was at I can't remember where I put the other one doesn't matter oh yeah it was it was not far away it was kind of looking at this little Cove a little Beach area I don't know 100 yards away
uh from the first location a couple of good spots and um I I saw that radar I

like wow and I took a quick shower and

felt refreshed took off driving in the blowing snow it was just whipping around it was kind of a weird gray blue sky snow like insane like the gust would
come and these trees have no leaves so they're just loud and it Roars through it was just amazing and I fight my way
down driving along and I get to the uh
to the Waterfront area where the lighthouse is and the Coast Guard station and there's hurricane warning flags up because hey hurricane force wind whether it's from a hurricane or a

nor Easter doesn't matter hurricane warning flags up they're whipping in the wind I'm sitting out there I'm just like I just can't believe this I can't and uh
I tweeted proudly I'm currently in chattam Massachusetts where near blizzard conditions are taking place and
uh I must have used um Siri maybe

because it says winds are gusting like not winds are it's spell it said Windsor

winds are gusting it's just funny winds
are gusting to 47 miles per hours what it should have said but it says Windsor like w i n DS o r that's funny you got
to admit anyway uh pressure was down in
the 990s and I'm right there in chadam and
uh the snowband out to the east was
gargantuan and I'm just begging come on nature come on get that in here let's make this just a complete Super Bowl win you know and Cantor was was
tweeting like this is going to be the biggest one of the season it's like the fourth time they've been in Hurricane force wind warnings and this will be the biggest one and it was hype hype hype
and I'm driving around a little bit and I see this sign and I'm tired but I had
enough sleep so that I'm not Delirious I
see this sign one of those yellow diamond signs it says 30 mph under it
you know because it's telling you of something a caution sign and it says thickly settled 30

mph I took a picture and I tweeted
exactly what my brain
wondered what in the world does that mean I tweeted that and I have a different
picture of it but it is actually one of the pictures for um the calendar that I put out for

the first time 2024 calendar I don't
have a lot of those calendars out it was my first shot but anyway it's it's the January picture of the calendar in case you have the calendar um that's where I first saw
that it's like what does that mean and I asked and people said oh it means that there's a lot of people there it's very thickly settled and then were some funny responses that well people up there eat a lot of clam chowder so they're kind of
thick it was just weird like okay uh so
I get back out to chadam itself you know right out there on the cape the winds are in the 40s 50s I mean it was cranking pretty
darn good I did a little bit of a walkabout freezing cold out there 30 milph 45 mph wind definitely the coldest
I've ever been uh at that point in time
with that windchill um and uh a building had
collapsed it was an antique building that was under construction and some renovation and the wind got into it and made it fall over and uh so then something absolutely

amazing happened I'm shooting video with

my iPhone it's all I had with me
and I'm doing a pretty good job I don't want to be too Brado docious about it but I'm doing an okay job I know how to frame up the shot I've been doing it
long enough even in 2014 that I know what I'm doing you know I know how to frame the shot and make a shot look good if something dramatic is happening got to be horizontal those iPhones back then are HD I don't know if they were 4K yet but I had an iPhone 4 anyway I had
several shots that were were pretty cool uh from around the area blowing snow howling wind the hurricane Flags the collapsed building that was under renovation and I was texting back and forth with Jim hey how's it going where
are you what you got whatever I said hey I got these great shots I'd like to come show them to you he's like yeah yeah please meet us at the van back at the
whatever this Fish House place was um
we're having some problems with with our camera equipment we might want to use some of your your video we'll buy it from you so I drove the Tahoe back over

to where uh he was with his producer uh

Steve couple of technicians Engineers whatever and I went to this it's not a SAT truck it was like the a van a SAT Truck Van a camper van whatever with a little sat dish on it so they could beam out their video feeds and I I sit in

