[Music]

it's a category 2 hurricane out here did the Western eye come ashore yes it did it came right across right down over top of us right there there is the hurricane landfall project truck it's all set up strapped down we're going to turn all the switches on in just a little while standing outside of the Chevy Tahoe we are getting into the eye wall of hurricane jeene right now core came in on Shore here along the Southeast coast of these little bullet cams right here
that we will use to record that
[Music] surge hello again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I'm your host Mark suth great to be back with you again this time around February 2015 leaving the month of January behind and what a month it was it saw me going up to Long Island for quite a a spectacular blizzard up that way tested
these new Logitech cameras three of them
very successful and I got to work with my friend Dan up there longtime friend who I had never met I don't think well actually I met him in 2010 I think for the first time down on the Outer Banks but I met him on his Turf up in Long Island the baiting Hollow area and really got to experience uh you know a snowstorm in that region I'd never been up there for anything like that and it was just remarkable and of course if you can think back to 2015 you remember that year the winter was just brutal for New England especially there was areas in Boston that still had snow you know those big piles that they they pile up with the the plows and the trucks and stuff um the snow piles as they call them those stayed around until like July
of 2015 and it certainly helped to keep me busy which I was excited about because I was really into this you know tracking the winter storms kind of thing and they really are the cousins you know the wintertime cousins of hurricanes yo get onshore flow storm surge flooding
high wind it's just 60° colder you know
that's pretty much and you know the different structure of course of a nor Easter vastly different than that of a
warm core focused tropical Cyclone
certainly but very similar in terms of impacts just a heck of a lot colder so we're up to February as I mentioned and in early February we got the Super Bowl I think I tweeting about that a little bit a few smart elic comments about the Super Bowl going back and forth with different people but we get up to and getting close to the mid part of February not quite there yet um and the
signals are starting to show up for another Blockbuster winter storm for New
England and I mean like I said the winter of 2015 was brutal lots of tress
in the East cold air dipping all the way down into Florida you we had ice and snow in North Carolina more ice really ice storms um it was just it was one of
those Winns it was remarkable and so we get up towards mid-February and the models were indicating that something another one of these big storms was going to kind of Round the Corner uh the trough digs in in the East you get this low that comes up the coast and we would be off to the races with another big storm up in New England and as I just looked through one of my portable hard drives here with all these photos on it from back in 2015 it's really neat to see I've got this one picture here this will be our first picture for this episode um we'll call this February so

Feb um 15 for
2015 a letter of the alphabet easy
enough February 15a this will be the first picture it's a nice little screenshot that I did uh probably of the
GFS might be the Euro who knows but it
shows this low 987 millibars right off

of Long Island snow on the backside lots of Isa bars there The Telltale sign of a

pretty impressive nor Easter that was setting up shop uh to you know bring a
big impact storm to New England and I was going to go so I start tweeting about it let's see here uh we're up to February 10th and um just kind of looking at what I'm
let's see yep here it is the 11th potential exists again I love the Twitter Archives this is so cool to just be able to literally go back and look and see what I was talking about February 11th 2015 I tweeted that the potential exists for another blizzard for parts of Eastern New England this weekend was just reading the National Weather Service discussion wow I said
stay tuned so I get the Tahoe ready and

um let's see it looks like I said also on the 11th if indeed this comes to pass
I will most certainly hit the road as soon as tomorrow for Cape Cod could be
epic up there excuse me up there Sunday
and that's exactly what I did I packed up the Tahoe uh put these three cameras from Logitech the boxes all that in there and um I hit the road and you know
started feeling more confident about it but this would be only my second trip up
to New England proper to the cape and that was indeed my um my location my

area that's where I'm going to go and uh this next screenshot this is amazing this is right off of Twitter um oh man

974 the uh model was showing this is the GFS I believe uh Northeast of Cape Cod
it looks like on um you know into
Sunday um of probably near Valentine's Day or something like that 2015
and it was going to be a blockbuster so I was very very excited about this cuz it looked like you know maybe close to Hurricane force wind up there right at the cape on the Outer Cape blizzard conditions and again I had been up there in 2014 late March I was in Long Island

in January so this would be my third and
so I started to feel as I said more confident about it um it wasn't as alien
to me I was starting to know the routes better understanding I95 and how difficult that can be the New Jersey Turnpike you know getting through the backside of uh New
York City and all that going around um
you know the GW Bridge getting on to uh
I95 in Connecticut whatever that is the throughway or whatever you know just learning how to get up there and again I

felt better about it so I remember for this one I drove up to
um Elton eel k t o n
Maryland uh I guess let's see that was the 12th so probably like a Thursday or Friday uh I drove up to Elton Maryland
it's about halfway to New England and I
stayed at the Hampton and up there and it was pretty darn cold that night I got there kind of late as you can imagine it's sometimes hard to leave early especially when you got kids and life going on and whatever but I got up there
and I got some sleep and I got up the next morning and I remember texting Carrie I'm like dude it is so cold it
was like 13° on the Tahoe I had the old Chevy Tahoe so I had the weather station on it I got in that thing had leather seats right and it's so cold and you know 13 is cold but it's not it certainly can be colder I know but for me that's pretty
darn cold and I remember the seats were just so hard those leather seats they weren't warm and comforting cuz the
Tahoe was very comfortable to drive around in it really was 460,000 Miles I
put on it tons of hurricanes tropical storms conferences bunch of winter storms and it's last several years right but this day I really I do remember I came out and I mean it was like it was yeah kind of Sunny with the Cirus canopy
and the sun had a Halo you know one of those cold winter days days not much wind thank goodness but it was really cold I mean 13° that's cold you know that'll do it and you can see your breath absolutely prominently and yo
know the Tahoe like cranked a little slower it's you know like come on baby let's go come on you old horse you got to get me up there and back safely so I had to sit there for a few minutes let everything warm up I'm shivering a little bit I just I can remember that so vividly like all right man this winter means business like this is

this is legit cold up here and it was really starting to get into the news more The Weather Channel certainly talking about it a lot it was on social media a lot that we were really getting into this pattern of storm after storm
in the Northeast and in particular like I said New England reinforcing that cold
air and I thought all right this is really going to be neat like I'm not just it's not just a novelty anymore I'm covering in you know an increasingly more important story of this pretty
brutal winter for New England so I get
out of there and I jump back on I95 it's like right there and I cross over the uh

