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it's a category 2 hurricane out here did the Western eye come ashore yes it did it came right across right down over top of us right there there is the hurricane landfall project truck it's all set up strapped down we're going to turn all the switches on in just a little while standing outside of the Chevy Tahoe we are getting into the eye wall of hurricane 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 to you again and welcome to another edition of stories from the hurricane highway I am your host Mark suth great to have you along with me again as we continue our look back at the year 2016 this episode packed over stuffed

you name it it's got it we have a lot to talk about or at least I have a lot to tell you about and for you to listen to and absorb uh we're going to go through February and March 2016 and this will include among other things a winter storm that went up the East Coast that I was not in I didn't go up for that one can't do them all um but boy it was a
doozy and then we had flood problems in Texas Houston would get a minor to moderate flood event again in the early part of March and then and the Crux of
this episode the main part of it the climax whatever you want to say however you want to call it is the great Deweyville flood of uh mid-march
2016 and the remarkable way that Carrie
and I and some other people were all working together with me in North Carolina I didn't even have to go out there this was the first time that we would do something like that uh to this
extent uh in Dewey a small town along
the Texas Louisiana border area where the San river is and it was just
incredible and it all it all like Mike Watkins taught me this phrase it all informed the future I just love that phrase continuing to test these Ustream cameras from Logitech they were
called Logitech broadcasters and these two events here the Houston flood in early March and then the great Deweyville flood that actually broke the flood of record um by 5 ft or so I mean shattered
it that went all the way back to
1884 we were there for it so I'll tell you all about that and some other odds and ends I'm sure as we go through and as always at least in these latest episodes I've kind of caught on to the idea of using Twitter Advanced Search The Archives uh as a framework so we don't miss anything cuz boy oh boy if it was important I probably put it on Twitter and uh so we start February off and um
it's warm in Wilmington my first tweet of February February 1st 2016 75 degrees
in Wilmington simply unreal I said seems
like I accidentally slept until April or something like a bear wouldn't that be nice that would be nice just sleep for two months then and I'm going to do something kind of neat here this is also in February first I posted one of my uh

offseason video discussions did not have
a thumbnail I didn't learn the whole importance of thumbnail thing for almost another four years can you believe it probably lost tens of thousands of subscriber potential didn't lose them like they went away I just never gained them because I wasn't doing self-created you know custom thumbnails I was just letting YouTube create them and I didn't
understand but we do now and our YouTube has grown a lot since 2017 I'll tell yo
all about that in an upcoming episode that was remarkable the rapid growth once we started doing live stuff on YouTube but that's in a future episode for this episode though I posted a uh offseason video discussion talking about
obviously the upcoming hurricane season some things that I was looking at related to that there was a winter storm
in uh Europe they do name them over there officially not just winter storms but any big extratropical mid latitude storm as they're called not just a corporate thing like what the weather channel does it's an official title they'll say like
storm Henry which was the storm in this
case so I tweeted it weekly video discussion includes look at Europe as storm Henry Bears down and it's a YouTube video of course that I linked to
off of Twitter and I did uh a similar
thing where I talked about a video discussion in the last episode the opening episode of 2016 where I think I did a video discussion on January 19th and that got me thinking whenever I do this in the future and I run across an important video discussion that I tweeted about let's play a little excerpt I mean this thing was 18 minutes long that's
ridiculous I'm not going to play the whole thing that would be not wise use
of our time but let's play few excerpts let's see what stood out and then we'll come back and continue this episode good afternoon to you marks out of hurricanetrack.com here with your off season edition of the hurricane Outlook and discussion welcome to February where it's 75° here at my office in Wilmington North Carolina so this is the February 1st 2016 Edition happy Monday to yo
let's take a look at the sea surface temperature anomalies for today and as
we start off the month here of February notice if you've been pay paying attention to these video blogs here for the last several months the El Nino definitely starting to lose its luster
uh and just as a note most of the long range sea surface temperature modeling still indicates that this region through here the main development region will be
roughly at or slightly above and in some cases couple of degrees Cel above the longterm average um I'll have to pull that up one day and give it a look as we get closer to the season here only a few months away now that we're into February speaking of big storms I wanted to show you this not often do I get a chance to talk about European weather uh this is a
great map the Atlantic surface analysis

uh coming in from the Noah ocean service the Ocean Prediction Center and uh this shows what they refer to from some of
the European countries over here as storm Henry all right they name their
big winter storms or ocean storms more as a public service I don't think any one Corporation does it like the weather channel does here in the United States for winter storms so this is called storm Henry and check out that pressure
right there that's not a typo 945 mbars

hurricane force winds in here this is the northern part of the British Isles this is Ireland and then you have the northwest coast of Europe here in Norway and Sweden and then this is the North see and folks this thing is headed into this general direction over here uh the Shetland Islands up here going to clip the northern part of the United Kingdom
and into the North Sea a very very powerful storm you can only imagine what kind of wave heights are out there and you know the North Sea oil interest that's going to be incredible they're talking about it a lot here in Europe of course I just wanted to point it out to you it's pretty impressive uh how this has developed and I don't know the exact origins of it maybe the leftovers from

what was the winter storm that the Weather Channel named Jonas but I'm not
really sure to be honest with you I haven't gone back to trace the origins of the storm but it's very very impressive and impressive enough that
the hurricane hunters from Noah are going to go and fly this and do some research out there I saw that on Twitter
this morning couldn't believe it so so you know that's pretty good that they're going to do some North Atlantic superstorm and this is a super storm that's incredible 9:45 I mean you get down to category 4 hurricanes with that kind of a pressure over the tropics all right so obviously storm Henry was going to be a big deal in Europe and some
hurricane season stuff for 2016 but yeah we were also looking at the potential of a pretty big winter storm taking shape I started really tweeting about it as we got into the overnight hours of February 2nd into the 3 um GFS site uh not working really well

