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

surge hello to you again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I am your host Mark suth great to have you joining in again
for this episode as we continue our look back at the year 2015 I do believe this episode will wrap up 2015 at least from the calendar side of things and hurricane season wise both the at Basin and the Eastern Pacific
Basin we're going to talk about uh hurricane Patricia and its impacts the remnants of it on the Greater Houston area and sort of my introduction
firsthand to Houston's flood problem that's going to be sort of the meat and potatoes of my look back with you my Min stories that I'll share with you on this episode of stories from the hurricane highway so that's a good starting point let's uh let's talk about Houston big city 4 million plus people um third or
fourth largest city in the country depending on which survey or poll or whatever you look at and uh very culturally diverse and a lot of sports teams Major League uh NFL uh basketball

you know NBA uh they have a big Zoo the Houston Zoo uh Cultural Arts and whatever you know very popular there as well prominent and of course the Johnson Space Center NASA the NASA culture in Houston especially coming up through the 60s and70s still there today certainly
United launch Alliance I believe Ula is still based out of Houston I know they were at one point so I was there in 2009
and did a talk for the United launch Alliance I think that's what they're called Ula right um and uh they also
have a a flood problem which we're going to get to but I think a lot of people think of Houston and galston sort of together cuz they do they say the Houston galvaston area and you think of galvaston and of course the great hurricane of 1900 that brought devastating impacts to a growing and
very prosperous Galveston area uh the
1900 hurricane took all that and killed thousands of people changed the course of history for the greater galvaston area Houston as well um and uh you know

then we had Ike in 2008 and certainly many hurricanes in between Carla 1961 1983 Hurricane Alicia uh certainly
put Houston on the map from a hurricane perspective from all of the wind damage but the flood problems in Houston the
flood problems are just enormous mainly because Houston is settled upon kind of a clay under soil if that's a word or a
phrase uh but it is it's got sort of a clayish um like I said UND soil like yo
dig the dirt up a little bit and underneath is this clay and so it's kind of Swampy and wet naturally draining
down into galvaston Bay through numerous streams creeks and rivers some of which are major some are minor you name it and then everything's been engineered to suit Mankind's needs Houston of course
being the big Energy Corridor and hub that it is you have the Houston Ship Channel lots of petrochemical activity a lot of Technology a lot of shipping I mean it is it is a major major US city
but unfortunately it is built upon
a very poorly drained area and as such
over the decades mankind has done a lot
to engineer it to fit his needs and that is all handled well a combination of the Army Corps of Engineers and in modern
times now kind of managed through the
Harris County Flood Control District and they watch over through their meteorologist Jeff Lindner uh rainfall
and they have like hundreds of gauges and cameras and a very sophisticated website because it's it's a big problem the flooding there when it happens is just epic and unfortunately it results in losses of lives still happening people driving through these flood waters um business time and uh you know
effort and resources lost um it's just a
huge issue still even today and um it
goes back though many decades to the point where even I think it was in the' 40s the Army Corps of Engineers worked to develop these two big reservoirs the atex reservoir and the Barker Reservoir also called flood pools and they help to
protect the greater downtown Houston area from flooding from these various
streams and creeks and rivers that are all engineered and concrete is concreted
with an ed a word it is now concreted
off or walled off is a better way to put it uh and just all these roads that go
through there you got 610 288 59 45 I 10

and all these different Beltway Beltway 8 you know you got the 99 outer loop or whatever it's called um the Hardy Tollway and you got Bush Airport and hobby airport I mean I think you get the idea Houston is a great
location that's not in a great location if that makes I think that's pretty good way to put it so they say location location location when when talking real estate Houston gets two out of the three you know it's a great location it's a great location to be in but it's not located in a ideal spot because of this
flood problem from a combination of
convergence where you get storm fronts and uh just almost like many atmospheric
Rivers that'll just line up just right and you squeeze out a lot of moisture stalled frontal boundaries you you name it very high precipitable water values down there by the way on a constant basis because of the very moisture Rich Gulf of Mexico that is just right there and then of course you've got your tropical Cyclone influences uh from depressions to storms to hurricanes that
come in and die out and park over the area I.E Harvey 2017 but it is 2015 that we're going to be talking about today or I'll at least tell you about from my side and um my
first foray into understanding the

Houston flood problem and that would be from Hurricane Patricia and its remnants that came across uh Mexico and dumped a
lot of rain in the Houston area so let's go back a little bit just kind of moving around the timeline and as I think about
what I want to tell you again this is kind of like we're sitting down talking at a restaurant or whatever and I'm just telling you these stories or we're riding in my vehicle or whatever and I just try to think okay yeah what was that like what was this like and uh stuff will come to me and of course I've got the handy very handy dandy uh Twitter timeline to look back at The Archives and my photographs that I stored from my iPhone and by the way this episode will feature a lot of those photographs so be sure to reference those photos on Discord and patreon when
I post this on patreon the accompanying photos will be there and I'll just talk about them as I record all of this and see it in real time right here as I'm laying everything down and I'll reference them and then you make sure if you get a chance to check them out a good way to give some Dimension to the audio portion of the podcast so
2015 um generally unremarkable from the
hurricane track perspective you know we were ready uh Carrie and I working very hard with this new Logitech camera system had three or four of these units we thought we were going to have a a big opportunity with Wen but Wen pulled a fast one and instead of coming into the Mid-Atlantic like it looked like it could do it did not and I ended up
passing north and east uh scraping
Bermuda and uh certainly lashing the Bahamas with some devastating impacts and then we had sort of the indirect um moisture feed that got peeled off of waen and put that so-called fire hose again I think that was Brad panovic weather Brad at WCNC
that coined that phrase we'll give him the credit why not the fire hose of of moisture that streamed into I mean basically the i26 corridor of South
Carolina all the way up into the upstate flooding was terrible uh even down into
the low country of South Carolina and eventually into North Carolina uh there were impacts on the Outer Banks and that was it that was the big highlight of 2015 from the Atlantic hurricane season side of things in fact if we go look at the National Hurricane Center homepage we started with Anna and um that was way
back in May so it was one of those out

of season storms we started with Anna in May around May 7th and we end with hurricane Kate and Kate was in November
November 88th is when it started and it ended on the 12th Kate became a hurricane and it was inconsequential to
any land areas to really speak of uh and
then in between of course we had others claudet Danny Erica you know we had the alino in the Pacific which was r ing very strong Al Nino so the Atlantic hurricane season was cut down we had 1 2

