it's a category 2 hurricane out here did the Western eye come ashore yes it did it came right across right down over top of us right there there is the hurricane landfall project truck it's all set up strapped down we're going to turn all the switches on in just a little while standing outside of the Chevy Tahoe we are getting into the eye wall of hurricane Jean right now core came in on Shore here along the Southeast coast of these little bullet cams right here that we will use to record that [Music] surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I am your host Mark suth great of you to join in again I do appreciate it good to have you along with me as we continue our journey back in time now looking at 2014 you know we're making progress we're getting there this podcast will continue to move on through the years this season season 5 we will end through the end of 2017 all right so that's pretty cool lots to go through between now and then and I'm going to tell yo what 2014 was a complete 180 of 2013 in terms
of the weather and my field work etc and
something really big is going to happen not long and uh into this episode and I
can't wait to tell you all about it so where have we come from so far in this season I think the biggest things are we've got this new Wi-Fi cam from Logitech we are trying to figure that out how to utilize that that's going to change things dramatically we still have the old bullet cam system two of the cases with these old bullet cam style 4x3 aspect ratio like 480 lines TV resolution maybe 520 it's all technical stuff using Ustream to broadcast it through a laptop but we are now using little notebooks I think we had one from one from Acer so that meant the power requirements were less so we we were able to shrink the battery sizes down to I think 45 amp hour battery um systems from Lifeline that's a battery maker and that's a big reduction from the huge gargantuan 105 amp hour Behemoth that we had to Lug around that made those cases so heavy so in 2014 our cases were smaller like an oversized briefcase honestly a little bit deeper a few inches than a briefcase would be um but
that you know was certainly better than the Foot Locker size that we had been using but we really did want to start embracing and understanding how to use the new Logitech cam the Wi-Fi cam it was widescreen 16 by9 it recorded into the cloud and all the Ustream stuff did that too you know very important to point that out so once we started using Ustream fulltime time we were able to ditch the VCRs so that happened after 2012 we didn't get to do much with it at all in 2013 we already talked about that but at least in 2014 no more VCRs so those are gone that's great and we have Cloud recording from Ustream and that simply means that any any and everything that that camera either the bullet cams going through laptops and the Ustream uh web interface using flash or
the Logitech Broadcaster itself all the way to the last frame if anything happened an internet outage a camera washed away whatever the case was got stolen by a big gorilla whatever um you know eaten by a shark I don't know the last frame all the way up to that point is saved in the cloud I think everybody knows what that is by now so that was huge that was great technologically and we just needed to figure out what are we going to do with this new broadcaster the U the Ustream Logitech Broadcaster and so we would start sorting that out as we go along in 2014 so I go up uh to New England capping off a very busy winter for me jumping into the winter weather scene with both feet uh as they say and I really enjoyed it I mean that nor Easter there the bomb cyclone in uh chadam Cape Cod area really was an eyeopener for me Ste was right Delaware Steve you know I'm going to love it and um it it resulted in some engagement and I got to work with Jim Cantor and The Weather Channel a little bit and I got some FaceTime on there with the Drone the quadcopter as we called it more back then so things were rolling along it was a really good start to 2014 and we're only up to April so that's where we are we're in April and the next big thing I'm going to go to the National tropical weather conference my first time attending I had been to the National Hurricane conference many times over my career starting all the way back in 1999 but this would be the first year that I would go to the National tropical weather conference its second year in existence down in South Padre Island Texas headed up by Alex Garcia and Tim
Smith now they are good friends of mine uh the first year that they did that conference 2013 Mike Watkins was a featured speaker and really the Hallmark of the conference it's small uh a handful of speakers and maybe 200 220
people maximum in attendance which is great because it's mostly for broadcast meteorology and that really makes sense because the National Hurricane conference is more for emergency managers decision makers Logistics people government people and that could number in the thousands 2 3,000 people could go to that depending on the economy depending on how people feel about hurricanes in any given year I guess but the national tropical weather conference was more geared towards broadcast meteorologists so you had local meteorologists some national interest down there from The Weather Channel ACU weather and um you know different oil company uh meteorologists especially from the Houston area and it was just a nice small intimate setting I