Susan River at I think you pronounce it
hav de it's like Brett Favre or harv de
gr it's it's you got to look at it up on a map it's it's a neat little Gorge or
whatever this River Valley where the susqu river is and 995 goes right over it and it's h a v re e d e and then like

Grace g r a CE um like Brett Favre so it must be
Harve degra or something I don't know I've asked so many people over the years how do you say that but I remember driving over that bridge it's just right there moments after I think let me look on Google Maps just to make sure I do believe it's right after after Elton I want to look this up make sure I get my geography right because it's a special area it really is uh Elton come
on e l k t o n it's a Elton

Maryland so let's see there's Elton and
you get on 95 right somewhere okay it's after see I

kind of I won't say I blew it but I'm off a little bit Elton is after Harve de

or however you say it so we'll come back to this cuz I do remember coming back I think that's what it was I am sort of misplacing my memories I would have come through there at night and I remember doing that on the way to New York in January and and the thing is you know I might have misplaced the the the time of when I did this but my point is what was happening you go across this bridge uh where you're coming from
Aberdine through Harve de or whatever

and then you're in Maryland and you stop in Elton and that's the last town before you get to Delaware all right but this Susan River comes through there and then
you're just about dumping into the northeastern parts of the Chesapeake Bay
and it's just this amazing I don't know if it's technically a Gorge but boy this bridge uh 95 when you cross through there and it says on there like high wind possible or or strong Crosswinds or whatever it's just this amazing Bridge it's very like steep walls of the of the
susqu river valley and you look off
especially during the day and I remember seeing that in January I was like wow this is gorgeous and you know I remember it from 2014 when I went up there in late March for that winter storm certainly that was probably also at night by the way but anyhow that gour or whatever you call it
that Benchmark you I get to Elton and
whatever that's halfway so that's always a good feeling you know even these days when I travel to the Northeast and I get to Elton Maryland it's like oh thank goodness I'm about halfway there cuz then you cross into Delaware and you're in Delaware pretty temporarily small
state and you cross the Delaware Delaware Memorial Bridge and um and
that's pretty close to where our buddy Steve lives in Newcastle Delaware Steves from there uh and then you're on the turnpike in in very little time after that in Jersey and the New Jersey Turnpike to me is one of the greatest things in the United States and I know
people be like what did he say I think
it is it's it's easy it's well-maintained it's a straight line Southwest and Northeast they've got service plazas on it if you need to stop and get gas or a snack or use the bathroom or whatever and it's not until you get farther to the north and east up near you know um New Brunswick and
Beyond uh towards New York and Elizabeth
that area on the outskirts of New York Woodbridge Township whatever Edison that's where the population Center starts to thicken yes but until there

I'm serious the New Jersey Turnpike to me is a gift and I love taking it once I
get to the New Jersey turn Pike I really do feel like this adrenaline rush okay I'm making some good progress now because then folks you you're getting
ready to get sort of stuck in the Quagmire of Newark and you know the outskirts of New York City you can see Manhattan over in the distance then of course you come around everything across the GW and um the Cross Bronx Expressway

I guess you call it and uh you know yo weave your way around that area and yo
uh get into Connecticut and you go through Stamford and Norwalk and yo
know right up I95 New Haven and so forth
so that's how I started let's see what day that was that is important I want to know what day I did all this so I hit the road yeah I tweeted on the 12th that
you know it looks like on Sunday there's going to be this bomb storm up there crazy strong I'll make this picture number two by the way uh so February 15

B I say picture number two it'll be b letter b and um let me make sure I save the other one maybe I did maybe I didn't but I don't want to miss it open save where
are you all right there we go so yeah so picture number one is sort of the precursor right and uh picture number
two B whatever is you know another
screenshot of the GFS where it really looks like it's going to mean business up there like wow and it really got me pumped like I said so I'm off to the races I head on up there and um I just
want to find out when I really was on the road I've I've officially hit the road that was the 12th traveling north now on Interstate 40 when I left Wilmington the temperature was 65 so February the 12th
2015 let's do a little Google research
here what day you know what this will be
fun we're all we're all friends here hey Siri what day of the week was February 12th

2015 it was a Thursday you can ask your $1,000 iPhone

what day of the week something was what a world so I left on a Thursday the 12th

and we all know 2 Days Later is Valentine's Day the 14th and I'm not
going to be home I'm going to miss going out with my wife uh
2015 uh let's see I would have had teenagers yeah I probably would have had a date night that weekend you know teenagers to watch the little kids just kind of thinking back to them but I would miss Valentine's Day ah bummer um

you know cuz you you always treasure that time and you take advantage of it when you can and I was going to miss it you know for a winter storm up in New England but you know that's the way it goes sometimes so I get on up there I leave the 12th like I said I get up to uh Elton so I must
have stayed up there that night the 12th
That's Thursday into Friday so I get up on the 13th here
and looks like I'm saying to everybody
that I'm going to be in East Ham East H
East Ham Massachusetts later today and I
remember I booked a gosh what was that
out there it was like a might have been like a holiday in it was not a Hampton or Hilton property because it didn't have one on the cape and they still don't even today you got to go farther you know along the mid part of the cape like hyas port or something like that but anyway I was going to stay at a different hotel right there in East ham
uh pretty close to the cape not far from chadam and the plan was to set up these