3 four hurricanes total in the Atlantic Basin but the Pacific was just
metaphorically speaking on fire let's
just go through the hurricanes in the East pack real quick this is astounding looking back at the 2015 season hurricane Andre hurricane Blanca
hurricane Carlos hurricane Dolores
hurricane guermo hurricane Hilda
hurricane ignasio hurricane hamina
trying my Spanish there hurricane Linda that was a powerful one I remember that one hurricane Marty hurricane
Olaf of course uh for all of you frozen
fans out there hurricane Patricia which we'll talk about in this episode and then we ended up with hurricane Sandra big Ace year lots of hurricanes in the East pack major impacts you name it and the big winner though of course uh was Patricia a very Fierce hurricane so
let's dig into that and then um we'll finish this first block here and then get into the impacts in the Texas area
which makes up a a majority of this episode so Patricia the most powerful hurricane tropical Cyclone on record uh

worldwide in terms of the maximum sustained winds and the second most intense on record in terms of of pressure so let me say that again Patricia is the most powerful tropical Cyclone on record uh the wind speeds were 215 mph around a very small core

which I can't even believe they flew into that and but they did the Recon planes I mean just wow they should make a movie just about that
I mean my goodness and the pressure dipped down to 872 mbar mbars um which is only 2 MB weaker if you want

to put it that way than typhoon tip and
I think typhoon tip was what 1970 or something like that uh and certainly the pressure in Patricia's core could have been lower Recon isn't in there all the time but it was late October off the coast of Mexico a small core uh fairly
large overall system of feeder bands and whatnot I will put a picture of Patricia
in the uh the lineup here just to start
things off I think that makes sense so let me find my folder here where am I putting these um I know they're here somewhere come on hang on do this in
real time I have a special folder for these on my desktop and I don't remember where the heck up there they are podcast picks archive duh all right so Patricia will be the first picture I won't keep saying that every time I'll just mention the picture and when it's noteworthy yo know to look for it does that make sense so Patricia the picture of Patricia probably at Peak intensity there will lead things off all right all right so
Patricia again Cat 5 it makes landfall on the Pacific side of Mexico and it was devastating for that
area um of course the very famous and revered in landfalls all around the world Josh Morman was in Mexico for the
landfall I can't even imagine honestly
and I know a lot of us were worried about him uh he got some really good pressure data not a lot of video cuz what are you going to do that's like nuclear hurricane coming at you and he had to do the best he could from inside of a structure there with some people that he was helping and one of the most harrowing experiences I think he's ever been through and um I was awaiting the

other part of Patricia so it makes
landfall uh in Mexico let me see if I can find out looking through Wikipedia here um it uh makes landfall let's see

here I know it's got to be in here so
comes ashore um just look in here move ashore

I have no idea how it's in the uh

heisco my Spanish j a l i s c o yis area

near quala cu YX
MAA um I should have just gotten Josh on for a little while to talk about this part of it nevertheless it makes landfall we'll just call it Southwest Mexico Don't Laugh at My Poor Spanish please I don't do it on purpose that's for sure but the yis region of Mexico
Southwest Mexico it quickly as you can imagine weakens running into the Sierra mandre mountains uh and I can only imagine the rainfall that was rung out but but it it looked like it was going to stay intact enough it's going to get the bottom ripped out of it that bottom 5,000 ft or so uh but the mid and upper
levels all that energy and all that moisture from this once most powerful tropical Cyclone ever that's going to move across Mexico it looks like and
toward the Southwest Gulf of Mexico on
the Atlantic Basin side and that is where I became keenly interested because

there was at least a small chance that enough of the energy would be left that it could regenerate in the southwest Gulf but that's not what really made me uh you perk my ears up so
to speak uh it was the flooding potential and I was keened on that like
I was like okay I've I've heard about all this flooding car's told me all about it he's told me about this great meteorologist there at Harris County uh Jeff Lindner and this tremendous network of the Harris County Flood Control District uh of of the different streams and creeks and rivers and bayu and all the different things they call them um and
it really started looking like this could dump a lot of rain in a fairly short amount of time hey why don't we
cover that as an impact that was the idea and and again the outside chance that maybe Patricia regenerates in the
western or Southwestern Gulf and eventually the Northwest Gulf between Galveston and and you know maybe Southwest Louisiana uh it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that that could happen even though it was not explicitly forecast at all still the rainfall part
was intriguing enough that I decided I'm going to go for it so that's exactly
what I did and I remember how it came about it was uh late October there I
don't know the exact date I can kind of look at Twitter to help me um you know
get an idea kind of narrow it down we're talking around the 22nd or 23rd of
October somewhere around there um I was

I think it was Friday night because I
know for a fact and it has to be a Friday night that I was at a football game with my wife uh because my daughter
uh was cheering I guess would be the situation she was a high school cheerleader and uh so was hogard high school and I remember texting I'm certainly watching this very closely texting back and forth with Carrie and we're talking about it on the old seab boox chat I'm sure and I was really like

antsy about it like an like the anxiety level like do I go do I not you know what do I do and I just decided I looked
at the plane ticket it was only like $400 round trip and I thought let me do
it like nothing ventured nothing gained
I will fly out early Saturday and go go
deal with the remnants of Patricia as those remnants come across and affect Houston and sure enough and remember texting Carri I like I think I'm going to do it and uh I was going to bring
three of these Logitech based uh Ustream

cameras and he and I would work to set
one of those cameras up to capture any Coastal impacts in case it did have wind and some onshore flow I.E surge problems