felt like it was a lot uh resembling a class reunion we're all colleagues a lot of us knew each other at least through social media if not in person so this is going to be a great opportunity for everybody to get together share ideas especially with messaging how do we message better what are we learning what's the National Hurricane Center doing what are they going to be debuting in any given year and that's what this conference would really help to drive home especially in broadcast meteorology which you need to realize if you haven't thought about it it's very true that the messaging is not just for legacy TV yo turn on the TV there's somebody from the local weather uh report you know the local station or national and you know now there's The Weather Channel there's Fox Weather um I think what what weather nation acuweather has TV I think there probably several broadcast stations if you will doing weather but in 2014 not as many as we have now and of course social media we were still trying to figure that out still haven't today but whatever um but that was a bigger and bigger part of the messaging because we could reach so many people through YouTube through Facebook Facebook live Twitter you know and Instagram I guess right and so that was a big part of it as well how to craft messaging how to talk to people where they are you got to reach people where they are and more and more those people were on social media so there was different speakers that would address those issues with innovative ideas what works for them what doesn't so forth and so on studies analyses you name it that was the focus of the conference I was going to go and be a speaker they uh paid my way out there that was great plane ticket hotel accommodations fetus it's remarkable I mean it's a 501c3 nonprofit the storm science Network which is behind it now if I understand my history and they have sponsors USAA is a big sponsor now um the Chamber of Commerce down there Alex and Tim work with them different restaurants donate food to everybody and it's just a wonderful time and they do they literally would feed the conference at different restaurants on a on a given night I think it was like Thursday night or something like that of the conference the conference is like Wednesday Thursday Friday and I think it was Thursday night that uh we would all go out to dinner three or four different restaurants maybe five and they would donate the food and it would be a way for people to talk about reciprocating that donation Oh Come to South Padre Island check out this restaurant or that restaurant but what it did is it gave us all a chance to continue to connect develop networking relationships I got to know some incredible people even that first year in fact I go down there and uh I get my picture taken I mean I couldn't believe this with none other than one of the founders of The Weather Channel way back in the day John Coleman and I had I got my picture taken with him I looked ridiculous in my opinion look like a living version of Fred Flintstone I don't know what was up with my hair in that picture I will drop that picture on Discord and in patreon for you John Coleman passed away several years ago but what was really interesting I think this is the year that he retired from his uh broadcast meteorology job in San Diego if I'm not mistaken uh it was either that year or 2015 I may be jumping the gun but either way I'm covered because it was an interesting story I sat with him uh at
his table and then he was the keynote speaker for a lunch I think on that Thursday or something like that and during his keynote he retired like he announced his retirement I'm not kidding and he said I want somebody to call my news director at the station and tell them John Coleman is retiring I'm not coming back to work or something like that and that's exactly what he did and
uh he I think he dialed the number or told me the number to the TV station or maybe he handed me his phone I don't remember those details but um he did and I said the station answered I don't remember the call letters and it was the secretary yo know at the front office and I said hey can I speak to so and so the news director and she's like uh well he's busy right now I mean like they're going to just put me through right and she's like can I take a message and said well I'm at the national tropical weather conference and John Coleman wants me to let you guys know that uh he is retiring he's not coming back and I hung up that really happened I really did that and he really retired it was either 14 or 15 and if I'm jumping the gun a little bit sorry but uh the picture of me and him he's legendary he really is John Coleman yep National tropical weather conference I got to meet one of the people that started the weather channel one of the original Founders so that was really really cool um another cool thing was the ceiling of the conference room I remember that it had clouds painted on it at the Hilton Garden in I just thought that that was really neat I even tweeted about it I said best ceiling in a conference room ever uh that was on the 10th by the way I flew down I think the 8th or 9th of April and the conference began on the 10th and off we go we started talking about flooding El Nino we had um Dr kbo's forecast and by the way the forecast for 2014 in April was for nine name storms
that's it he was like I'm not getting burned again I guess being pretty conservative but he did cite that the inso looked pretty favorable for El Nino there was like a 60% chance from the climate Prediction Center in April that we could have a warm inso event in the Atlantic M main development region was um a little bit