uh everybody was hitting it I guess I mentioned that on February 2nd GF GFS site not working again must be a chance of some East Coast winter storm on the horizon Lord help us during Hurricane Season I think that's probably I was
must have been using the um the actual inep site um I don't know when I fully discovered tropical tidbits but clearly
cuz I would have mentioned that I would have said hey tidbits not working I would have tagged Levi or something but
in this situation I mean surely I knew about tropical tidbits in uh 2016 but
whatever reason I was referencing the incept site here and it was bogged down

why because all the snow weenies up there and that's a term of endearment it's not an insult at all the Weather Geeks in the Northeast the East Coast honestly and you're talking 50 to 100
million people I guess it's a lot that we're going to be impacted by this big winter storm that was starting to show up in the guidance on the 3rd of February I mentioned that the North Carolina Outer Banks could see strong winds on Sunday which just happened to
be that Sunday that I was referencing
the Super Bowl Super Bowl Sunday so that was going to be problematic that some people out on the Outer Banks might miss the Super Bowl so yeah there you go um

what else did some testing of periscope
it looks like from Twitter their little
popup live video thing that um never really caught on you know like they were
hoping I guess and we we dabbled with it but couldn't really find any good applications for it plus we were using the Ustream stuff and it was working great and so we ran with Ustream um

then this storm this winter storm starts to take shape uh February 4th and 5th it's it's really starting to ramp up um
nice little picture here I I'll save this for you as well uh got a couple
pictures of already saved but this is the second one first one by the way is the 75°
temperature that I referenced forgot to mention that but I saved it but I forgot to tell you that I saved it so this is the second picture and it's a screenshot from the North Carolina uh Outer Banks area from the Weather Service coastal flooding water levels of 3 to 5 ft above normal are possible for
areas adjacent to the pamco sound for
the beaches water levels will be 2 to 4 feet mainly from Cape hatus North so
this was a nasty winter storm taking shape uh hurricane force wind warnings were up uh for the North Carolina coastal areas but I as I mentioned was
not going to be going out into this winter storm up into the Northeast it cost a lot of money to do these things I had already done one just a few weeks earlier a couple weeks earli whatever in
January so I sat this one out but man oh

man look at this radar shot I'll save this for you as a an image to reference it's our third one here for this episode uh radar scope from uh the
Wilmington area I mean we were just getting blasted with heavy rain it was in the low 40s upper 30s something like that if it had just been a little bit colder man and the power went out around town I remember this um cold and
blustery and yep February 7th that was Super Bowl Sunday 2016 anybody remember
who played I don't um maybe it was the

Panthers hey Siri who was in the Super Bowl in 2016 ah it was the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos yeah so yeah my
memory is not too bad that's pretty good I don't even really care that much about football that's funny so is the Denver
Broncos versus our Carolina
Panthers uh based out of Charlotte North
Carolina in viscinity so anyway that was February 7th 2016 and some people didn't get to see it cuz this storm was cranking big time
I'll save this picture for you this is the uh satellite view uh late in the
afternoon on the 7th that thing looks like a a dying hurricane offshore of North Carolina check that out picture number four man oh man what a doozy

here's another one I'll save this for you as well um it was a full color shot
of it huge comma shape I mean clearly
extratropical duh U mid latitude storm
but boy just look at that that's yo talk about massive winter storm that that's what one looks like that's amazing anyhow lots of commercials during the Super Bowl I got a bunch of tweets about that um I try not to do

that anymore by the way just mostly
sticking to weather you know how they say stay in your lane once in a while I'll have a little smart elic tweet or something but a lot of back and forth with Matt Lanza and Ryan Maui and other folks that's funny and I said in the last episode Matt lenza has a a good dad
sense of humor those dad jokes so yeah
we get through February and um one thing started really
becoming evident and that was we were going to lose the El Nino and really start to
head towards linia in
2016 and that was going to really yo

know jack up the hurricane season it looked like and we were already seeing this in February you guys know when this stuff get getting better and better we can see things with these big climate puzzle pieces as I like to call them um
way out in advance I mean it's it's really quite something all right so I think that pretty much wraps up the most important stuff about February of 2016 you we had that big winter storm that went up the east coast and really the

the other part of this was us seeing that follow this stuff uh the declining
El Nino that the super of 2015 and the models really indicating that we were going to be headed towards a linia for 2016 and uh a pretty warm

Atlantic overall it looked like and um
basically setting up for what we anticipated to be uh a pretty impactful
2016 hurricane season but before we ever
even get to that we got to get to the next month which is the month of March and all that flooding that I was telling you about that was going to be coming up for the Texas this area