uh up on Boliver peninsula near High Island because we knew how vulnerable that area was so that was a given we're going to put a camera right up there basically uh near High Island you know where the highway comes down and drops South along the Boliver Peninsula so that's one camera done we'll do that for sure and then the other two we wanted to
put out somewhere in Houston now now let
me just say that oh somewhere in Houston the giant city of 4 million people that I have never dealt with in terms of a flooding situation you don't just show up in Houston well sometimes you do if there's enough heavy rain at least I've learned that but that was a big challenge okay it sounds good on paper I'm going to put these other cameras somewhere in Houston but where you know you got to figure out where these low water Crossings are what traditionally does flood and whatnot so that was going to be a big Challenge and Carrie was going to help out the best way he could um but the mission was on I texted to him I said I'm going to do it and uh bought the plane ticket right there on my iPhone What a Wonderful World we can do that from the football game right I told my wife and Y okay you know do what you got to do it's never easy when I leave not even today you know family is important and especially when it's just last second literally like that but at least I stayed for the football game I don't remember if hogard won or not but uh the next morning I would take off and take some equipment with me and the adventure and and the research and the
first time literally boots on the ground

dealing with the Houston flood problem would commence as the remnants of hurricane Patricia would move through the Greater Houston area

all right back with you now stories from the hurricane Highway We are continuing our look back at 2015 and specifically
the remnants of hurricane Patricia that
are forecast to move across Mexico and
into the Greater Houston area and elsewhere not just Houston but I was most interested in the Houston area because it looked like it was going to dump a lot of rain and that would trigger some potential flash flooding in an area that is no stranger to flooding
the Houston area and I was going to go I was going to meet up with Carrie he would pick me up at the airport at George Bush Airport and off we would go
to deploy some cameras and one other
thing that we had I was looking through everything kind of in the break there I was like oh yeah I got to mention that we had made up and it might have been in 2015 that we did this these basically
giant tape measures and there's definitely going to be a picture or two of these so you see what I'm talking about but I got Fast Signs here in Wilmington to make a 10t a 15 ft a 20ft

and a 25 ft again the best way to describe it is an oversized tape measure it was about 8 in wide on canvas yellow canvas and then it would be 10 15 20 25 ft tall we had four of them ranging from 10 ft to 25 ft and
I made it in Photoshop and you went in and uh put the little lines in there and then you know 1T 2 feet 3 ft all the way up to 10 or up to 25 on the the largest
one and you roll them up and uh you can
take them with you and you can put them out staple them or zip tie them or whatever to a pole and it would give us
our own high water marker thing like
they have down there at these low water Crossings it'll uh it's like a flood gauge that's literally what they have if you ever drive around areas that are prone to flooding you get these low water Crossings and there will be a flood gauge and sometimes it tells yo how high it is above sea level and so you might look at it and it'll be like start at 12 13 14 15 see you're like what and then sometimes it's just height above the actual concrete 1 2 3 4 5 and
so on sometimes it can be confusing but they are around our great country of the
United States and maybe elsewhere in the world I don't know but they're very prevalent in Houston they're very prevalent over in the Hill Country of Texas these flood gauges they're usually made out of metal or some kind of plastic and they are permanent and they are right there kind of at the low point of any kind of a dip or what they call a low water crossing but I wanted to bring a couple of Our Own that again were made out of this canvas material very bright yellow with black lettering starting at 1 foot going as high as 25 ft and I think I brought the
25t one with me if I remember maybe a
couple of them the 20 and the 25 foot one but I was going to bring those with three of these camera systems and uh Carrie and I would uh deploy this stuff and be ready so let's go back and look at Twitter though um kind of sequentially here starting on on October 22nd I'm interacting with different people including morgaman Josh morgaman who was down there um and just a few random things that I was pointing out here here's one or two I said uh 24 hours ago again this was October 22nd 24
hours ago the forecast for Patricia called for it to be near 100 milph right now and of course we know what happened it peaked at 215 miles per hour w w I mean that's a

huge gargantuan bust only to be outdone
especially because of the impacts many years later in uh 2023 when Otis basically did a very
similar thing fortunately it didn't peek out at 215 miles per hour but it went from a tropical storm to a category 5 in just record time so in you know from
2015 to 20123 those eight years not much
has changed in intensity forecasting it just goes to show right absolutely especially when you're dealing with the core of a powerful hurricane the small
core very hard to model anyhow um it's

going to make landfall and I'm sort of
speculating that I think it would fill as we call it some uh 25 millibars
before landfall that's just my hunch because I felt like it was going to run into those mountains there and the Downs sloping wind would ingest dry air and help that small core to collapse but it would still be very very powerful
and you know the water temperatures I'm I'm pointing out here were 30° C 30
celsi so mid 80s um you know morgaman
was definitely going to have his hands full so it makes landfall uh here's a
just tremendous satellite picture of it I'll save this for you uh and I even tweeted about this and to think there are actually human beings flying an airplane through this right now hard to
believe this is an INF red shot and if you look at it all that dark gray almost black you you're talking about probably - 80 - 90 celus Cloud tops just pushing
up against the stratosphere there just intense as intense can get so Patricia
makes landfall and uh comes across
Mexico and again I do that uh Friday Night Football thing with my wife and um
I decide I'm going to go and I'm going to head out on the 23rd so uh another picture for you check this out I say here on the 23rd let's see if it'll tell me I think if I click on it what time I posted this uh yeah so it
was it it U must have been let me just look and see something real quick we'll do this in real time see if it works hey
Siri what night of the week was October 23rd 2015 yeah it was a Friday that's great real time if yo want to know you ask the the dadgum phone so yes I had gone to the game so
Thursday the 22nd uh was when Patricia reached its
peak it must have made landfall Thursday into Friday or something like that it matters but it doesn't matter as much as the rest of this story which is going to end up of course in the Houston area Carrie and I strategizing while I'm at the football game and the football game probably ends at 99 or 9:30 or whatever and I'm home and I post this picture it's 11:42 p.m. October 23rd 2015

there's the yellow case which we still use today the big yellow case which I want to remind you used to be the case