cooler than average and so it was basically the forecast was for a quiet season uh with not much activity at all relatively speaking nine names toor Ms and only one major hurricane was predicted a total of three hurricanes predicted and again Dr clbo citing El Nino he thought that would be a limiting factor in the 2014 hurricane season to affect it right so um then we started talking about the word quiet what does that mean you know 1992 was quiet but we had Andrew all that kind of stuff um Jim EDS I've known him since the year 2000 he had a presentation he talked about hyan that unbelievable typhoon that he was in in November of 2013 and just that's that's the other part of it we could hear from people that are out there getting stuff done the stormchasers the hurricane Chasers you know that just the general term for it that's fine um as well as your degreed Rockstar scientist from the Hurricane Center I mean I get that there's different levels of respect people have for whomever's out there whatever I've done this long enough now that I think I've earned my place in how all of this works but even way back then N9 years ago you know we're still making progress still trying to do things still trying to prove that some of this technology will work and um so anyway it was really nice to be able to uh hear from people like EDS and then there was uh Tim Marshall I mean come on Tim Marshall the legendary Tim Marshall a stormchaser and an engineer um that does a lot of the post tornado and hurricane assessments at least helping with that right uh he was there that's what I mean it was just amazing to be able to hear from these people and then of course the National Hurricane Center had Dr NAB and different folks from the storm surge unit and it's interesting because 2014 was the first year and I'm going to drop this picture as well this will be picture number two John Coleman and myself number one this is number two the new graphical tropical weather outlook map would debut in 2014 where people would call it the Crayons now right yellow orange and red
for low medium and high probability you'll see that that happened that's not been around forever that started in 2014 with that uh debut right of that
particular product this was April 11th that we were talking about all of this and I think this is really interesting here again I like using Twitter in real time as I do this podcast and I'm I'm going to do it pretty much every episode now because it does help me to remember details that I may not have otherwise remembered you know we're remembering later you know the the expression um 2014 Dr NAB and I even said it here oh NAB talking about having watches and warnings before something even forms what do we know that now as I'll wait for you yeah PTC potential tropical Cyclone didn't have that back then he was talking about that was on their radar so to speak they were pun intended um they were talking about that it was probably inhouse as they say so that first came up in 2014 the idea of
watches and warnings before something even forms that was at the national tropical weather conference where we got a a sneak preview of it from Dr Rick NAB um and then Mike and I Mike Watkins and I did uh a presentation I talked about our history up to that point with Sandy probably being the Highlight really up to then maybe Ike in 2008 for people that didn't know me I certainly did a dog and pony show of everything we had accomplish lished with the remote camera system our weather stations through 2012 cuz remember 2013 was a big fat zero really and um so that was my part and then of course Watkins more data visualization what could we do with some of the data and he's just really good at that kind of stuff so that concluded our part of
the conference we had other people Dr Neil Frank I mean come on truly one of the legendary folks he's in his 90s now uh such a great person scientist Pioneer of hurricane awareness uh one of the original people at the National Hurricane Center many many years ago got that flat top haircut looks like he's out of the movie The Right Stuff I mean just amazing and we were hearing from him and we got to go out to dinner like I said um where we all got to sit with each other myself um Neil Frank you know John Coleman Dr NAB it was just amazing it really was and you learn so much and then just another example of broadening out Beyond just hurricanes and making it interesting keeping it interesting there were a couple of stormchasers there and they were talking about the 2013 eleno tornado that was really interesting and it just kept everything fresh it moved along we all felt very close to each other we really did like we like I said it's like old reunion or something like that a high school reunion of old classmates really really neat so one of the big things that happened and this was one of those moments right Brian Norcross uh who was at the Weather Channel him and I don't remember when NAB got to the Weather Channel if he went there came back but that doesn't matter right now cuz I want to talk about Brian Norcross so Norcross of course was famous in 1992 down in Florida uh at the TV station I think he was uh not K that would be in the west of the Mississippi was it WF um either CBS or NBC where he stayed
on the air they were all down I don't think it was a basement was like a lower floor or something like that staying on the air as long as they could helping people get through Hurricane Andrew I think NBC maybe he was at the NBC affiliate but anyway that's just details I mean it matters but it's for this podcast it's okay if I don't remember that they actually did a in 1993 they made a movie of the week basically about Brian Norcross and the hurricane and whatnot Andrew so he was legendary as well and um now he's at the Weather Channel as their main tropical guy of course John hope had died several years before Steve Lions had come and gone and now we had Brian nor cross a fixture they their hurricane specialist at the weather channel so I knew Brian and he knew me a
little bit uh we had interacted a couple of times at a National Hurricane conference or two but we never had a long conversation I always felt like he was you know like Stratosphere you know Rockstar like I just never got to know him you not that he was better than me but he just we just never had a chance to really talk and hang out you know at a conference he's always busy I mean he's very very popular so that's part of it and so when this next thing happens that's how you'll understand it was shocking to me we are at and I'm going to back up a little bit we are at the um first night that we all get there