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all right back with you now St from the hurricane Highway continues now we are
in early March 2016 and I'm going to tell you it was wet in Texas it was a pretty active pattern overall we still had East Coast
winter storms uh headed towards Spring obviously now that we're in March but it was Texas that was the focus of a lot of heavy rain and two events that would
happen fairly close in time to each other one in the Greater Houston area uh
in very early March and then just a few days later as we got towards mid-march another big flood event this time along the Sabine river that would eventually impact the very small town of Deweyville Texas which we're going to get to in just a moment but first down in the Houston area it's just one of those patterns that set up that was actually going to repeat itself again in April
and that'll be the next episode The Great Tax Day flood of 2016 we're going

to get there but very very wet in the Houston area it was bad in 2015 we had
the Memorial Day floods in 2015 we had the Patricia remnants in 2015 and 2016 again wet wet wet with

this big flood event that was going to unfold for Houston and so what Carrie and I had done as we got got from 2015
into 2016 testing those new Logitech
Broadcaster cameras that go right to Ustream we did that testing in 2015 during some winter storms in the Northeast during those floods that were
kind of related to Hurricane Wen you we
did that in the Outer Banks of North Carolina down in the Charleston area and then again the Patricia remnants in Houston so lots and lots of testing of these new Logitech cams and these little
lithium battery packs everything was very simplified he had a Logitech camera it was powered by a lithium battery pack we could get about 30 hours or something 36 hours of of runtime and then you had
a Verizon hotspot and it was on its own
small lithium battery pack about the size of your hand and you know that would run for 2 days as well and
everything packed very nice and neatly into these pelican cases these uh I think it was the IM 2075 brand or model

number and we had built six or seven of them and I had three with me in North Carolina three or four and Carrie had three or four whatever it was um in
Houston you know for testing and flooding potential there and that really came in handy because um in very early
March again here the first week or so
very wet pattern and again I did a
weekly video discussion and in this situation I think there was a lot um of
lower 48 weather to talk about always going to talk about some upcoming hurricane season stuff but very wet pattern stormy pattern coming up for the Texas area uh Eastern Texas Texas is a
big state so got to be careful when yo say Texas area you know that it's huge
and we're talking Eastern Texas and Southeastern Texas and uh so what Carrie
and I decided to do was let's work with

the Harris County Flood Control District directly with Jeff Lindner and uh he's their meteorologist
and let's set up some cameras in three
different locations on these bayu um or flood control channels
whatever you want to call them it's all engineered it's an incredible feat out there that does a really good job uh
until it gets overwhelmed and yeah that's how anything is that's manmade most man-made stuff holds up really well until it doesn't and that's just the way it goes so we did we got in touch with Jeff and we had a plan in place we talked about different areas White Oak White Oak Bayou brace bayu South maid
Creek you know like we we had a pretty good plan and of course the Houston area is big and I worked with uh Carrie and

again Jeff Lindner talked with people at the National Weather Service and we decided we were going to go with three
sites that Carrie would go out and put

these cameras up on these flood channels

to watch them uh in real time you with audio and um now certainly you got to
understand Houston has hundreds if not
thousands of cameras from transar and uh

they monitor the interstates and what not but they're usually up on pretty tall poles and they have kind of an a bird's eye view and of course as yo know what we like to do is immerse people closer to the impacts and these

cameras what we're doing are specially designed for those impacts they're not traffic cams they're widescreen they're full color and they they have a pretty good picture quality and and they have audio so Jeff Linder he was pretty excited about this um and willing to work with us he's a very busy man and so Carrie and I got to work I'm going to save a couple of these pictures here um these are from Carrie that he had sent me and then I posted him on Twitter posted these pictures and you get an idea of what these flood channels look like I don't know exactly which one this was my tweet was making preps in Houston
to set out three of our flood cams for the excessive rains headed there this week and you can get a real clear idea of what this flood Channel looks
like this could be brazed by you but I'm not real sure we did not label it or name it or whatever which that's unfortunate but it's okay two pictures here you can really get an idea and I do I believe this is brazed by you um and I

probably later on did talk about like what the intersection is or whatever but I I believe now just looking at this that this is bra byou these are pictures uh
six and seven uh Carrie went out to Scout and um he and I worked I mean we
were on the Bluetooth headset just chatting it up he had his special Ford
uh pickup truck it's got the yellow uh amber lights on top or whatever to let people know that he's out there working and to be mindful of him he had his orange vest very very very careful uh
very coordinated everything was just that this plan to capture this flood uh

was coming together and it wasn't going to be again particularly um devastating for the
Houston area but a pretty impactful event nonetheless so yes uh in fact I
did note it here a tweet I'm just reading through my Twitter here um it was brace Bou at Rice Avenue and then we
have one on Buffalo Bayou at Millum

wherever that is and South made Creek the old famous South made Creek at Greenhouse so we had brace Bayou covered Buffalo Bayou covered and South made Creek over there near Katie and everything was up and running and so here's another picture this is picture number eight um a great photo that
Carrie sent of the camera looking right

down the flood Channel though right down brace Bayou that's bra Bayou at Rice Avenue and uh the rain started and it was just

excessive it was ridiculous very heavy rain over uh a day or so and uh here's a

picture of the one this is March the 8th so you check this one out you can see the number on there too this was camera number three um so Carrie had one two
and three and maybe even four and I had five
six and seven because those are the ones that I set up for that winter storm uh
up along uh New Jersey and you know I talked about that you know in the last episode that uh I did I had cameras 5 six and seven and Bruno Tim Bruno said
well where's 1 2 3 and four Well Carrie had those I guess but um it was really
exciting to be able to watch this from afar and know that we're going to get this long runtime and they worked the cameras did really well they showed the uh the flood
as it happened um and again these water levels came up several feet uh this is really really neat to see uh the bra byou came up I'm just reading through my Twitter this is March the 9th and let's see where this so here's South made Creek this is really cool this is a graphic that I had screenshotted from Harris County uh FWS

flood warning system maybe. org you'll see the URL in the graph TR and this is
gauge 2150 and it's at South maid Creek in greenhouse and you get a cross-section of the flood Channel or the creek um and
then you have the top of bank which is to and then bottom of the creek I guess or the channel and you can see the little crosssection there and where the water level was I mean these folks have
it they have it down it's amazing yo
know and this is 2016 imagine all these years later how amazing and and incredible it's gotten and then you've got the plot and you can really see boy you wish all of our stocks and everything would do that right when yo look at this it's um about 96 ft or so

and then it spikes up to well over 100
and um uh 106t 107 ft something like

that top of bank is just under 110 ft
and you can see that in this next graphic um picture number 11 that I'm saving for you here and uh we captured it you know all these cameras worked really well a couple of good shots here south made Creek yesterday versus now and this is a great
example here this is pictures 12 and 13
you really get an idea of how much the water came up it spreads out it uh goes
over Greenhouse Road and it's disruptive for traffic as you can imagine um it was just a great test of

everything and it's really funny too because the one on Rice Avenue there
South uh brace by over rice you guys know who Chris ebear is um