there uh get out Taho sitting there with them show them the shots from my iPhone and they're like man listen all of our cameras they got these really expensive cameras they got snow in them they've messed up we don't have any good video no b-roll can we buy some of this from you and I'm like we don't have to do that I'll just give it to you and they're like no we got to it's whatever protocol I don't know what the you know Steve hands me a phone and he's like this is so and so in
Atlanta you know you go ahead and work
out your fee and then we can get the
video I was like listen and I was very serious I said look at the video it's
good you need it it needs to be on the air I don't have time you don't have time you're the Weather Channel let's get this on air somebody is helping me to fund this I mean what are you going to pay me like 200 bucks you know money is money I get it but I got a good friend partner of the project long story he funded all this I'm not up here to make money I'm up here to work and I got
some great video let's just get it on the air and he was like oh okay sounds good so you don't mind you know I don't mind just get it on the air you can credit me that's fine so the next order
of business was to figure out how to get it off the iPhone in 2014 apparently
that was difficult to do and um even
today directly getting it off an iPhone is still a little difficult now that I think about it but nevertheless we figured it out gave them several of
these clips and they aired them and my
name was down there mark suth whatever and I saved the day yeah I mean that might be a little bit hyperbolic but I added value to their coverage and Jim
thanked me referred to me as his friend Mark suth you it was nice it really was
I contributed something to their coverage and the storm started to wind down the day sort of Drew to a close and

I went back to the hotel and I crashed
big time I really I was
likeo and uh you know this a harit port I'm just
looking through some of my shots here as the weather calmed and I went back towards my hotel I went down to harport
took a few shots there pictures I'll post this one as well that's a beautiful picture uh these will go really good with this episode drift it'll say it's a
nice little sand or snow drift Sand Drift um and it was just a very

successful uh event and I see these

interactions with Steve Delaware Steve um let's see what he says up here
uh oh I guess he removed it for some reason says it's unavailable that's a bummer as I responded to him and there was much rejoicing that's fine I don't know what he said but it was apparently positive
um so Ty said something to me and I responded Yes this has been great check out some of the videos in my app should be under the field missions ready for a hurricane now yeah um really awesome up

here if you ever T have you ever tackled a coastal blizzard you know so forth so
definitely a winner and I was hooked
hooked hooked hooked totally oh I can't
wait for the next one I really really was so uh Happy Sun finally came out

later in the day on the 26th these Coastal storms they can get in and out in a hurry got a great picture of the
sunset from the main road there in Cape
Cod wherever my uh Hotel was and that
was that went back home and very

interesting tweet here I said I've intercepted more winter storms in the last 60 days than I have hurricanes in the last 4 years holy cow

I don't remember that that is funny and
kind of odd isn't it right I've intercepted more winter storms in the last 60 days than I have hurricanes in the last four years that was March 26th 2014 at 8:16 p.m. so I did that
obviously from uh my hotel so the 27th

after sleeping well goodbye Cape Cod it was a blast hardy har I'll see you when
something with a warm core comes your way yeah you know one day that'll happen

so that wrapped up an epic winter and a

tremendous entrance into the world of winter weather that in involved a lot of of
Engagement more followers The Weather
Channel appearance with kantori all that
interaction and everything would lead to something

phenomenal that would happen in April

and we're going to get to that in the next episode because I got to wrap this one up I've been going a long time but

yes March ended with just huge like

potential Steve was right that winter
storms are a big deal I'm going to cover them but I thought we're getting into
April now it's time to start thinking
the h-word hurricanes and before I let you go
before we wrap this up we've got the
national tropical weather conference coming up and I was invited to speak and

present at the 2014 National tropical weather conference in South Padre Island Watkins
would be there other colleagues that I knew and we will pick all of that up in
the next episode of this podcast that will be one of those pivotal one like that's this episode coming up the next one major major changes coming incredible stuff you'll see you'll hear whatever I can't wait to bring it to yo so we covered a lot ho holy cow lots of details several pictures to go along
with this episode thanks for sticking it out with me I promise you the next episode part two I mean we might even have to do part three but yeah maybe so
with all the stuff that did happen in 2014 now that I think about it let me wrap this up edit it together Stitch it all up and we'll get it online for yo all right as always thank you for tuning in two stories from the hurricane highway I am Mark stth your host looking forward to Bringing you the next part of
Epic 2014 uh again thanks for listening I'll talk to you again very [Music]

soon [Music]