um meet and greet and again it's out at the pool there's ures and you know the mariachi band and whatnot and I remember the conference is three nights long Wednesday Thursday Friday or something like that might have been just Thursday Friday and we all arrive Wednesday again details that don't necessarily matter too much but we're all out at that pool it's nice outside whatever that first night there that I had arrived and Norcross is talking to people I'm talking to people you know schmoozing as they say and he comes over to me and he's like uh hey Mark uh you got a minute I was like wow Brian Norcross came up to me okay yeah sure what's going on he said let's let step over here and he pulls me aside away from everybody and you know he's like yo know how you doing I'm like I'm doing pretty good and he's like well um I just wanted you to know I saw your coverage up there in New England and you were on with Jim uh that was very good you did really well with that I was like oh thank yo very much he goes yeah we were all very impressed with that with that at the Weather Channel I was like oh I appreciate that man he goes yeah that drone the quadcopter pretty cool technology you've always been a Pioneer with this stuff you know your remote cams you're making some progress and yo know he seemed to know about me more than I thought and I was really stunned I was like wow yeah thank you I appreciate that cuz again to me he's legendary I mean he is you you know and it's like a movie star or whatever so I mean you got to be careful you don't want to put people on a pedestal too much because then you yourself yo become you know you don't want to become where you feel like you're inferior to them or whatever there's always that balance So I listened which is very important because I can certainly do a lot of talking and he said um yeah yeah it's really impressive what you've done your drive through all of this and we know that you've had interactions with the Weather Channel over the years but you know never anything official um he said I think we'd like to change that and I was like okay I'm listening he said our president David Clark would like for you to come to the Weather Channel he wants to meet you and talk about how we can get you to come work with us and I mean it's just one of those moments your my pul starts racing you know the adrenaline starts going that's a big deal that's a legacy Network you know the Weather Channel come on that started in the early 80s right there at the Advent of cable news wow and you know and now remember I
had been through this before back in 2009 that cantori had arranged for a pitch meeting
I'll summarize it real quick I went in July I think it was of 09 Jesse went with me I sat down with many Executives and made a pitch about working with them doing this remote camera thing maybe doing some reporting and uh within a few weeks after the pitch I you I did a proposal it was pretty big over six figures yo know for the like a whole ball of wax man I was going big a new vehicle everything and they passed they said and again just to remind you the they were almost ready to Greenlight it and then somebody from accounting or something had the question of okay if we pay mark this amount of money and there's no hurricanes this would have been for 2010 what do we get for that return on investment the ROI what's the ROI if there's no hurricanes and we pay Mark over six figures and nobody had an answer I guess I mean they didn't respond or it's not like they just sat there but no one had an answer that satisfied maybe it was the CFO I don't know but they said no
yeah we're going to pass sorry that was 09 so that is living in the back of my head it has to so I didn't say no I've
been through this before you guys had your chance I think we even visited it in 2005 as well but I was well funded back then through lows and Sprint and it was more of a vanity thing oh yeah I'm working with the Weather Channel and we still couldn't get an agreement even in ' 05 after the big 04 season so I felt like there's this pattern and I kind of hinted that to Brian that look I want you to know as early as 09 which was not long ago uh I was up there and I did a pitch and they yeah they passed he goes well and this was the key he said it's new management David Clark he comes from uh Manhattan I
think he was doing something big with the Madison Square Garden group and he's younger you know he's much more Progressive The Weather Channel had been I think sold in recent years like 0809
somewhere around there got three big partners that own it now between NBC Universal Blackstone Group and Bane capital or something so there was just more money maybe I I don't know but he he he said David is more receptive
to these things your ideas whatever it's it's not the same management and I was like all right yes I mean I'm not going to say no I don't want to meeting I said yeah that'd be great and of course I was very excited about it texted Carrie not long after the conversation and uh probably my parents too and um didn't text them they didn't have a textable cell phone in 2014 believe it or not probably called him knowing me because it was exciting okay here's another shot and everybody remembered well yeah you went through this in 09 I told Jesse and Watkins yo know like this could be a big deal we'll see so needless to say that made me pretty excited throughout uh the conference because this again was the first night that I had arrived and I believe again that was Wednesday evening and then the conference was Thursday Friday and then we did some stuff where we all went on on like different like a pirate boat fun stuff a water park I think Watkins went to a water park with Max Mayfield field on Saturday everybody does something fun on Saturday and then everybody starts going home that's the conference like I said it's like a retreat you know it's amazing so everything went great I did
the conference I did my speech speech whatever presentation and uh Norcross comes to me with you know this the the the president of the network David Clark wants to meet you all right so where do we go from from here I