HB ER T Chris E bear I guess the H is
it's French right Chris ebear so he works for I believe it's storm Geo um meteorologist there in Houston um

everybody knows this guy on storm 2K as weatherman 57 uh prominent hurricane forecaster um and a biker this guy is definitely a biker in shape uh met him a
few times over the years in person and he was watching on Twitter in in our Ustream feeds and uh the rain gets on

these lenses as you know no matter what you do and there's all kinds of suggestions over the years you can put vodka on there how about some rainex whatever and people have to understand that all of that repellent stuff works best when you have wind velocity yo

know rainx works well on your windshield to get the rain to beat up and slide off but you have to be driving otherwise yo just get all these very fine particles
so it doesn't slide down like an untreated R windshield I mean believe me I've tried all this but so the point is the uh Lind had a little bit of rain on it and Chrissy bear knew exactly where
that camera was is looking right down bra by you at rice and he drove by on
his bike and wiped off the lens and we
saw that happen when we were going back through and making a time lapse or whatever um so just a little funny side note for you so all of that
happens you know March 6th 7th 8th 9th
whatever and the overall pattern I guess
there's just tress and deep tropical moisture coming in from the Gulf Eastern Texas was just
drenched all the way up over the Toledo Bend Reservoir area it just incredible
amounts of rain falling in and around that region um kind of Northeast Texas
East Central Northeast Texas something like that and they the people that run
all of that those Engineers the Army Corps of Engineers and all the the folks that manag the too bin Reservoir needed to release like in
incredible amounts of water to go uh to to lower the Toledo
bin Reservoir otherwise it's going to flood you know golf courses in very nice
communities I guess and a lot of people and I Mayan I sound factious there but the risk was that you could get a lot of flooding in a lot of places maybe some structural problems with the dam itself I don't know I'm not an engineer but they had their reasons that they needed to release just ridiculous amounts of water to bring the Toledo Bend levels
down you know because you still had the spring rains coming and it wasn't over
but this would inevitably send basically

a big flood wall like a wall of water
not a tsunami but you know it was a wave sorry that's the better term a flood wave and I think that's literally what they called it down the Sabine River
flooding towns all the way out
eventually I guess towards the Gulf of Mexico where it where it uh it enters at the Texas Louisiana border uh kind of near Port Arthur and sine pass and so in

the path of all of this was Deweyville
and uh a little town there Jasper County
and their flood of record was set in
1884 that was the highest flood that they had ever seen and this flood event because of the flood wave from the cor of Engineers and all the folks that manag the Toledo bin Reservoir deal um the river forecast all that
stuff from the Weather Service indicated that we were going to break that record possibly by several feet um
in mid-march of 2016 and so we were
ready Carrie recharged the batteries and
uh I mean we finished up the stuff in the Houston area like March 10th late afternoon I'll save this picture for you this wraps up the uh the flood coverage in Houston that was March
10th there's a beautiful picture of flooded South made Creek it's the sun is out so forth and um that was the 10th

and by the 11th there it is plans are in motion this what I said on Twitter to set up two live cameras in Deweyville to
document the historic flood that is headed down the Sabine River more later

so yeah let's do another quick break and when we get back I'll tell you the incredible story of how Carrie and I
with me being I don't know what is it 1,200 miles away in North Carolina how the two of us using Google Earth and Google Street View captured the flood of
record in Deweyville Texas

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so here we are in early to mid-march
2016 and a good part of Eastern Texas had been literally inundated with days
and days of heavy rain over the same areas from basically a stuck weather pattern and this resulted in a
tremendous amount of water piling up in
the Toledo Bend Reservoir and the subin river Authority
as they're called that helps to regulate all of that it's kind of like the Tennessee Valley Authority you there's different areas around the country that have different groups like this that control water which is odd to say but I
guess we have to do it and um you know them working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Weather Service and um the West Gulf River forecast Center I think that's what it's called all of those different agencies FEMA uh Louisiana state government the Texas state government they all decided it was in the best interest of people living in and around the Toledo B Reservoir and the Integrity of any dams that were on there that uh an insane amount of water
would be released something like
200,000 cubic feet of water per hour or something like that just crazy amounts had to be released which
would create this big flood wave that would move down the Sabine River eventually making it into the Gulf of Mexico but along the way towns like
dville would be flooded it was a certainty it was just part of what was going to happen the
only uncertainty was how high the water would get you know down to the inch or whatever and we saw this it was a big headline it was all over social media and Carrie and I
looked at it as an opportunity to really
solidify the place for these new cameras
once and for all ahead of the 2016
hurricane season again we had tested them during 2015 during the winter weather of that very busy 2015 um winter season and Ed them during