for uh storing the cameras like that
that housed One camera system uh back in
2008 like that was used during Hurricane Ike for One camera system now in this
picture it's got three camera systems in it a couple chains you see there and then we've got a uh one or two of those rolls that I was telling you about uh like the oversized the overdone tape measure right so um off I'm going to go
I'm going to head out and uh fly down to the Houston area on Saturday and I went
back on the Twitter advaned search and it bumped me up to the top of my results I want to scroll down here there we go so I'm going to leave uh on Saturday and
um head out and I'm and I'm mentioning I said I'm going to Airline these to Houston and deploy tomorrow in flood prone areas along the coast uh and of course in Houston and we'll see what happens so off I go and uh for good
reason I save this picture here for yo as well uh October 24th I'm up let's see
what time that was uh this is 6:30 in
the morning Mark's got to get on a plane and get out to Houston and for good reason they had a high risk of flooding

for the Southeast Texas uh actually the
mid Texas Coast all the way up to the Greater Houston area with a moderate risk covering the rest of the Texas area you know Southeast Texas so this was going to be a pretty big deal and so me going was definitely warranted uh and
I'm communicating with different people along the way I do specifically recall that I bought the onboard Wi-Fi because I needed to do a lot of research and figure things out during that Trek so I
go from Wilmington to Charlotte always
and then from Charlotte to Houston and Carrie would pick me up Saturday afternoon very early Saturday afternoon and we'll go off and do our thing over the next 2 to 3 days so the remnants are
coming through uh and it looks like we're going to get a lot of heavy rain 3 4 5 6 in something like that enough to

trigger like I said the uh the high risk
so I land just in time and when you see
the this radar here so let's see I posted this picture and I literally say uh wow 11:08 in the morning so yeah I
must have um I must have gotten out of the Wilmington area quickly um let's see
it's 12: eastern time 11 Central when I posted it this is a radar scope shot wait till you see that you can see all that very heavy rain coming into the Houston area and uh Carrie and I definitely had our work cut out for us
now one of the things that I did while I was flying was that I asked
Twitter hey it's thundering outside that's timely um where are some good

areas to put one of these cameras I've got three of them one's going to go on Boliver the other two1 in the Houston area where should I put them what do yo guys think where are some areas that flood typically during hurricanes and a

few people responded of course and one of those people said that bra Bou near

like the Houston Medical Center or something it was like a specific area of Houston Highway 288 um and and the person gave me some specific areas you know to look at and
braze Bou was one of them and so I sent this information to Carrie and I was like we need to put a camera here I don't know anything about it except this is what somebody told me a guy that lives there strongly suggested Ed this and Carrie's like all right we'll go there first so Carrie picks me up and
like I said I posted that picture of the radar scope thing at 11:00 in the
morning uh Houston time sure enough by

1:15 that afternoon not not even two hours later these would be the next two pictures for you um we had a camera inra

by you ready to go and this is really remarkable these are two different pictures that I had posted on Twitter so I'll save them for you there's the first one here's the second one the first one shows the camera and it's kind of funny folks and you got to look at it you got to take the time to see it I'll still describe it for you just in case yo don't look at it or you can't these giant concrete columns that hold up
Highway 288 that's what we attached the camera to the uh diameter of the thing is probably 8 to 10 ft so we had to put double zip ties on and do everything we could to Wrangle that thing on there and then we put a big chain around it to yo know keep it from washing away or if it fell down nobody would steal it hopefully but these massive columns
that's what we put the camera on and the camera is looking down this flood channel it's all concrete of course and we ourselves are down I don't know like 30 ft below ground level at the bottom
of this flood Channel and there's like a a running uh path through there it's a nature way or whatever you call it and you know when it's not flooded people like to run and ride bikes and Little Critters live down there and it's a a beautiful kind of thing you know engineered to keep the flooding at a minimum but also when it does flood uh
you got to be the heck out of there and so we got the camera set up and it was running and the camera was looking at a 10-ft marker on the opposite column down
the flood Channel again if you can look at the pictures you'll see exactly what I'm talking about uh and the water was pretty low you know deep down in this little Basin in the channel and we were just waiting for all that rainfall to come and it was definitely coming so it didn't take long we got the things set up we're all set it's running it's on Ustream I'm talking about it on Twitter tagging different people you know Matt Lanza uh I think he's with Space City weather or something like that now uh him and what is his name Eric Berger I
think or something like that uh but him KPRC was interacting with me what are they the NBC affiliate in Houston um I
think I told the Weather Channel about it but I don't think there was any interest from them for whatever reason and of course we were talking about it over at the seab boox at Hurricane track and it was just a big deal I was like Hey we're going to have a live camera I
mean it's running it's live now it's happening in this flood Channel Once all
this rain comes and starts jacking up the flood Basin you know and all that rain starts accumulating and the flooding starts well it's not really flooding if it's in the Channel but yo get what I'm saying it would flood the channel braze byou and then we were just you know not sure if there would be so much rain that it might over top the banks and spill out into the area uh
McGregor and the medical center region
uh along the bra Bayou Nature Park or whatever you call it that was not we weren't sure if that would happen or not you know enough rain it could so it's all set up we're ready to go it's raining hard off and on as the big moisture plume from Patric from Patricia coming in this was mostly mid to high level moisture kind of sheared off from the uh the ex hurricane the low-level energy was still trying to come across more to the South and we were tracking that it was more south down near Brownsville very heavy rain associated with that too uh but a huge rain maker nonetheless for everywhere in Eastern Texas Southeast Texas in particular and uh our next location we looked at going to the Friendswood area for the second camera out near where uh Bill Reed lives now
from the former Director of National Hurricane Center and my friend Lo Fincher who passed away within the last year or so uh he used to live there in the Friendswood area so I knew it fairly well but I looked at a low water crossing there and it just wasn't viable
um it just didn't look like it was going to do much it was kind of in a golf course area it was just kind of weird and there was really nowhere to put the camera so Carrie and I I got lunch
somewhere who knows probably Red Lobster or something knowing me back then um and
then we went out to Galveston and I guess we must have taken the ferry across I don't remember
exactly but I know that we got to Boliver Peninsula um fairly quickly so we would have done so with the fer it wasn't too windy it's just rainy as all heck and we
uh must have taken the ferry over cuz to drive out to Boliver you'd have to leave the Houston area go up on I 10 get off at Winnie come all the way down and I
know that we set a camera up a long ball of peninsula roll over pass uh which was
all devastated uh near Gilchrist and and whatnot during Ike and we set up the second camera kind of looking at the pass and water was kind of coming in little wave action raining whatever putting on a telephone pole there and we were good to go then we made our way up
to um basically near High Island uh
essentially where Highway 124 and 87 I
think it is come together and uh we put the third camera up there and there's a good picture of that that I'll save for you uh the camera was literally on one