get back and I start thinking about everything and I'm like all right we got to make this happen ASAP right so in
early may I scheduled the meeting with uh David Clark the president of the Weather Channel Brian Norcross helped to facilitate all of that and uh I did I went to Atlanta stayed at a hotel few miles away very excited about it went in checked in at security and I got escorted up I think nor took me up and uh we went to this meeting room David Clark was there Brian was there a few other Executives and producers um I don't remember exactly who all I know I saw Jim Cantor in the building and it was just very exciting uh David um I don't know how old he is but maybe a little bit younger than me or around my age um and that kind of helped because we could relate to each other you know he was a younger executive and his experience working in
New York City with Madison Square Garden and other Ventures I think he had something to do with MTV at some point um you know this guy was pretty sharp and he was uh doing a lot for the weather channel to sort of turn it around from where it had been the last several years sort of losing its footing and you know the legacy of what the weather channel meant he was making some changes and they were positive and again he seemed to get me and that was really cool so we all sat down in this meeting room and I went over some of my history uh as as brief as I could yo know you only have a few minutes really but everybody was wide eyed and focused right on me you know it was uh pretty exciting that uh I had this opportunity but I did remind them that I had done this pretty much exact same thing in 2009 and it went nowhere yeah we got got all the way up to almost greenlighting it and then somebody asked the question in their you know internal meetings after had submitted my proposal well what if we pay him to work for us and uh there's no hurricanes you know where does that return on investment go nobody had a good answer so they didn't Greenlight me I got stonewalled so I reminded them of that and I thought it was interesting that Clark David Clark said well that's not going to happen this time you know he said some something to the effect of we've got plenty of money now or something like that it was really funny I was like all right so it sounded really positive like we're going to actually do something and we discussed the possibility of me doing some on camera work he said would you be good in front of the camera would you be okay with that I was like yeah absolutely no problem at all and he's like all right and I said uh I would also be willing to travel outside of the US to cover hurricanes Bermuda certainly Jamaica probably Cancun kumel probably
you know certainly Hawaii I know that's part of America but you know it's outside the US Mainland um maybe Cabo San Lucas and I would like to use these remote cams and my talent um my ability to shoot video now with the iPhone yo know I had highdefinition video studio in my hand right you know it's a lot easier than shooting on cameras then yo have to download the footage upload the footage all that stuff that I could yo know maybe even cover other weather Events maybe the Southwest Monsoon and any hurricanes that come into the US Southwest from the Eastern Pacific so I had this big Grand idea and I really
came out of my shell so to speak I know that's not like really but I was skeptical you got to understand because I had done this in ' 09 and I didn't want to repeat the same thing where I get all excited and then they say no we don't want to spend the money sorry but David really helped me to just lay it all out what are my ideas what are my ideas for Innovation I've got this drifting surge cam idea we're getting ready to have the Wi-Fi camera from Logitech we're going to start using that eventually sooner rather than later yo know just my energy and passion for doing this I didn't feel like it would be a job it would be I still don't it's amazing that I get to do this for a living because I enjoy it so much I enjoy interacting with people I enjoy studying the weather the the people places and things that the weather impacts and obviously hurricanes being my forte this would be a great relationship and he agreed and was very excited about it and uh at some point he kind of reached across and he said you know welcome to the team we're going to make this happen and we talked about you know to the best that we could what should I propose as my ask you know and and um we discussed that a little bit he can't just give me a number I don't think I don't know how that works exactly I don't have an agent I don't have an attorney that goes with me still don't even all these years later you now I'm with Fox Weather I handle all of my negotiations myself I bounce things off of my really close colleagues and my family of course but I got a little bit of guidance and we talked a little bit about the reference point of when I worked with Lowe's and how much they were paying me I was able to discuss that openly I didn't have a non-disclosure agreement where I couldn't talk about my previous work with Lowe's it was relevant and David said just kind of think about it along those lines you know in terms of your ask I was like all right so it was a really productive meeting and I felt great about it uh we wrapped everything up I think I was there maybe an hour hour and a half and um I left texted the
family and told them I think it's going to happen this time and um my wife's always skeptical which I think that's a good thing somebody's always got to have you got to have that balance and she was like well I'll believe it when I see it and hey look me too right and I called Carrie as I drove back and he was just super excited about it very proud of um me and the project and what this would mean for it and I went back home to Wilmington and I put together a proposal sent it in it took a few weeks of back and forth of course big company and um we're getting close to June so we had kind of got a hurry I felt like and um I had a pretty big ask which was over