other events including the minor
flooding in some cases moderate flooding
in October of 2015 from the remnants of Patricia that I have already talked to you about and then of course we just had a few days before all of this was going to happen some very heavy rainfall in and around the Houston area and Carrie
put out three of the cameras on different bayu as we call it flood flood channels and that all worked terrific
you know everything was great so this would be a pretty high-profile uh situation and the
weather channel was very interested in showing the streams live um if we were
going to do this and it was just a matter of okay well where are we going to do this and I couldn't fly out to
Houston for whatever reason I was not able to go and it really didn't matter because Carrie lived in Houston and he
had had to just get up there to where this was going to take place up in Deweyville which was not that far away from Houston and I think I said earlier it was in Jasper County that's incorrect it's um Newton County so Carrie being
who he is and um his just overall good

communication skills his knack for working with Emergency Management especially from the amateur radio side of things all of that uh lint itself to

he's going to be the man so we decided
we would put two cameras there so he recharged all the batteries he got some bungee cords and so forth uh zip ties
whatever and um made his way up there

and he took with him this was really unique one of these oversized tape measures that we had created back in
2015 uh literally they go 10 ft some of them are 20 ft tall and it is it's just a giant literally looks like a tape measure yellow very bright yellow on canvas with black lettering one foot 2

feet 3 feet so forth clearly marked yo could see it from a pretty good distance away fairly reflective so it would show up pretty well at night and he took one of those with him I think it was a 10-footer and we would try to figure out where we're going to put these cameras one camera I think was pretty obvious
and that was going to go somewhere along
the bridge that um crossed where where the

Sabine River separated if you went on the bridge you would cross from Louisiana into Texas or vice versa and

that would be the Sabine River and um there was a bridge there of course and there was a little park close by and we thought okay this will be a good spot uh to put a camera camera for sure just got to find somewhere to strap it to or whatnot and that wouldn't be too hard but the other camera was really really really important we needed to show the
impact cuz this camera system was going to run for about 36 hours we needed to

show the impact of the flood in real
time in Deweyville and this could be really helpful to Newton County Emergency Management news media in and around Houston nationally The Weather Channel the FEMA I think they're region
six out there something like that the weather service out of Lake Charles my friend Lance escade worked there and I told him what we were going to do again this was going to be a pretty big stage so to speak to put these cameras up
ahead of time obviously Carrie would leave and we would all Monitor and then a few days later uh he would go back and
and uh get everything that that's yo know pretty straightforward right so he
goes out there I had mentioned it on Twitter that we're going to try to do this um in the days just a couple days

there after the flooding in in the Houston area that ended up you know wrapped up on the 10th of March so by the 11th again that tweet there plans
are in motion to set up two live cameras in Deweyville to document the histor flood that is headed down the Sean River
so um off we go and so by L the 11th so

Carrie went out there on the 12th and he took some supplies with him he was going to sleep in his truck one night and just kind of chill uh sleep you know take a nap whatever and then set those cameras up on the 13th I believe it was so he goes out there and there's a few pictures that I will save uh of how everything started to unfold and uh here's one tweet here massive sandbag effort in Deweyville Texas as historic flood heads their way we will have two live cams here I was really hitting that hard so let me save this one cuz you know there you go now of course I'm recording this in 2024 we know there's better Solutions than sandbags we have Quick Dam and uh the Water activated flood protection imagine if we had that back in 2016

readily available like we do now that'd be pretty cool wouldn't it you can just show up with boxes and boxes of these things you set them out and when the water comes in they activate and yo absorb a little bit of water but yo know you have these instant flood bags quite literally but yeah people were uh getting the sandbags going and then we had to figure out
where are we going to do this so for the first time ever in an operational
setting you know where it's really really important we're not experimenting anymore it's you know not necessarily testing granted this is not a hurricane but this was really important we need to know where to put the camera one of them's definitely going to go up at the saine river you know where it crosses into Louisiana from Texas as I said it

was just a matter of Carrie finding the spot for that once he got there but Deweyville proper Where will that camera

go so what I did is I got on Google uh

Earth or maps.google.com
whatever and um you know not necessarily the the Standalone application of Google Earth and you know looking at the uh town from the air what what's called a plan view where you look straight down you can see the river snakes around it comes through there and you could
understand how it was going to definitely flood through so forth and so on and you can see the small grided
pattern it is a small town about 12200 people and you know all right where are we going to do this we needed something that people could relate to the post office a church small town Church big
deal in Texas you know yeah a church of
some kind you know maybe some kind of a major intersection and you know Carrie certainly could have gone in and just figured it out himself but I wanted to be like the location scout and have my

input and so I switched it over to
Google Street View and lo and behold we
are there I'm there and I could be on
the phone with him as I inched along the
different roadways there until I finally
found the view roughly and you know you can pan and zoom around it's incredible what Google will let you do even back in 2016 and I found the shot it was right
along basically one of the main roads
and an intersection there and sure enough there's the post office and to the left the road went down it was County Road um 4150 I'm looking at the

picture now and there was a church back there uh everybody would know where this is and this would be really helpful for the people in Deweyville because we we were going to put this on Ustream Ustream of course had a Content delivery Network that could handle many many tens of thousands of concurrent viewers and
no problem I didn't have to worry about it so that was the plan and I sent him a
picture of my laptop or my computer or whatever it was and said here here's where you need to go and he went there and he took a picture himself send it to
me and I'll save that for you here's the
picture this is picture number 16 that's the picture he sent to me and that was essentially going to be the shot now there was a uh set of utility
poles right there and the guy wires that came down and that would be kind of in the way but the utility pole sat just a little bit farther back you can see the shadow of the power pole in the picture that Carrie took and we decided that's it that's going to work so it wasn't time yet though it was still too early but we knew that was going to be the spot for that camera meanwhile he did some Recon he went over to the bridge um

apparently it was Highway 12 that crosses out of Deweyville there uh
closed of course going into Louisiana from Texas Carrie got out talked to
various officials and you know told them what we were going to do so forth and so on I'll save this picture for you going to have lots of pictures in this episode and um

we were we were ready you know the excitement was building and it's really so so weird to
say that I know you know I'm not excited that these people are going to lose their houses uh or have to deal with all this flooding you know wasn't going to sweep houses away but still two or three feet of water in your house is terrible I wasn't excited about that I was excited that we could put technology to use and
it would have a purpose and you know
really hoping that this worked you know what could go wrong you know was there something we didn't think of we we' find out so here's another picture the um
forecast office there from the I guess