three cams that I had had these Logitech cams and really put them to the test as I said I was getting more confident about everything the winterstorm coverage what do I do what do I say what am I reporting on driving in the snow and the wind dealing with it from a clothing perspective you know no more shorts and t-shirt man you got to be bundled up and ready to go so uh I head
on up there and um here's a cool picture
I'll make this number three this is February 13th let's see click on the Tweet of tell me what time it was 2:00 in the afternoon clearly this has got to
be nework airport and nice picture I
took I said hello neighbor and check out the picture you'll see why I said that so February 15th C third picture picture C uh big old
plane I guess coming in for a landing or taking off and if you've never been up there it's really cool you parallel Newark airport or 995 and the planes
come in you can see them coming for like a long time and they're lined up and
they land and they take off right next to I95 it's it's quite the site and for
me let's see what airline that is if I can make it out that might be Air France
hard to say I don't know if it is or not hard to pick it out the pictures weren't quite as good as they are these days on the old iPhone plus it was yo know half a mile away or whatever anyway
um off I go I'm up in New York area the
temperature is 11° how do I know that cuz I tweeted it the air temperature outside my Tahoe is 11 or as I like to
call it cold so I get on up there uh I

arrive in Cape Cod and let's see what time that was 11:25 so it took me N9

more hours to get up there I checked into the hotel at um uh at East Ham and

I was ready to go so the plan was and this is really really important I was going to get out there and put some

cameras around and kind of spread them out you know a little get a little bit more Brave with it so to speak so i' had worked with Carrie to select some spots

and I got to go back to my Google Maps here CU I want to you know nail this as in terms of exactly where I was going to do this so I'm staying over in East Ham

which is up Highway 6 way out on the
Outer Cape north of chadam kind of like you're heading on the North part of that arm where the the cape curls over right near so it's south of Province Town North of chattam kind of in between the two and so that's where I'm going to stay I knew that I wanted a camera um

over in this place called cesu Harbor
because the way the storm was going to come by it looked like we're going to get a North wind coming into Cape Cod
Bay and eventually switching to the north northwest and Northwest really
piling up the water there along the

curve of the cape on the North side
right so you've got like Mayflower Beach
Corporation Beach Dennis Yarmouth Barn
stable Brewster but then right on the coast itself right on the water there's this one place down here this Harbor called sesuit Harbor and I thought
that'll be a really good spot so I went down there the next day the 14th and set

up one of the cameras and it was amazing
because everything was frozen like
driving around I'm looking at some of the pictures now um this is Valentine's
Day the 14th uh 2: in the afternoon I'm driving out trying to get everything set up and I want to get to this Harbor and
it like it had been so cold up there for so long that everything was frozen

almost solid you get these like weird ice like pad things in the water so the
water was like thick slushy then you'd have like almost like ice flows it's hard to describe I'll show you I'll save one of the pictures and you can look at it on Discord or patreon but you know it
was it was completely alien to me to see
all of this frozenness in snow everywhere and the storm was just starting to crank it wasn't quite there yet so I had the 14th Saturday Valentine's Day to get everything set up and then the storm was going to come in and develop and do its thing Saturday night through Sunday and then I guess maybe even lasting into part of Monday so I'm out there at this
Harbor ceu Harbor and I went out to like

the the water and it's it's all Frozen
there's like chunks of ice everywhere cuz the tide comes in breaks up the ice into these they're not icebergs but they're like big chunks and they're everywhere and it was just so weird how much Frozen you know everything was it
was so bizarre and the wind is just screaming out of the North already right
and so I'm bundled up I'm by myself I'm like I got to get this camera up and uh
it's right there in the harbor and I put it on a wooden utility pole and we're
going to save this this will be the uh
fourth picture so picture D very
important picture this one right here this is a benchmark picture um it's it's

a Black Pelican case February
15th uh D Black Pelican case it's on

this big thick utility pole right next

to the the to the water and the cool thing about the picture hopefully yo can pull it up and look at it while I'm telling you this you can see the Tahoe
you know small in the background on the left side of this wooden pole you see
the Black Pelican case and it's
literally gorilla taped and I'm thinking there was probably a bungee cord underneath that and there's a little L bracket I think holding it up although you don't see it but I don't even even know if I had an L bracket but I know that I've got a bungee cord and I got the Gorilla tape on there to kind of reinforce everything and that's the setup that's that's how I did it back then we we wouldn't learn about ratchet straps and all that good stuff for another couple of years or so unfortunately but that was the setup
right and you can see the ice chunks that I was telling you about and it's looking out the view is looking out at the harbor and that'll be the fifth picture or picture e drag that out of the uh portable hard drive folder it's
literally a screenshot it's kind of fuzzy or whatever it's not the best but you get a a shot of what it was seeing the Logitech camera it was looking across the water and there's boats and everything of it's a terrible shot honestly but you can see the different ice flows or whatever you call it it's kind of slushy and then you got some areas of solid ice and I thought well this will be pretty cool and it looked like and this was the key that the Surge
and there was going to be a surge would be I think like 2 or three feet so yo
would have your high tide come in and then on top of that all of cou Harbor should come up two or three additional
feet not particularly concerning yo know not a real big deal but certainly

pretty cool to see I would think what I
didn't realize this is what's so cool I
guess I did didn't realize that when I put the camera there I put it at low

tide so I'm standing there in the the
chunks of snow and Frozen whatever and I
got the bungee cord and I've got the um
Gorilla tape and I'm just holding it right there at like the level of my head I can't put it real high so it's just me I don't have a ladder nobody helping me so I'm probably using my forehead to hold it in place and get everything strapped and I didn't realize I had done that at low tide so the camera box is five and

some change feet above the ice which is

literally where the camera is it's right on the edge of this Harbor okay looking across the harbor across the water which of course is Frozen at boats and whatever on the other side and I thought my thought was oh this will be cool we'll see a little bit of a rise in the frozen ice whatever the surge should
come underneath it the whole thing will lift up it'll be kind of neat to see probably some good blowing snow and yo know be a nice little test for this remote cam because you remember folks I'm doing all of this yes because I'm interested in covering winter weather but also to test for hurricanes we got

to make sure this stuff works that was the the main reason that I was there so
very important to keep that in the back of all of our minds right right so this thing set up I'm ready to go Carrie is excited about it you I send him pictures probably put um let's see if I tweeted any of this or not I don't know if I did because I didn't want anybody to go out there and steal it if you tweet it somebody come and take it
um I don't think that I did I'm just
looking through there's pictures of the Tahoe oh wow this is a good one I'll save this one as uh F picture number f

is that how you say that picture number this would just be picture F from February 15th or 15
2015 Valentine's Day how about that that's a great picture of the Tahoe what did I say about it Tahoe has been in more winter storms than hurricanes the past three years oh that's hilarious so
yeah I set the camera up I did not tweet a picture of it because I didn't want anybody to come out there and get it so
I set that camera up and then I know I
had to do more let's see where I went from there um I thought that I put another one
over yeah let's see where this is it's like harch port or something like that
there was uh it's on the the south side of the cape let me just look at the Google Maps I'll tell you exactly where so I went from cou Harbor on the north side traveled north to south down to and