$100,000 because it included a new vehicle I figured let's go big which is what I did in 2009 by the way I wanted a new vehicle we would put some Weather Channel branding on it and you know get a bunch of new equipment and really be all set to go on the technological side and then I'd have plenty of money for the field missions because those are expensive they were expensive then they're even more expensive now of course and of course speaking of of course being able to support my family and at least pull my weight you know my wife's working as an ER nurse busting her hump in that thankless World it it can be a lot of times and I would really be able to finally be back to where I was all those years when I had the sponsorship and the partnership with Lowe's and funding from Sprint as an example um and I wouldn't be struggling and that was very important obviously right and so through some back and forth they and me came to an agreement and um I signed a contract
and it was great uh it was not over 100,000 I'll say that it was a good contract and I felt excited about it very relieved that I was finally going to be officially working with the Weather Channel not as an employee but as you know on contract I would have certain obligations and they would pay me for exclusivity uh all inclusive you know it was a set fee for 2014 what was left of
it anyway basically 7 months or so 6 or seven months and we were Off to the Races and um I remember it was going to be four different payments throughout the rest of 2014 and I would be you know not set
because it's just one year but it would certainly help my Outlook financially um in fact we were able to finally look ahead cuz remember after the loss of the Lowe's partnership my finances went into the toilet and we were not able to keep our house filed for bankruptcy protection restructured all of our unsecured debt all that good stuff had a great attorney working with me moved into Wilmington had a rental cuz we lived over in Leland on the other side of the river in a nice golf community and as I said in a way earlier podcast I don't golf I wasn't there for the golf it was actually a smaller home in that neighborhood but with the family getting bigger we needed a bigger house anyway so I I guess all kinds of good things you know what do they say yo know one door closes another door opens everything happens for a reason we moved into Wilmington which was a better school district all sorts of positives came out of that very negative experience of kind of Reinventing myself and all that stuff I mean we've I talked about it in earlier episodes long time ago now but this changed that now I
would have some money for a down payment on a brand new house in Wilmington and there was a neighborhood off of Market Street near College Road kind of behind Corning uh we have a big Corning manufacturing plant here next to an established neighborhood called King's Grant was a brand new I guess you can call them cookie cutter neighborhoods that was going in called Lantana Crossing and there were plots available houses were affordable and we bought one we put money down got it going and my life would change I mean it was like okay I waited since ' 09 starting
over people helping you know like I hung in there that's perseverance and The Weather Channel giving me this opportunity really meant something to me I appreciated it I was very very excited about it financially it was going to be very helpful it would also um give me a
chance to really be Unleashed and I think that was the key I told David in the meeting I want to be Unleashed
that's what I want so I'm going to ask for enough funding that I can do whatever I want to do within reason of course you know I wasn't getting arrogant about it but I don't want to be tethered because I don't have the money for something if there is a tropical storm only a tropical storm right in yo know Padre Island Texas where there's more cattle than there are people I don't care I want to be able to go if there's a hurricane headed for Bermuda I want to be able to go bermuda's expensive Southwest us something coming in from the East Pacific that should be covered I want to go that's going to take several days all of that was in this budget and they said yes yo understand so that was really really great on so many levels like I
was going to be Unleashed and that was wonderful and so the era of The Weather Channel had [Music]
[Applause] [Music] begun well so far the uh year 2014 has been very busy for me uh several winter storms to start the year off the national tropical weather conference down in South Padre Island a meeting with and then signing a contract with the Weather Channel and we are only in the month of May it's not even hurricane season yet and already I have been far busier in these few months than I have been you know in years it seems so um
yeah very very very much the polar opposite of of 2013 I think we can all agree with that so we're now towards the end of May and I'm going to do a test myself of the drifting surge cam Carrie and I had tested it in Galveston at the waterfront down there in the Gulf of Mexico the cold Gulf of Mexico well 65° is cold to me now I've got the drifting surge cam back with me in Wilmington and I go down to rville beach at the end of May it's like the 23rd or so uh looking at my Twitter here got another picture for you I think this will be number three picture number three for this episode so be sure to check that out it's the it's the Box the drifting surge Cam and uh it's got a nice rope tied to it and what I had wanted to do in this situation is turn on all the equipment so that would be the GoPro the Logitech Broadcaster the the streaming uh Wi-Fi Cam and um the spot locator would be in there and take it down to the inlet it's called Mason's inlet at the North End of rville beach at low tide or at the end of low tide and you know obviously all of this you can look it up online and determine when all of this will happen and as the tide came in I would put the camera box the the drifting surge cam the DSC uh fairly close to the water but