West Gulf River forecast Center or whatever it's called Uh had a new forecast here on March 12th uh that the river would Crest at 35.7 FT uh beating the old record by

over 3 feet and um
yeah 35.7 from because I tweeted it wrong I said five feet on my tweet it
beat it the record by 5T but nope um 35
minus 32 is 3 feet Mark but anyway I'll
save this too because this was this was very concerning for these people and yo can imagine the anxiety and by the way they have to deal with this fairly often because of the to Toledo bin Reservoir and the Sabine River Authority um they occasion Al have to flood the area so Carrie start

streaming and from his vehicle he had a
Logitech in there and he's just kind of
hanging out down at this park and um
he's going to stay there overnight and that's the uh the day of the 12th and then on the 13th he would set up the two cameras and get out of
there
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so now we are up to March 13th

2016 just after Sunrise Carrie stayed out in Deweyville
down at the boat ramp and um little Recreation Area there along the Sabine River all night took a little nap kind
of Babys set everything the Water started coming up as forecast and it was time to set out the
first of the two cameras and he did so
the first one on a utility pole right
next to the bridge and the way the

superst structure is you'll see it there's a picture I'm saving it for yo right now uh but he set out the first one at uh 9:07 a.m. that would be cuz

the way Twitter works when I post something it's eastern time so this would be about 8:00 in the morning 8:07 Central Time and uh the first cam is set
up and it's looking down the beginning area of the bridge

like the way the entrance is or whatever the approach and uh it's looking toward

the Sabine River uh looking into Louisiana
or looking across towards Louisiana and um let me save this make sure we got it there we go picture number 19 so that cam is up and running and it's going to monitor what happens at least we're hoping so for 30 32 hours something like that and uh shortly thereafter he goes
over to the intersection there where the post office is it's uh County Road
4150 and um whatever this the Main Street there is in Deweyville and he works to set up the
flood marker the oversized tape measure
as I like to call it and it was a 10-footer and uh he really took his time I'll save this picture for you too this is just a great picture picture number 20 of that flood marker that he had zipped tied and kind of wrapped around
the stop sign pole and he did everything
very meticulous measured it out so that the 1 foot Mark was in fact one foot above the ground so forth and so on and
this thing went up to 9 ft you we're certainly hoping the water wouldn't get that high that would be you know catastrophic and uh this was an hour later so almost exactly an hour later he
did that and um he took a couple
pictures I'll save again there's going to be a lot of pictures in this episode um picture number 21 the flooding had uh
really started coming up there in Deweyville um this was Old Highway 87
also known as 272 in Deweyville I had
posted and it was uh up and running both
of the cameras they were ready to go um
then I tweeted this was let's see what time this tweet was 1:43 p.m. that day
on the 13th that the crest for Deweyville keeps going up now forecast
to reach 36.2 ft on Tuesday and the

flood of record by the way let me scroll back down and look at it the record was

32.2 and they say it's unofficial it goes back to 1884 I guess I can understand that but
anyway the record was 32.2 the new Crest forecast
was 36 and some change there uh so it
was really looking Grim for the people of dville and of course we had these two cams to kind of help monitor everything and um we're good to go uh we
waited until the last possible moment for him to get out of there safely this was not some tital wave mind you but he didn't want to get trapped where the water is around him and then he can't get out you know that would certainly ruin his truck he would get rescued by somebody it would just be embarrassing it' be horrible so we were playing cat and mouse with the flooding there uh to wait as long as possible to
give the camera as long as possible to run so the moment it went live I'm going to save this picture for you was 2:11
p.m. so 1:11 p.m. central Time on March

13 2016 it went live on Ustream for all the

world to see anybody that was paying attention anyway and he left uh shortly

thereafter and if you look at this picture it's the 22nd picture that I've posted and uh I invite you to seriously go try to to look for it on Discord um and again we're going to use that hashtag of podcast and uh on patreon for this
episode I I post all the pictures it's just remarkable everything's dry there's
one pickup truck in the shot you can see
the post office on the right there is a church back there on the left uh this
County Road 4150 goes in there to the left I think the scale of everything the framing and all of that I think it was if I may say so myself very brilliant as
as well as could be expected because we had um the marker on the right hand side
of the shot that showed how high the water was going to get you had the post office there you had the road and the road kind of disappeared at an angle or not disappeared but you know it goes back so there was perspective you had
these um steel concrete filled whatever

ballards or little things that protect you know they're like little road berries if you look at the picture yo see what I'm talking about and you know those were 2 or 3 feet high probably 3T
36 in something like that and you know when those if those went underwater just all kinds of ways to clearly see what
the flood was doing so he did a great job Carrie did of getting the camera
going securing everything locking it down and we worked together to make this
happen using Google Street View I mean

it was just remarkable so by the time we

get to let's see what time this was 2:30 I posted a very
important uh tweet which it was it was really important for the history of the project both cams are up now and they're on their own here's hoping our technology does the Dirty Work stay safe doville and uh somebody replied and said your work is excellent and should be receiving way more attention than it is getting keep it up that was from Joe this guy Joe uh slac SLE e z z a we'll

just call him Joe well Joe you know it
it would come our day would certainly come perseverance uh but we were we were very excited about using this technology to see something that was important to the people there in Deweyville and in Newton County and the various agencies around there Weather Service in Lake Charles was very appreciative and that was it you know Carrie did it so he went on back to uh