I'm pretty sure it's harwichport if I can just find it on the
map here there's hartch and there's harwitch Port yep um I'm not sure why I

put one there maybe with the approach of the winter storm you'd have southerly wind was my thought but again this was a
protected port and this was pretty wild
uh I went over there and I guess in this
situation I did realize that it was low
tide and I went out they have these floating docks and the uh the the Harbor's Frozen as well there and I put
the camera out there and I thought okay this will be pretty cool to uh capture
or maybe I got there and it was high tight I was trying cuz I definitely noticed yeah that's what it was okay
it's coming back to me folks I got there in the afternoon late in the afternoon on Saturday the 14th I put the camera on uh one of
these um wooden poles that are part of the floating dock Marina Harbor system
right so it's this big wooden pillar in
the water and it's basically Frozen everywhere right and I remember that the
docks and everything as I got there it was high tide um that everything was

elevated and so I put the camera yo know about head level so 5 ft off the dock or the water uh bungee cord whatever some Gorilla Tape I'm sure and it was filming out and and streaming live from harwichport great and then I went back
to the hotel uh you know filmed some stuff around the area of course but I went back to the hotel in East ham uh the storm starts ramping up um I remember I talked to a few people in the lobby um you know they were like yo know hey man you chasing that storm or you the typical stuff and um it was yo

know just like all right let's Buckle in and get ready for this storm it should really be cranking on Sunday so I remember watching this is just part of
you know me right what am I going to do there nothing to do that night I can't go anywhere it's it's blizzard outside so I watched the Duke game I don't remember who they played I think it was Syracuse or somebody honestly and I remember eating snacks you know in in my hotel room and watching the Duke game and they won so I was all excited yo I'm big Duke fan born in Durham all that good stuff and it was just like wow man this is just everything about it is great you know like everything's working
I got this camera down at cou Harbor I got a camera over at harwichport I don't think I put the third camera out if I did let me think

now actually I do think I did I put it down at chadam yes yes I did I put it at chadam
over at the uh it was like this um let me look at it I tell you exactly where it was it was at this the same place where I did some stuff with cantori the year before uh
when I was out there it's called
the um it's right there at the chadam
bars in and they got this
um what do you call it it's like a
uh a fish house kind of deal the the big

uh boats come in and whatnot I got to
find this darn thing hold on bear with me so there's chadam zoom in on the Google Maps Town way to water okay great

Lighthouse Beach that's not it uh Confections by the Sea nope where

is this place um there's a there it is chattam Pier fish market of course um and so you have Aunt
Lydia's Cove that's what it's called out there and it's kind of this concave deal
and you've got you know the bars as they call it out there it's these big sand bars chattam bars and that mostly protects chadam and the you know the road that goes through there it's called Shore Road mostly protected from the Atlantic uh these big sandb bars and then offshore of all that is all the big great white sharks but that's story for another day not related to me but that's
where I am I'm in chadam and I set the third camera up looking across this lyia
what you call it uh Cove right and I thought well at the very least and the sandb bars will protect chadam of course but you know we'll see the tide come in and out and mainly it's just a test yo

we're not expecting anything crazy to happen but it's just a test and I need
to make sure everything's going to work cuz you know we're in February now we're less than 100 days away from the 2015 Hurricane Season and I want to do as much testing as possible certainly so
back to Saturday night everything's
running I got three cams cou Harbor harwichport and chattam everything's running great I'm kicking back at the hotel I think it was a holidan or whatever you know I bet I can look at East ham and tell you exactly what it is hopefully it hasn't changed names or owners or whatever in n 9 years there's
East Ham zoom in enough and maybe I can

find the hotel that I stayed at what's the hotel will this be easy to find or

difficult it's own Highway 6 um it wasn't an like an inn or

whatever it's a legit Hotel I just don't
know if it was a brand name though that that's the other I mean it could be like I don't know the East Ham who knows I don't see it on here it's hard to find it wasn't at Wellfleet it doesn't matter that much I do like to try to remember these types of things I do know like I said it was not a Hilton property cuz they didn't have any and as I said they still don't out there on the Outer Cape after all these years like what come on um I'm
just looking one more time I mean it could have changed names uh it's not the eagle Wing in in I
can't say it I Inn it's not a
Cottage I'm just going to let it go doesn't matter anyway I'm at my hotel
and uh watch the Duke game and they won
and I'm like all right cool everything's great when I get up on Sunday I'll go out to the cape I'll do some driving around a little bit in the Raging blizzard and it'll be amazing and that's
exactly what I did got a good night's sleep and I remember you know kind of like 5 5:30 in the morning something like that kind of woke up I you know
this stuff's rattling cuz the Blizzard's raging and first thing I did is checked
the cameras uh probably in the Ustream app I
think that would that would make the most sense and I'm watching the uh the

camera suu it and remember these Logitech cameras have audio so this is
this is pretty big this is one of those moments that I'm like okay what's going on I thinking like I said it's like 5:36 in the morning something like that and I got the app the Ustream app up I've got all three cameras in there and I'm yo know looking at the one and suu it and I
hear this scraping sound like I it let's see I got pretty
sensitive mic it literally sounded like yo
know like that right hopefully it translates through it was this
weird um um cyclical scraping sound like