then let the tide come in and start to float the thing simulating the arrival of a storm surge see so that's pretty clever you go down at low tide and we have a tide range here of a few feet the water would come in the the camera box would float I'd keep it tethered and what I thought would happen is at this Inlet with the tide coming in the drifting surge cam would drift back into the inlet towards the inter Coastal Waterway off of the inlet there I thought it was pretty smart so I go down this thing weighs a lot I don't know how I I guess I dragged it um to the North
End you have to park in this parking area near Sher Island Resort and you can look this up on a Google Maps check it out and uh then you you know it's a I don't know quarter mile or so maybe longer down to the inlet and so I had to drag this thing down there probably all kinds of people looking at me like what is this guy doing the uh drifting surge C was made from a Black Pelican case storm case in fact I'll put a couple pictures in here for you of what it looked like uh while it was out there um full sunshine and that's important because oh good actually there's a picture here so what I'll do is I'll probably drop two or three pictures just from this segment of the drifting surge Cam and the Drone from the back of my Tahoe you can see it there there's a nice shot of it looks like a couple of eyes and you'll really get an idea of what this thing looked like uh when you look at this picture so make sure you do that either on Discord um or on patreon as I've put these up as attachments to this episode
but yeah May 23rd 2014 I had tweeted just arrived at rville beach we'll cart the equipment down to Mason Inlet and fire up the drifting surge cam in about an hour and um looks like I was going to do it uh in the morning time says I was going to go around 9:30 Eastern be out there 4: to 5 hours and of course the uh Logitech had audio so that was going to be kind of cool and I was going to stream it live I even created a um a directory Fort and everything it looks looks like um so I was trying you know this was a big deal I was really hoping this was going to be uh a major test um
of everything it's interesting as I look at this picture it appears that I had like a little bag of all the equipment that would go into this thing um we've got the oh this is really cool I guess we had the um the aprs uh high altitude science tracker thing which I'm going to I'm going to talk about later because we're going to test Herby as we get into June that'll be The Next Episode by the way um probably its own episode cuz that was an amazing thing I told you 2014 is just jam packed with stuff but it looks like I've got a plastic bag looking at this picture from way back in 2014 I can see the Logitech camera in there I see the um the flight Eagle computer or whatever it's called and that would record GPS
data uh to track where this thing moved we had a spot locator and of course a GoPro inside the drifting surge cam box lots of foam in there and then these two batteries and by the way the way we were powering stuff again we had shrunk down
either with the bullet cams the first generation uh or the drifting surge cam we were using these smaller golf cart type batteries these sealed AGM batteries and um what we did is we just put a cigarette lighter uh alligator clamp kind of deal on there took the alligator clamps off and stripped the wire and then wrapped it around the terminals nice and secure and then there was like a cigarette lighter plug you know so you get 12 volts and then we would plug a USB adapter into that just like you would use in your car at the time now cars have USB adapters built in USB um the regular whatever usba I guess it is and uh and USBC these days anyhow
uh back then we had to Fashion it up ourselves so that's what we were doing very high-tech right cigarette lighter adapters and you know USB adapters and whatnot but it got the job done I carded the thing down to the inlet and uh talked to a lot of people they were very curious as to what was going on I flew the Drone just to get some or quadcopter just to get some aerial shots of it and I waited and I turned everything on I got everything in there in the box turned everything on the camera was running the spot locator the GoPro and it was just sitting there and as you'll notice in one of these photos it's looking out at the water this box this black box is looking out at the water waiting for the tide to come in
and um you know it takes a few hours for that tide to come in and um I I mention here in a tweet uh a little later on that morning the water has almost made it to the drifting surge cam here in rville Beach put another picture of it of course and um the water starts gradually coming up it's closer and closer and it finally gets there and it's just about to start to float and I get uh a text from Carrie
couple of people on the seabox chat and they're like yeah stuff's not working um it was drifting finally floating around in the water but there was like no data or anything coming from the box I was like well what the heck I went over to it and despite the fact that the water was starting to come up it was just you know simple physics and look at the picture you'll understand what happened the black case absorbed
sunlight duh so this thing was getting
hot inside and the way the cameras are
and everything they're set down in there you can look at that one picture where you see how they're located it didn't matter the the inside of the box was getting hot the GoPro gives off a little bit of heat while it's recording the Logitech gives off a little bit of heat certainly the Verizon hotspot that's also in there gives off some heat and everything was accumulating and it just got too hot and everything shut off all