of those work um not work like
construction things like a sign uh that
that tells you that the road goes this way or whatever that's all we had there just wasn't much to to put stuff on out there but the remarkable thing while while all this is happening while we're trying to set up these other two cameras that were out on the coast the water was starting to come up at bra by you and in
a hurry so the marker that we had went up to 10 ft and we had zip ties on it one at the very bottom one at the 5ft level and then one at the 10-ft level well there was enough wind that got in there and kind of agitated the the marker and it it made it kind of flimsy and then it fell over kind of doubling on itself but you you can still see the five of the five and then there's a picture of it I'll save this for you yo can see it uh so we were able to watch and we were able to watch that water come up and it was coming up one feet or 1 foot 2 feet 3 feet and we were
watching it live and I remember Carrie was talking to Jeff either through email or on the National Weather Service chat Jeff Lindner uh I think he had a link there at Harris County Flood Control District that he could watch it uh there was all this styrofoam coming by all this garbage and cups and stuff that was actually kind of sad to see honestly all this trash going by but the water was going by quickly the Bayou was filling up braze by yo very quickly and we just sat there Carrie and I I think on the side of the road somewhere in Boliver who knows uh

just watching in awe

as this water came up and up and up eventually reaching the level of the camera and it did it reached like the
eye level of the camera you could hear stuff banging into the camera and it's just incredible here I'm going to um save this picture of it it's a still image obviously but this is just remarkable to see and for us it was a huge Victory it's like wow this is amazing like we could really cover flooding from either freshwater like this or storm surge these uh Logitech
cameras are fantastic this isn't this is amazing it was a really good effort and it was paying off seeing something and then hearing it the audio of that water swirling around and the occasional solid object bumping into the camera box yo could hear all that the marker was long since sort of doubled over and it wasn't really Stripped Away but you couldn't see it but we knew that the middle band
was at 5 ft so the water had come up at least 5 ft from the bottom of the concrete area and then it kept going and it finally it put the camera
underwater and it did so by 6 in and
then a foot and then 2 feet whatever yo could see underwater we were streaming live underwater until we couldn't and we

realized immediately and I even tweeted this it went off air not because water

got into it and it was DED destroyed but because the Verizon hotspot that was powering the Logitech just can't get a signal out from the water like if yo took your phone in a Lifeproof case or one of those bags that you can put your phone in so that they are waterproof and you went down into a pool 5T 2 feet

whatever I don't know what the actual like threshold is but you can't use your phone in the ocean if you had it inside of a uh a waterproof housing or a pool

you know you go to a resort somewhere you try to use your phone at the bottom of the pool it's just not going to work right and so the same thing the signal just can't get through all that water so the camera went off air not because it was ruined or destroyed but because the signal couldn't get out because the uh braze valou had gone over the camera and

submerged it so Carrie and I do end up

um up there at Highway 87 and4 I'll save
this picture for you as well uh we got up there around 6:45 uh Houston time getting towards
evening obviously this is a great picture of uh Mr Cary and uh my handy
work with him setting this camera up on one of those uh directional signs cuz
the road makes a hard left it's like a 90° turn and when you're coming from the other way of course it's a hard right and so they have these signs you know like go that way so we just put the the camera on that there just weren't too many other options um and then we were

pretty much running out of daylight but
the remnants of Patricia weren't
monkeying around like they were trying to come back this the center was getting back out over the the gulf there near Brownsville and Corpus Christie so Carrie and I went ahead and checked into the Hampton Inn up in Winnie Texas spent
the night there and decided we'd get up pretty early in the morning on Sunday and be ready to get out because it looked like Patricia was going to try to make somewhat of a comeback

all right continuing on now with stories from the hurricane Highway talking about the remnants of hurricane Patricia now
making their way across Texas into the Gulf of Mexico drenching the Houston area a minor flooding braze Bayou comes
up uh several feet I think several tens of feet 10 or 20 feet uh did not quite reach bankful during this but it did put our camera underwater we'll get back to
uh when what happened to it it's a pretty cool thing when we finally get back to pick it up a day or so later but
now carry and I on Saturday night the
24th I think it is uh we are going to
stay up in Winnie Texas at the Hampton in in fact the housekeeper they they
often will put their card on your desk
in your room and it has their name on it hi my name is whatever uh I had the pleasure of cleaning your room today if there's anything else we can help yo with let us know or whatever enjoy your stay this housekeeper's name was Patricia I kid you not saved a picture of it I tweeted it I even tweeted at Josh morgerman hey what is the uh what's
the odds of that that's pretty ironic isn't it so yes uh that was the 24th Carrie and I got some sleep and we had to get up pretty early on uh Sunday and