it was clearly scraping it was not yo
know the wind or snow hitting it it was definitely snowing and windy as a as a you know all get out but that wasn't what it was I like what is that and I I
texted Carrie I might have posted something on seabox our chat are yo guys watching the sissu cam you can see
a few lights across the harbor uh yo
know whatever but that no yet it's too early but like there's definitely a noise some kind of a weird scraping noise and then it would kind of back off and it would come back and I thought yo got to be kidding me somebody's trying to take the camera that's what I jumped to like and I texted Carrie I was like and he was up I was like you know I think somebody's trying to steal the camera and I remember thinking true
story I'm like I wonder if it's Reed
Timmer like there's no way EX I knew he was up there and I'd actually see him later that day we'll get to that but I was like nah he wouldn't do that like I knew he was the only other one for sure I'm sure there was other people but like I knew for a fact that he was in Cape
Cod chasing this blizzard and he might
have I think he was with somebody from a local Boston or New York Fox affiliate
it wasn't Ginger Z she was with ABC um but let's see I think she her
Twitter might be on Twitter let me let's see I just want to know I have to know from my curiosity here um I know Timmer
was up there who was he
with um cuz I thought it was him I'm
like he wouldn't be messing with my camera that would be a really like
boneheaded thing to do there's no way right uh who he was cuz I saw him later that day and I even told him I'll get to it I'll get to my point here here sorry I'm kind of jumping everywhere all right so he was with Maria Molina she was with
Fox at the time um her Twitter at least
in this timeline is not clickable as
they say so she must have deleted the it doesn't exist anymore or whatever but Reed Timmer was with Maria Molina and it
says at Fox Maria Molina so whoever that is so he was up there and I knew that like I said and I thought maybe he
is out there maybe something's wrong with it I I will say I wasn't necessarily assuming or thinking that he was trying to take it I just thought he might have found it and it certainly didn't have any labels on it I didn't do that back then you know what is this who is it whatever and I just thought I wonder if Reed timmer's messing with it for some reason and so I was like all
right I got to get up and I got to drive out there cuz somebody is messing with the camera and I put it on the SE box I'm like I'm going out there so I jumped out of bed it's raging freaking blizzarding outside is that a word blizzarding it is now and I I won't say
I tore out of the parking lot cuz yo can't not in a blizzard and I had to make my way from East Ham in the Orleans area or however you say it all the way over to ceu Harbor and at least on the
way over the sun would eventually start coming up cuz now we're getting close to 6 6:30 in the morning whatever and yo
know it's really slow going in a blizzard and I'm watching on my iPhone
on the Ustream app just keeping an eye on it and I could keep hearing that scraping and it was literally like I said it was like

that you know like back and forth I'm scraping on my laptop and the desk here it was a very prominent like something

is messing with that box that's that was
the bottom line right so I'm trying to
get out there it's probably going to take 45 minutes to get there maybe
longer cuz again ladies and gentlemen it's a blizzard it's cranking the storm
is at its height or getting close to it but I am going to go see what in the heck is messing with this camera so we

realized because it kept going it's not
a person it's not Reed Timmer you know

could it be a bear I'm serious it
started to become the subject of lots of speculation on the seab boox Carrie was on there he's texting me I don't know what it is D me it was I'm like I'm going to find out so I'm driving on out there trying to get there it's very slow goinging I mean dude it's crazy finally
we're getting close to first light and at some point I'm probably 20 minutes away something like that I pulled off
and I'm it's just a little bit of light and I'm like okay I think I can see
something coming through the shot and like it stopped whatever it was

like the scraping just basically began to stop and I'm sitting there I'm like okay
pulled off the side of the road like I said I'm like let's just see what happens for a minute I'm starting to see a little bit we're getting some light I still got 20 something minutes to get there or whatever and if I don't have to go all the way out there I don't want to so I want to get down to chattam and right out on the cape at chattam bars and the Coast Guard Station and you know be as far east as I can and I knew Reed Timmer was going to be out and I wanted to say hi to him no I didn't think he was stealing it but whatever and um so
I'm waiting I just need a few more minutes just get a little bit more light and see if anything's still messing with it like I said maybe was an animal maybe it could have been like I don't know a deer or an elk or something that was rutting I don't I mean what do I know you know when they put their antlers against maybe it was some creature against the wooden pole and it had nothing to do with the camera box I don't know but it was definitely something going on and then it quit within a few minutes it just kind of died away there was no more scraping oh okay so we waited got enough light it
only took like 10 or 15 minutes to sit sitting there and um it stopped and I
could see the view better we all could and it was looking across the harbor and
everything was fine you know like the The View was level you know like okay uh

I don't know you know we'll see I'll go back on the archives later maybe there'll be something on there that we can figure this out it's still there the
scraping noise is is done we're live we
can see the ice whatever the snow forget it you know what I mean like all right cool so I go finally sun's coming up and

I make my way over to chadam and uh I

get out to the chadam bars area um not
far from where my other camera was right over near Lydia's Cove or whatever it's called at the fish Marketplace and I'm right out there near the Coast Guard Station and I'm going to put this let me find that picture what a great picture they had hurricane force wind warning so
it's not the same as a hurricane warning it's hurricane force wind warning so
this will be picture G uh check that out that's a classic picture US Coast Guard Station chadam hurricane flags are flying and I'm right there it was really really amazing um gosh just like wow and uh