Houston and waited you know it was going to be a few days before anybody could get back there and we all waited and
eventually the Water started coming up so the next picture I'm going to save for you here um the sun was starting to
go down and there's clearly water uh
coming up in the uh roadway there this is picture number 23 um you know the water is a few looks like it rained really hard you know what I mean like there's definitely water in the road is gradually coming up and um

it was happening as we say it was happening and it got dark the night of
the 13th into the 14th and it's interesting I posted here um let's see
what time this was it's very prophetic
so to speak 7:50 so it be 6:50 central time getting dark so forth I said uh
assuming the Gremlins stay away and Murphy you know like Murphy law took the weekend off um tomorrow should yield
extraordinary yet painful live video certainly was going to be hard for the people there to watch and um sure enough

the next day uh and it's interesting to as I'm just kind of scrolling through the Twitter remember these do have audio these Logitech cams and also just a gentle reminder we have had audio all
the way back to the beginning of this project in 2005 when it was live um and even in ' 04 when we were
just doing recording with cameras of course those had audio we think about Francis and Ivan um you where we had remote cam set out for the beginning of the hurricane landfall project audio is important clearly sometimes it's overwhelming CU all it is is the Roar of wind and rain slapping against something and it's kind of useless but audio is very important
and I even uh said that here uh late in

the evening on the 13th uh the audio is an incredible part of the event listen to the frogs and the water in this Eerie

scene in Deweyville now it's a link to hurricanetrack.com and the the link to the Deweyville flood Cam and so forth but that's obviously not working anymore cuz it's gone but I
remember it I remember listening you can
hear the water it's that trickling sound the water is grab ually flowing into
Deweyville there are some lights just a little bit there they left the power on for as long as they could so there was some light but you could hear the frogs it's kind of warm in Texas in March I guess um and it was just like it was

mesmerizing I couldn't sleep it I had to keep checking it partly to see how
things were going it was truly riveting
and then the other part was please don't fail you know we had these two cameras there The Weather Channel was showing both of them and it was a really really big deal and lots of people are starting to tune in uh a lot more people taking
notice and uh we even I did

tagged um the founder of Ustream uh this

guy named Brad I think his name is hunstable like Huntsville Alabama but hunstable hun stable whatever it's Brad
hunstable and I think I told this story at some point before about the how Ustream came to be and if not I'll try to remember here but Brad uh was in the
military and I think he and a friend of his something like that needed to come up with a way for active duty Personnel
to easily communicate this is before FaceTime and whatnot before the iPhone
uh they needed a way to be able to communicate over video and audio easily using flash is the way I understand it so they came up with Ustream and long story short because
this is not a podcast about their company even though it kind of is at least in these episodes where we're using their Tech uh it it took off and
it became a social media company trying
to rival you know YouTube which by the way in 2016 except for a very few people YouTube was not live you would have to have a third- party app and it was very cumbersome and difficult Ustream was a quick way to go live and um I tagged uh

Brad and got his attention and as the
CEO of you Ustream and the founder we had conversations back and forth uh some direct messaging a couple of emails and I tried CU this dude was pretty wealthy
I mean he's a startup guy lived in Austin um I tried to get a meeting with him and worked on it he even said yeah let's make it happen but you know that's
that's really hard to do um but I gave it a shot he certainly was aware of it and and we'll talk about we will I will tell you about that more when we get into 2017 when we get to Harvey there
were more interactions with Brad uh and

then eventually by the way IBM bought you stream and I'm assuming that Brad
became close to a billionaire at that point probably anyway story for another day I guess right back to our story though everything's working lots of people are watching then the sun comes up on March 14th which happens to be my oldest son's birthday uh and let me just
click on this link to see what happens the old Hurrican tr.com
flood yeah file not found it was uh in
the day when it was working it was hurricanetrack.com slfd ville. HTML but obviously we've taken that down because it's not you know applicable anymore but it was back then that's for sure uh conversating with weather Brad that's Brad panovic as you guys probably know up in the Charlotte area very very popular meteorologist and social media
Guru and so this was really amazing that
this was working but then something
happened with the camera over were at um

the bridge there along the Sabine river that it turned off it was just poof gone it was no longer on air and that was the sad thing by the way about Ustream is it
would just say like off air like when the camera was not streaming your view would say off air and it was like wow it
was a big slap in the face no Little Wheel or like just a blank screen it
would just say off air it it was it reminded me of Television broadcasting or whatever it's a definitive this isn't
working there was no having to guess uh
and that camera went offline fairly early in the day on the 14th and we actually figured out what it was by the way and in fact I'm talking about it with uh this guy Joey who was
definitely tuned in Joey szac SLE z a k