get up into Louisiana because it looked like I mean believe it or not it looked like uh Patricia's remnants were trying
to sort of get together again be more
organized and kept waiting for the Hurricane Center to say okay it's it's a tropical storm again or whatever but there just wasn't enough organized convection I guess it looked like a big comma and I understood it was kind of
subtropical um but it was definitely still the DNA and you know the the main part of what was left over from Patricia uh there's no doubt about that um and the gulf was still pretty warm so it was trying so Carrie and I still had some work to do under these uh
circumstances out here uh in Southwest Louisiana Northeast Texas Coastline we had a big day ahead of us in case Patricia did come back but even if it didn't again who cares if it's named or not it's all about those impacts and we wanted to document that so we get up and early let's see what time I tweeted this I was mentioning something to a uh a one
Deborah Strauss she works for Houston's
kpr as an executive producer I have shared many videos and live links with Miss
Strauss over there I think she lives in the marand area I never met Debbie in person but uh her being at that big NBC
affiliate we've definitely shared some video over the years uh and I tweeted at her because I think I made sure KPRC had the link to this one so I tweeted at her let's see what time that was I'm up pretty early here on oh man this is already it's real early it's 12:15 hadn't even gone to bed yet that's how early it was but anyway I tweeted to Deborah my cam is under so much water
it's supposed to be airtight so we'll see once the water recedes um she was asking me about let's see what she said what was her uh oh yeah so she um she had posted uh the uh sensor information from
bra Bayou and the water level had
reached 40 ft now I don't know where it starts from but there was definitely an increase at at Braes byou so it had made it up to 40 ft uh above some Benchmark
again I don't know exactly what that would be so I mentioned back to Deborah again this is 12:15 early in the hours of Sunday morning now really early just after midnight that my cam is under so much water again it's airtight at least it's supposed to be we'll see tomorrow so uh let's see when did I finally go to bed so this is uh 12:20
I'm still awake watch live as the storm pushes the golf Clos Closer Closer at 87 um this is down at Boliver yeah I guess the camera there rollover pass uh you could see some uh not storm surge but certainly some overwash and some splashover as they say coming in so
finally uh I must have gotten some sleep eventually cuz it's now 10:47 in the morning on Sunday the 25th of October
and I say I'm currently in Winnie Texas about to head over to the Sabine Pass area rain and wind a plenty now this next picture you can definitely see this is a great radar scope shot and you can see my location with carry there he's driving his truck and uh he was by the way my Transportation which was fantastic he picked me up at the airport there on Saturday at George Bush and off we went in his Ford pickup and uh he
helped to drive everywhere for this Mission so we take off we get out of Winnie we head up into Southwest Louisiana via Bowmont and Port Arthur
areas that I have been in all the way back you know certainly during Hurricane Rita and that was ironic because uh Rita

of course was 2005 so we're about 10 years removed now obviously at this point and we are on the anniversary roughly of Wilma in 2005
that was October 24th so this ending part of October is kind of a an important time period you know it's like plus the location that I was in I was there for Rita I know the area pretty well but I hadn't been back really since Ike
in 2008 so we're talking about 7 years
later and it was going to be an interesting journey across Western and Southwestern Louisiana so we head out
and um we go
through Sabine Pass um which is just an
amazing area right there at the Texas Louisiana board you've got the big Martin Luther King bridge that comes out of Arthur into Louisiana out of Texas um

and I was posting videos and pictures
and it was windy it looked like a tropical storm out there it felt like a tropical storm it was for me it was really really interesting here's another picture it's a nice zoomed out radar scope shot uh if you can reference this one be sure to check it out I mean it absolutely looked like a tropical storm that was just not quite organized enough
to be named a tropical storm and again eye of all people should just let it go the name doesn't matter I know this was definitely bringing the impacts and if again if you can look at the radar scope shot a big comma shape to it rain in
Lake Charles some rain still in Houston big band heading into Baton Rouge New Orleans was going to get in on it yo know Carrie and I thought about following this all the way over to the New Orleans area but I had to get home he had work to do the following week yo know we couldn't just track this thing forever but boy oh boy it really did

look and feel like a tropical storm down
there so we traveled all through Southwest Louisiana and um you know uh Cameron

Holly Beach area uh Creole went up to
Lake Charles you know just like everything you know all these places that I would be in 5 years later in the

2020 season who who you know I should have taken notes who would have thought right but it just kind of gave me the uh

I was it was almost like seeing okay I'm going to be here in the future there's almost that feeling which is true I mean you come to these places eventually is going to be a hurricane especially Louisiana and Texas but there was just something about it something about putting that effort into getting out here it's not a name storm it's the weekend it's the end of a pretty lackluster hurricane season for the Atlantic Patricia was this big news making event I think morgerman went on to to be on uh The Weather Channel on their Morning amhq Show or whatever it's called with cantori um you know Patricia was definitely this news making event and
what was happening here where we were eh not so much but I didn't care I wanted to be out here studying the environment
soaking it all in understanding more about the Houston flood problem seeing Southwest Louisiana and even here's a picture save this for you too Holly Beach I mean we were right back there 5 years later uh multiple times right in
2020 you know but I tweeted here Holly Beach almost completely wiped out during Rita and ladies and gentlemen it did Rita almost swept that place clean now
back and elevated ready for the next hurricane the irony there yeah just 5 years later we'd have Lara down there and then Delta and Zeta affecting Louisiana uh but this is a great picture save it it's just one of these elevated houses uh from Holly Beach rebuilt just
um 10 years now 2005 of course was Rita

10 years after Rita there in 2015 so we
go on we go through Cameron Cameron was flooded you know is easily flooded with heavy rain uh and our camera systems the ones that are still running doing pretty good um here's a good picture I knew we put one up at at rollover pass I was just wondering like I never had any pictures of it I don't know why Carrie and I didn't take a photo of the camera itself I don't see one anywhere but here's a screen grab there's some Pelicans uh in the water it's kind of a low resolution shot but yep the camera down there at uh rollover pass on the Biv Peninsula that was still running yo and this is in the afternoon let's see what time this was this was uh 3:00 Sunday afternoon October 25th the camera
down that rollover pass still doing great um so we did we toured around
Southwest Louisiana did whatever we could do to uh see the impacts of this