Reed Timmer comes over I see him um he
might have sat in the Tahoe with me for a little bit I remember I met Maria who he was with um you know did a little chitchat and I had met Reed before in the past and um I think all the way back to' 05 during Hurricane Rita uh I saw him at a hotel when he was
in school I think but that's neither
here nor there definitely met him that day on the 15th up there this is now February 15th Sunday and um you know it
was kind of cool to see him hey Reed what's up and uh I did a lot of reporting and
picture posting on uh Twitter and Instagram uh winds were gusting into the 30s and 40s out there and you know it was it was cranking it was really really cranking it was amazing and I just took it all in I thought ah man I am just
absolutely hooked I'm all about this yo
know let's let's just do it like and I film stuff with the iPhone and got these great shots like just blasting wind and
the very thick shrubs and trees that are up there they're very Hardy they can take all this and you can just hear the wind howling through and the snow blowing around you'd get these little Swirls and anywhere you drove where there was a pond or any little Cove
along the road and again I think it was uh six Highway Six up there uh pretty

much yeah six that just weaves around uh
chadam Orleans East Ham you know and
then you get these little secondary roads or whatever uh what is that 28 or
something like that I think uh but any
Little Pond any place that there was water it was frozen and the snow would
blow across it and in in straight lines
and it would do these weird little snow devil things you know little Vortex and there would be these little boats little Skiffs that were just Frozen in the lakes or ponds or whatever and it was just this amazing frozen tundra sort of like and it was it
was phenomenal I'm not going to you know some people hate the cold I thought it was just incredible and that everything endures it up there you know year after year and not so much anymore but at least as of late but back then it certainly was and
it was just really neat to be up there and be part of it let me look on Twitter here see if there's uh any of these pictures I might have posted of some of this stuff um no there's not I mean I posted
a few things there might be some stuff on my hard drive here let me just make sure I don't miss anything good um lots of video and I do have the
documentary tracking the Hurricanes 2016 part one was 09 through 15 talked
about this before and some of this video is in there um there's a few pictures
here here and there that oh here's a good one I will save this one for yo this was fantastic yeah oh man you can see one of these pawns and I'm looking across the the water there's a house over there and it's clearly just snowing its rear end off uh let's put this over in the folder
for pictures that I want to share with this episode and this will be uh G where

up to H this will be picture H wow it
just really brings back the memories man oh man the Frozen like Siberia when it's it's in

reality it's it's just Cape Cod Massachusetts that's all so I go out and about all throughout the day Sunday and I'm going to drive back from chadam up to East Ham to my hotel and uh you know
maybe go get a snack or just use the bathroom or something who knows and I remember I was driving along uh that road six up there whatever it is and uh this lady comes out from
the right and she's like flagging me
down like pretty um uh frantically right like I thought
she needed some help so she's waving hey hey hey hey and I pull over and of course I'm in the Tahoe and it's very visible it's the hurricane tracker truck right and she comes over to the

passenger window the right side of the Tahoe I put it down and as soon as she
gets to the window to say something to me she says quote Oh you're not Reed

Timmer sorry and then she like waved
like never mind and went back towards where she came from I'm like wait
what and I'm like that was really weird

and so I pull up a little further I was like hey hey what and she's like oh and
she walked back and she's like I didn't want to bother you I thought you were working or something I'm supposed to meet Reed Timmer he's out here I was like oh yeah I just saw him he was over at chadam she's like my name is Kathy and I'm a teacher up here and I've been a huge fan she just went on and all about re Timmer I'm like well I'm Mark the hurricane tracker or whatever and she was nice but she was there and I guess she had emailed or tagged or something Reed Timmer and he was going to come by and do a really quick meet and greet yo know was the upcoming celebrity that Reed Timmer was even back in 2015 but it was so funny you know it's

the second time you guys remember this in 2008 that I was in baraba Maine Bar

Harbor at the waterfront for
Hurricane uh Kyle that never made it and

I'm sitting in a parking lot and this bus pulls down or pulls up whatever into this parking lot and all all these senior citizens get out and this lady comes over and it's very light rain no wind at all I drove up there for nothing basically and I put the window down and
she goes are you Jim Cantor you guys remember me telling that story in a long lost episode well it's not lost but it's long ago episode right
that was the first time that somebody mistook me for somebody more famous yo know I'm a little famous right I've done this long enough have some presence out there but can tor's got a little bit more than me sure Reed Timmer you know he's Reed Timmer he's popular too and so
this lady Kathy uh up in Cape Cod it

looks like she's still on Twitter that's funny um educator Tech geek adjunct

adjunct instructor uh he note coffee lover Jeep owner whatever that's Kathy there to meet Reed Timmer not Mark SU that's funny so yes that was my um hey how yo
doing Kathy no I'm not Reed Timmer sorry didn't mean to disappoint you so I go on about my way and
um uh go over to um Hy's port or I'm

sorry harit Port sorry uh it's getting
kind of late in the day let's see what picture time this picture was yeah 3:20 in the afternoon that's fairly late in the day once you get to winter time so go to harch Port I wanted to see how the cam was doing and um I'm uh figuring

well I'll hang around hang around out here the blizzard starting to wind down I'll grab the camera and uh start
collecting stuff cuz I got to leave on Monday the 16th I got to get back home
so I drive out to harwichport it's a great picture I'm going to save this one what are we up to I picture I indeed we

are so picture I is this beautiful picture from harwichport you got Old Glory up there the American flag on the flag pole the Little Harbor building or whatever uh Harbor Master building I guess and then this beautiful snowbank you know the old iPhone 4 whatever the heck I was using in 2015 modern iPhone would have taken a better picture but it was just so beautiful the way the sun was the low was pulling away this big winter storm I'll post a picture of that that'll be picture J is that what we're up to hi J
yep uh big old winter storm starting to pull away so the clouds are starting to break up still snowing a little bit still windy but it's pretty much starting to wind down so again I'm going to wait and uh go ahead and grab the camera so I had one of these new GoPros
probably the four the hero four at this
point something like that three or four don't know exactly doesn't matter but I wanted to you know the take the GoPro out put it in the snow and see what it could do so I played around in the snow a little bit very high wind fresh snow I mean I felt like a kid and a scientist at the same time it was so cool just watching the snow blow how the drift was
forming watching the water kind of gurgling up through some of the slush and the ice of The Harbor at
harport and you know gets on 3:30 4:00

all right probably time to grab the camera uh off the pole there in the harbor and uh go over to suu it and all that and let's collect everything I can get out of here on Monday so I go
down uh to the floating dock that goes