of it and it was like a dud like well darn it like when Carrie and I first tested it in February in the Gulf a it was colder B it was probably not full sunshine and now we're in late May the sun angles higher so this was a flaw and we weren't really sure all right is this going to work or not we have to come up with some ideas to keep things cool so I tweeted here as I was finished okay test is complete for today time to work on solving the overheating issue and try again next month I might just throw it into the ocean which that would I guess make sense um that the water would keep it cooler but you know we didn't know is the equipment inside and remember everything inside is squished together everything's pretty much held into place with all this foam that comes with the case you can as I mentioned earlier in another I think the last episode you can dissect that foam and uh section it off and and shape it the way you want so everything is packed in there with foam so this thing could you know tumble and you know be in a hurricane and the equipment shouldn't move well that was also going against me because it generates all that heat and that's what it is I even tweeted here Mike Ty was asking me about it our good friend Mike Ty uh you know what happened and I said I believe the issue was more the electronics giving off heat and being compacted in foam and they just got hotter and hotter so yeah that was the flaw we would try to figure it out later and uh go from there so that was that that was the test of the drifting surge cam I had to quickly get it uh over to
uh FedEx within like a few days
because I and the drifting surge Cam and some other equipment are all going to make a trip back out to Houston I told you I traveling on a lot in 2014 2014 was a game-changing year it really was I I wanted to be Unleashed and by golly I was so I go over to FedEx on the 27th take a picture of the drifting surge cam box I'll probably post this picture for you as well why not it just helps to go with all this stuff um give you a little bit of visuals why am I shipping it out there well Carrie had uh told me about this massive hurricane awareness event um the Houston Galveston hurricane Workshop I think that might be close to the formal name for it and uh that was going to be on Saturday uh just before the start of hurricane season and um I don't know was that like Saturday the 30th or something like that 31st not exactly sure the date doesn't matter but I was going we had a Booth inside and we would set up some of our equipment we had a few uh handouts that we could give out I think we printed some stuff up and it was just a good chance to network with people we had a video monitor in there to show some of the video from the work we had done all the way up through 2012 cuz remember nothing in 2013 so that's was a big zero there uh and just showcasing hurricane track and we talked about the app with people uh hundreds of people came through because you know our booth because the event was over at the George Brown convention center in downtown Houston and all the media Houston media would promote it I mean there's like 4 million people in the Houston area so yeah it was very well attended lots and lots of people out there thousands of people come out they had workshops training sessions with meteorologists you know all kinds of vendors that sell hurricane preparedness materials the red cross you name it military people offices of Emergency Management from the different counties it was a big one probably the biggest one in the country and I had done lots of these types of events over the course of my career and um it's a lot of fun you get to interact with the public and uh almost lose your voice doing so talking to so many people Carrie very active with amateur radio so a lot of his H buddies would come out and we we had Herby with us of course because we're going to test it in just a few days after this event up in Oklahoma and again I'll talk about that in the next episode with you but yeah through the month of May Mark was a very busy traveling guy that is for sure the hurricane track brand on the up and up you know we got the winter storms under our belt four of them including the big nor Easter up there off the coast of Cape Cod and uh now the agreement with the Weather Channel that was huge news that was going to be just an amazing experience and opportunity we had the drifting surge cam car's idea that yo had some things we might have to work out with it but it had potential and we're going to test Herby again and be ready for whatever the 2014 hurricane season would dish out all right so that
concludes pretty much everything for this episode in the next episode I'm going to conversate is that a word I think it is with uh our good friend my good friend a good friend of the project allaround excellent guy uh Paul Bowman and uh you remember Paul he's been on a few episodes with me well he's going to be back because we convinced him to come out to ardore Oklahoma actually he flew into Dallas or Houston or somewhere and we picked him up I think it was Dallas and uh we went to Ardmore Oklahoma to do the next Herby test um on June 2nd 2014
I'll discuss that with you on the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway all right hey as always thank you for tuning in and listening I do appreciate it I know I say that at the end of EP every episode but it's true I really do appreciate it and I'm going to tell you what we have got a lot more a lot more miles a lot more adventures all kinds of things to talk about as we get through just 2014 then we still have all the rest of the years to go through so exciting times ahead for us on stories from the hurricane highway I am of course your host mark suth again thanks for tuning in I'll be back with you real [Music]
soon