sort of hybrid leftover Patricia storm thing and uh we were done we came back
and uh grabbed the two cameras the one from basically near High Island on the north side of the biver peninsula area and then we went down to rollover pass and we snagged the camera from there and I went back into Houston and now it's getting towards dark and we make our way back over to braze by you there at 288
in McGregor in the Houston Medical Center area and we parked up on the sidewalk
area Carrie put his emergency flasher things on from his ham radio truck and
uh we worked our way down the banks of bra Bayou which were all scoured all the
grass was laid flat from the Rushing Water there was some debris and stuff caught in the railings of the the
sidewalk area where people run and do bikes and stuff and we you know saw the
columns that everything was attached to and there was the camera just kind of bobbing along in the water held on by the chain it had uh obviously been submerged it looked like the water had come up 20 30 ft total I mean it was
just incredible and that's exactly what it is supposed to do it's supposed to hold a lot of water and then the hope is that it doesn't go over bankful and flood the area and of course it does do that from time to time as we would see very painfully in 2017 but in this instance uh the Water hadn't come down enough for us to get anywhere near the camera really and it was still kind of rushing through I wouldn't say it was like Rapids but certainly was rushing through we couldn't get close enough and so I filmed it and uh here you can hear the audio from

it and Carrie and I are just kind of sitting there looking at it like look
it's just holding on you know uh the chain is working the the box is not submerged it's clearly got air in it and you know we can't wait until the water goes down enough that we can go down and get it that'll be fantastic and we can open up the the case it's a a pelican IM

2075 I believe is the model number of this particular case it's like a big lunchbox it's basically a cube and it looked very much like it was not
you know no water in it it was like wow this is really going to work this is great this is great news to see uh but we couldn't get it so we were like all right well maybe a couple more hours and
the water will come down enough that we can get it so we went to dinner somewhere probably Longhorn or something close by killed about 90 minutes to 2 hours doing that and now we come back
and it's dark and we go back down and there are like rats
kind of running around the place kind of smells bad now sort of a nasty damp yo
know postf flood smell um the water's
still kind of rushing through and it's still just a little bit too high we had flashlights of course for us to reach the case uh but the velocity of the water was slowing down and the level was gradually coming down but then there was just these weird the way the Houston lights were uh of the urban area um some of the street lights were now on you know cuz the power wasn't out it wasn't the the
brace byou did what it was supposed to do there was no epic flood it just flooded the flood Channel like it should um so all the street lights are on and whatnot and just the way all of like this grass and reads and trash would

collect at the ends of like fence posts
for the lack of a better way to put it uh and I'll put a couple pictures of this in of course so you can see but it looked like sculptures of like seam monsters or something it was so weird
you know it literally looked like there were faces the way the grass was all shaped and whatever and it was just very odd and kind of eerie and if you shined your light on it of course Carrie had a very powerful flashlight you know it would kind of be shiny some of these big leaves and strips of grass or whatever or kind of reflective and rubbery looking uh just a very strange you know
situation like something was out there these debris monsters or whatever if I hadn't had Carrie with me I probably wouldn't have done it you know honest to to goodness I would have been a little frightened to be honest with you like nope yeah I know they're not real but it just looked very odd but nevertheless we couldn't reach the box and uh so we had
to wait and I don't remember what my
flight situation was honestly did I do a one way ticket and I'd fly home later uh but I definitely had to delay things another day uh so I spent that night and

then finally the next morning we go out
and I think before we got there we went ahead and decided to go to academy and uh pick up some hip waiters or at least
at least up to my knees or thighs or something like that but definitely some flood boots or something similar so that we could go down in case the water level was still too high and at least get in there and grab that sucker and um that's exactly what we did we um I think we got some just for me um
and we didn't need them for carry I just needed to walk down there and get the thing and um we we did we came back
let's see if the picture will give me the metadata as to exactly when it was oh it sure did so this is October the 26th it's amazing again I got these hard
drives these portable hard drives with all these files on them from my life
basically anything I took I dumped the camera roll from the iPhone and it's

just all archived it's really cool and you just Mouse over it and there's the metadata it's a JPEG file I've saved this for you October 26 2015 1:11 p.m.

uh I think this might be a Monday if I'm not mistaken and uh we got the box and I
think I was flying home that evening so we kind of had to hurry uh and so I got the box and we opened it up and I don't
think there was any more than a teaspoon of water in there if that it was virtually dry we were just elated it it
worked you know like wow all three cameras we put out saw something yo know these Logitech cameras were proving themselves I did something different we were there in the Houston area for a big rain event again from the remnants there of Patricia and um it's late October
Seasons winding down and I had the bug I
had it I was like all right I like this
strategy that we know we have a big urban area an important city like Houston that regularly floods let's do something with that in
the future you know when we see big events coming let's capitalize on this and build upon it for telling the story
of freshwater flooding you know we've got the storm surge stuff pretty much under control we're doing good with that with these remote cams that's what they were essentially invented for right now

uh let's really start putting some effort into the freshwater scene in the Houston area anywhere else that we can but certainly Houston because it's so vulnerable and I started doing more research I got in touch with Jeff Lindner over email myself shared with him some of the video we did a time-lapse video from brace byou a real time compilation as well posted it on YouTube in fact I will put a link to it the YouTube video it's really cool there's a real time when I think that's like over two hours it's just a raw Chunk from the Ustream camera
that I must have dumped onto YouTube it literally has like the file number and everything it's just a raw like 1core 1117 332 uncore blah blah blah blah yo know what I mean it's literally yo would pull down the files in 2our chunks off of Ustream and then I'd put them on YouTube so that'd be converted into MP4 files and then I could use them in video editing it was just convoluted but that's how I had to do it back then so I'm going to put a link to the raw video from brace byou and then the time-lapse video that I did put out on YouTube with annotations and editing and everything I'll put that on patreon when I post this episode be so be sure to check that out uh but yeah folks it worked and I
was elated I was you know another sort of facet of what we were doing with the hurricane track field project shining a light on flooding in this big urban area
and it would certainly help sew the seeds of continued learning and continued preparation uh for the next couple of years until we got to 2017 and it would be the biggest event you know probably in Houston's history of course that would be Harvey so I fly home uh later in the day there on
October the 26th and really not much else happened
we did leave I might have left all three cameras there with Carrie or at least he had one
because in uh November there was just a