out into the harbor to get to the big pole cuz you understand that you got like it looks like like a terminal at an
airport there's all these docks that go out they're floating and then they've got these huge wooden poles put into the water and then these u-shaped things so that the floating dock can float up and down with the tide I think that makes sense and so I go out on the and then there's yachts and boats and everything all tied up out there and then the water is basically Frozen slushy whatever so I go out to
where the camera is it was you know few tens of yards out kind of in the middle of everything just a neat perspective bungee corded and zip tied or whatever the heck it was gorilla taped I don't know know to this big old pole in the middle of this Harbor and I walk out there and I'm like I literally

dropped my jaw and probably cursed to
myself you know what the right I look up

up ladies and gentlemen I look up like 7
feet off the ground I can't reach it maybe 8 feet the camera's way the hell up there I'll go somebody move moved the camera like

what is going on out here something
weird happened at couid Harbor all the
scraping in the middle of the night yo
know and then it just quit and then I get to harwichport and this camera I can't reach it it's literally 8 ft up
off the the the the water level the dock
whatever there's no way I can reach it I'm like what I and I was so pissed like
who who is doing this somebody's doing
this somebody's messing with me I was sure of it so I'm texting Carrie dude
somebody moved the camera he's like what and might have sent him a picture I don't know I'm like yeah look at it it's 8et I can't reach it I don't have a ladder why would I bring a ladder I don't need a ladder so what in the world
am I going to do and I went back to the Tahoe probably put some stuff on the C Box about it and I'm mad I'm truly upset
like come on folks you know but it's so

weird like they didn't steal it they didn't aim it the other way it still looks like exactly where I put it but it's 8 ft High you guys know what happened right I'm such an
idiot as smart as I am when I figured

out what happened oh my gosh it's one of the most
like oh you have to be kidding me Mark come on I didn't take into
account that I had set that camera up at

high tide and the tide range in New England

duh is many feet I don't know what it is off the top of my head but it's several
feet so when Mark put the camera right

at about head level so 5T 6 in something
like that off the the dock the level of
the the floating dock and it's comfortably just lift your arms up there it is okay and then the tide
drops 5T from there or whatever maybe

more of course it's going to be 8 ft above the dock you know at low tide and
it took me a little while for me to realize that maybe somebody mentioned it in the SE box maybe Carrie is the one
that finally hey what about but it it occurred to me oh oh my gosh it's low

tide isn't it and I felt so stupid humbled but also

relieved that nobody messed with the camera so I was like okay well that explains harwichport and I'm going to have to just wait for a couple of hours
until the tide comes up enough so I can reach that stinking thing uh but what
what happened at suu it like what was all that scraping so I think that I left
harwichport and drove over North to ce

Harbor before it got dark and uh yo know there might be a bear out there scraping up again right so I get out to
C Harbor and um I grabbed the camera and

as soon as I did this you as soon as I got there as a little bit later took about an hour to get there whatever it dawned on me what happened there it was
these tide changes and I realized looking at the
box when I got to ssue it that the tide

when I set the camera up I had set it up
at low tide you see and overnight that

was the 14th into the 15th or something like that whatever it was the tide had come up and then you had a 2 or 3ft surge underneath or or actually on top of the tide but underneath underneath the ice and so the ice had come up and

actually scraped the bottom of the camera box and it I went back through
the Ustream video and you could hear it
and I could actually see the faint Lights of the harbor that were normally level slanted in an an angle every time
waves that was the key folks waves were
coming underneath the ice from this big storm and that would cause the ice to heave up and the the high tide the extra high tide with the Surge from the winter storm push that ice to the camera and
each wave that came under you would get that scraping sound right that's what
that was it was like holy Moses here
like wow so I like was just in awe like Wow

nature has taught something amazing like this was really really neat so I went grabbed the camera
from suu it all is well uh went back
over to harwichport the tide had come up enough now I can reach the camera box duh got that down went back out to
chadam grabbed that one from Lydia Cove or whatever and I went back to the hotel spent the Sun Sunday night I think I I might have gone head and left let's see let's look at Twitter Twitter will tell me um no actually folks I left I went
ahead and bailed out I wanted to get back out off the cape as far as I could
uh so I leave uh the cape uh that evening and here's a good
picture um let's see what time this was
Mark is leaving it's 8:59 p.m. I
remember this now I was heading back down 95 in Connecticut and I took a
picture of my uh rear view mirror on the
Chevy Tahoe it's got the direction and the temperature the outdoor temperature up there right and I was going Southwest
which makes sense Southwest coming down I 95 in Connecticut and the temperature was 5° so we'll save this one 5° I

remember thinking dude this is like really cold maybe we will hit zero hi J
K we're up to picture K here so picture k a little shot there of the uh rearview mirror moving Southwest temperatur is
5° so I left I had collected all of my

equipment it was an amazing um time up there
absolutely I made my way South the
winter kept on Raging uh I don't know where I spent the night Sunday night maybe back maybe New
Brunswick or something doesn't really matter but I try to remember these things I was definitely north of DC and all that stuff because as I head
south South remember I'm heading south
another winter storm comes up I mean folks this was just one after the other
now this one was not as big but it was farther to the South it was undercutting a little Clipper system had come around that's this big trough that got carved out now DC right Maryland Baltimore DC
Woodbridge in Virginia all that area down to Stafford all along 95 Fredericksburg rolled up like tighter

than a drum traffic was
just snow and slush it's like in the mid

20s and it took me freaking forever I
guess I drove all the way home uh on
Monday yeah um I'm in Woodbridge here
let's see what time this is this is Monday night 615 on the 16th I'll save
this picture too this is a good one um this just kind of a blurry picture whatever but you can clearly see the traffic uh this is picture L um Northbound traffic very thick as

well and it just took forever to get home uh but I finally made it home and I
even said here rolled up on 9.95 let's see what time that was 6:41 p.m. uh

anyway I get South past Richmond and all that good stuff finally made it home and you know it was uneventful and I think I even said that somewhere in here um there's a nice little picture from Ashland Virginia they had 2 to three Ines there um it's a nice little radar scope shot sleet uh in Virginia I'm you good chunk
distance away from Emporia making my way
South uh finally get home and um very

late at night let's see uh uh oh look at
that man that huge trough that you can see I'll post this picture in a minute just looking through my Twitter here um trying to read stuff I stopped at uh
a gas station somewhere 995 now we're man it's so late at night it's the 17th 1:00 in the morning on the 17th I'm
still driving trying to get home some weird picture of a hippopotamus and and some glass I'll save this for you this is what Mark sees on his way home from these long trip sometimes this will be picture M so anyway I get home from this
amazing adventure and um I went through the
Ustream video it was kind of hard to do
back then now it's a lot easier with nest and what our good friend Cornelius does with YouTube videos that are yo know like 11 hours and 59 minutes long each and it's just a lot easier to make time lapses and whatever now but I wanted to figure out what on Earth happened at cou Harbor seriously so I pulled down all the video from Ustream you have to do it back then in 3-hour chunks and I ran it in time lapse and

once we got to the daytime it's one of the most remarkable pieces of video you know it's not that grand or like oh my gosh jawdropping but to me it was just really really neat and
sort of the first proof positive that this new camera system from Ustream and Logitech was going to be remarkable a it ran
whatever it was 30 40 something hours freezing cold up there single digits to teens wind yeah I don't think equipment
really has wind chill that's more of a living creature thing uh but it did great all the batteries ran fine Verizon did great had three cameras up whatever but I ran the suu camera uh footage
hours and hours of it through time-lapse mode and Adobe Premiere crunched it down
and I'm going to put a link on Discord and patreon to the YouTube video of this
it's amazing you can actually see what happened why they were scraping the high tide comes in like I
said gets under the ice the waves come
in the storm surge on top of it 2 or 3 ft whatever it was and the ice literally comes up and touches the camera box
scrapes it with the waves coming by like I mentioned and then you know comes back down again and you can watch the harbor the Frozen Harbor lift rise right and

fall in this time lapse and I remember I
put that together I shared it with the Weather Channel they aired it it was really remarkable and I showed it uh at
conferences like for the next couple of years as like this is an example of this
new camera system what we can do with it and it was just really really neat kind of brought everything home you know why I would put all this effort into going up into nor easers doing all this by myself you know that's kind of dangerous right you know and it
worked and I was just so excited and
Carrie was excited it was just you know people on the back end our our supporters I mean we were really on to
something here this new generation of

unmanned cams we had three of them
the Logitech camera the Ustream
platform all of that
was working perfectly and I I was just

so ecstatic like oh man June can't get

here soon enough yeah we're going to be so ready for Hurricane Season that it's
not even funny like it was so I don't know it was such a fulfilling thing right and towards the
end of February um I went up to East
Carolina University uh and I did a talk um trying

to remember CU I know they don't have meteorology at ECU I don't know what the like who would
have invited me science I don't know who
it was but I I definitely remember going to ECU and I did a presentation up there for them um I mean it might have been

I'm trying to think of who it was let's see if there's any indication who did I
speak to and why did I go there um
nothing evident here on
Twitter um let's see just trying to check nope it doesn't matter but I
remember when I spoke at ECU and I showed them um it might have been their geography program CU I know they had geography duh but I remember I showed them this time lapse from cou Harbor and you know just the the ooze and I like wow that's a because it's really cool to see that you know to my knowledge and again it wasn't that big of a deal like you know you're going to be on the cover of Time Magazine kind of stuff but I don't think anybody had ever captured time lapse of

storm surge on top of the high tide uh from a nor Easter like that yo know and I know that's very specific but it was so neat and just to be able to share it again I think it was the geography department or something like that asked me to come up and do a talk at East Carolina University in Greenville as we um got close to the end

of February so speaking of the end of
February we're up to the end of February on my Twitter timeline and um it's the winter just
wouldn't quit it's February 25th I tweeted quote it appears that out of 100
North Carolina counties only three New
Hanover that's where I lived Brunswick and Columbus are not under any kind of
winter weather advisory so major winter weather
continued for the East and the Northeast Mid-Atlantic um and uh it just kept on going and I

don't think I was able probably the funding and whatever I'm like I don't think I can go back up to New England anymore I'm running out of money here and we're getting close to Spring and uh conference season you know National tropical weather conference will be coming up in April um maybe the National
Hurricane conference you know we needed to do another Herby test with Carrie and
uh maybe some other people would help out with that maybe Todd our good friend Todd and so I had to kind of like all right you did two big winter storms in in 2015 that's enough you've tested these cameras you're running out of money yo you don't know what's going to happen with the Weather Channel again you know whatever your contract's almost up so that was it I was like okay we're done with February let's get into March and
uh literally March towards hurricane season 2015 and be ready for that to the best
of our ability so there you go that takes care February 2015 and uh quite the epic adventure for years truly the hurricane track crowd
you know Carrie was there virtually such a big help he was with ideas of where to go what to do how the weather was doing keeping an eye on things in the background posting stuff on the seab box you know we we really did have a good thing going with our our crowd over at
Hurricane track the family that's a good that's a good name for it the the hurricane track family and uh you know I got up to the Northeast twice within
just a few weeks without any incident at all by myself both times met remarkable
people did some remarkable things with our technology now we're up to the end of February we're going to be about 90 days away from the start of the 2015 Hurricane Season and you know what's up what's next what are we going to do so I guess we'll find out in the next episode right so that's it that'll wrap up this edition of stories from the hurricane Highway that takes care like I said of February 2015 again I hope you enjoy the pictures that I post I think they're nice to include to kind of help fill out some of these parts of the story that I'm telling yo about and uh make it a little bit more interesting and it helps me too because they'll be saved on patreon and Discord
uh for as long as they exist I guess so that'll be a good archival method as well all right all right well that's it for me I am Mark suth of course this has been stories from the hurricane Highway as always thanks for tuning in and listening I'll talk to you again real
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