like a frontal passage that was coming looked like it could dump some heavy rain early to mid November something like that and again we were learning more and more about the area I was uh through Jeff Lindner and there was this one spot and this is going to become very relevant I want you to remember this for when we do get to
2016 um which is up next we start breaking into 2016 in the next episode and then 2017 when we get to Hurricane Harvey and the tropical storm version of Harvey when it impacts Houston so so terribly and so deeply I want you to remember this it's called South made Creek at Greenhouse Road so this is a
known flood area it frequently floods
South made Creek engineered of course like pretty much everything is out there and it winds around over there near Katy Texas on the west side right off of I 10
and you go uh what would it be let me think North or or west I guess West just
a couple of Miles off of I 10 on
greenhouse and then there's South made Creek and there's a an elementary school or something nearby there's like a sewer plant of Some Kind real close by lovely right and South made Creek dumps into
the west side of um or whatever it is
the South Side I don't know my directions are mixed up out there but South made Creek empties into
something's knocking around in the office empties into attic reservoir one
of these big flood pools which is going to become very relevant of course when we get to Harvey so what happens is uh I
don't know it's like early to mid November 2015 there was a front coming I
was really not obsessed with it but I was very keen on all right when's the next time we're going to get just a few inches of rain in Houston because I learned that it only took a few inches over a few hours and different regions would flood the White Oak Bayou Braves Bayou South made Creek you know Buffalo Bayou whatever it was very vulnerable
all around and you didn't need a big widespread event so I was watching the GFS and the precipitation rates and all that and lo and behold once we got into November I think it's like November 9th or something honestly we had one and uh
there was a camera we left with Carrie and I said hey dude go put it out on South maid Creek right on the bridge there and have it look up the creek yo
know so you'll literally look up the rivered if you will the creek bed and let's see what happens and of course it was live and we were able to watch it and it came in the front came in it rained you know 2 or 3 inches whatever real quick over the Watershed water comes up didn't even you know really get close to bankful but it was just really really neat to see live and of course we
piped it over where Jeff Lindner could see it um and you got to understand Harris County of course has transar which is this massive network of traffic control cameras you name it all across the Houston area and a lot of these are on low water Crossings you can see that and it's live in the transar offices I've been there with Carrie before but they're kind of square it's traffic cams are not always the best and the Logitech cam of course is 16x9 fairly high resolution I wouldn't call it HD by any stretch but it was a pretty good quality video feed and for what it's worth it had audio so Jeff was you know pretty compelled by that well that's pretty neat man you know you guys are doing a good job with this I said yeah look if you ever get a major event or when yo do again we'll deploy whatever we've got out here we know South made Creek works we did that we've done Braes byou before over there near the medical center region uh and we'll learn other areas too and um we did so you know Carrie set
the camera up it worked recorded for several hours I pulled down the video made a time lapse of it and I'm going to put a link to that as well off of
YouTube because it's sitting out there on YouTube South made Creek at Greenhouse nothing dramatic or crazy but it was another example that okay we can start documenting and capturing the data

video data of freshwater flood events

and that wrapped everything up and kind of capped off a very uh unusual you know

different kind of year I had no formal
relationship with the weather channel of course as we talked about before I told you about before we had that super El Nino that definitely became that in the
Pacific the Atlantic was very down as I talked about we ended up with you know all the way just to the ktor Kate hurricane Kate and that was it East pack goes Way Beyond anything in anybody thought with many many more hurricanes than the Atlantic including record setting Patricia and we were just kind of like
all right we learned a few things we're you know well positioned for 2016 we've tested Herby again in 2015 uh you know got to work with other colleagues and we're we're good you know
hurricane tracks hanging on um what's
2016 going to hold you know we're whatever it is we're going to be ready for it and so that's how the year 2015
kind of wrapped up you know I wouldn't say nonchalant but you know certainly nothing very dramatic uh but we were ready we were ready to tackle what 2016 would have in
store um I do recall just a couple of points here of interest at the end of uh
2015 there in December I think even spilling over into New Year's Carrie drove out to North Carolina and he
joined uh my family and I all of us that
lived at the house it's our first year here in this house this new house that we had built um and we all went out to the Outer Banks and spent the few days
after Christmas I think leading right up to New Year's on the North Carolina Outer Banks and just you know like

chatted about the future went fishing off the old boner Bridge uh you can fish on part of it they were I think they had started replacing it by then or not I don't know um just hanging out him and my family you know Carrie was never married that I'm aware of didn't have any children that I'm aware of um so it was just really nice and we again just strategizing always thinking what can we do with this what can we do with that eventually you know we're going to have a big impact hurricane season and we need to be ready for it and it was a great way to wrap up and otherwise yeah
kind of mediocre year 2015 and we were ready for 2016
and all that that would bring all right so there you go I don't think I've left anything out and if I did I'll think of it and we'll throw it in the intro and the first episode when we start the year 2016 sounds good to me hopefully it does for you as well listen as always I appreciate you tuning in I love the feedback I know it takes a little while sometimes to put these episodes together and the time between them is like come on we need them faster but life is busy
I'm busy with the work the family yo guys the community we've built it's all good stuff I love it look at how far we've come and we've got an amazing set of stories still to come as we get into 2016 I mean oh my goodness we got I'll
just tease it real quick you know we got herine in 2016 yep and that amazing footage there from Cedar Key that's going to happen and uh more Herby test in 2016 um just you know then 2017 and then
that'll wrap up this season by the way what are we season 5 still ah a lot more episodes to go but a lot of exciting Adventures to tell you about all those inside little tidbits that you know again if you were sitting here with me and we're driving down the hurricane Highway together just shooting the breeze I would tell you the same exact stuff at least I get to do it here for a bigger audience can't pack a bunch of people in these vehicles right so we do these podcasts it's a good way to tell you all of these amazing stories that we have endured and gotten through over the years some of them have literally been having to endure them that's for sure sure all right that'll do it I'm going to wrap it up I am mark suth this has been stories from the hurricane Highway the year 2015 is now behind us I'll talk
to you again soon as we begin the year 2016