I mentioned Joey before um he's an
operational forecaster now by the way in the private sector uh who knows what he was doing back in 2016 a follower of me on Twitter and our

project good old Joey but I was conversating with Joey there amongst other people it was a very busy day March 14th 2016 the camera went down it
was gone and one thing we noticed I say
gone it was off air was we could see the sun coming up and it was shining right in the camera's eye so to speak so Carrie and I assumed that the uh the

heat got to it and these cameras these
Logitech um they had an internal battery
their lithium ion they were being powered by lithium ion batteries the
Verizon hotspot was powered by a lithium ion battery and when those things get hot they shut off Electronics will shut
off so our thought was either the
Logitech broadcaster got too hot which is the the more probable of the scenarios or the Verizon hotspot funny

right it's a hot spot got too hot and it turned off but whatever that that camera
there next to the bridge looking at the Sabine River was offline it was off air
and um that was that so I was talking about that with Joey one possibility I said is the Heat this is sitting in the direct sun and it's it's apparently quite warm in Texas today so it all ended up so that the one camera went down but and here's the Tweet by the way
right at Brad Brad hunble who is still
active on Twitter now he's the CEO of
linear Labs Incorporated by the way
founder of Ustream acquired by IBM in parenthesis West Point um and he's a father Hayden's daddy says um too bad
maybe I could still meet him someday I should guys should tag Brad after yo listen to this Brad hunstable um be hunstable like hu n s a
b e be hunstable Brad hunble tag him say
hey Mark was talking about you in the podcast and how he was using your Ustream Tech and maybe we can still get that meeting someday have a cup of coffee or uh some brisket or whatever they have in Austin I'm assuming that's still where he lives um anyway there's
the exchange with Brad I said I wanted to show you how we are used your awesome platform for something very important
and he did he responded um it's interesting cu the at Ustream uh no longer works I guess it's gone from Twitter anyway it was working
that is for sure this next picture I will save for you this was um 1:37

Eastern Time on March the 14th this is
picture number 24 so it's just a little bit after 12:30 there in Texas and the water is up over a foot deep it's muddy
looks like coffee with a lot of cream in it and an airboat went by we're watching this live you can hear the audio um too many pictures I'm just going to have so many I'll keep saving them what the heck right for posterity there they are people going by walking you know the water's not 8 ft deep but it's still enough that it's getting into houses and businesses and it was destructive and in
some areas it was 3 or four feet deep it just depends um but it was it was happening and it
kept on going um and we figured Carrie set it up
on the 13th uh and it was already running all the way through the 14th now it's going to get dark again the water was getting very close to 2 feet high on our marker
and one of the most interesting things about it is you could see it moving in
the Ustream feed and like you could literally see the water flowing and it was going past this pole I'll save this picture cuz it's it's clearly you can see the um through the little Ballard
there on the left and uh the stop sign
pole uh you can just tell the way the water bends uh around those objects that there's obviously motion and uh that was the water still spilling into Deweyville coming all the way down from the Toledo Bend Reservoir um and then it broke the record and uh says now it's at record level surpassing the 1884 uh record and Rising so the cameras

well this one anyway witnessed a record

event and it would not be the last time
that this camera or our camera systems like this the Ustream cams would do something and we'll talk about that as a in a future episode but this was truly
historic for the project we were part of history in weather history watching the flood live probably the
only live camera in Deweyville of this

event I mean I haven't seen it anywhere else I try not to get too wrapped up in that kind of stuff cuz nobody's handing out trophies but it is important to know
that we made a difference that people as

hard as it is to watch they at least could see something they knew oh at least it's not 5 ft deep or 10 ft deep
and it never was forecast to be that high but you know it was comforting in
that regard but still certainly painful that you're seeing all this flooding and flooding is such an incessant and I say this word penetrative because it does it penetrates your life quietly usually
unless it's a flash flood you understand that it just Rises up it Wicks into your house your furniture your carpet your walls and it's just so like it's just

bad it really is and so these cameras
doing what they were doing especially the one that stayed up the entire time it was designed to run was very important it really was so here's a picture late in the uh afternoon early evening of March 14th um somebody was
riding their boat through there you can clearly see them and uh this is picture
number 27 and the sun was getting ready to go down it's now 7:30 there in Deweyville

7:30 central time and um we were able to
see as it got dark CU they finally did whoever the Power Authority is out there kill the power to the town as the Water started getting high enough to get into people's sockets and whatnot you know you don't need Fires for goodness sake so it got dark and that was it I'll save this picture for you too this will be um probably the last picture we'll see picture number 28 might have a couple more to round it up to 30 make it an even number right so this picture that I just saved um was from 8:03 p.m. on March 14th

2016 the Tweet says Deweyville goes dark no street lights to help tonight cam will die soon good luck to the people there see you soon and uh that's what
happened the camera ran and it finally
went out and it was like a little over 30 32 hours something like that and um
let's see I was still talking about it our Cam and dville still going dark as can be uh there's only you can hear the
Rushing Water and the frogs should shut
down anytime now what a what an amazing tweet this was 11:25 p.m. eastern

time um so that would be 10:25 Central

and uh it did it went out it finally went out probably moments after I said that and somebody asked me this guy Michael on Twitter will it be back up and running today this is into the 15th
and I said no that's it the batteries are gone and we can't get to the site I wish we could um so that was that and
the camera did what it did and we captured the flood of record and it was a huge huge victory for the the project

you know in in mid-march 2016 so you know true to form like
working towards hurricane season and everything that I do outside of this kind of work you know the field work there's also presentations and conferences and other things you guys know that and uh that's where I was headed on the 15th like I probably didn't sleep much at all the night of the 14th watching that camera at least it died overnight and I probably got a few hours of sleep cuz I had to be up early and get up to Eden to North Carolina where I was invited I think
that's choan County yep there it is choan c h just like Chow CH c h w an choan

County I was invited to be a speaker at
their disaster Workshop up in Edenton
and um I guess I put it on Periscope cuz I said that watch live on Periscope and
uh that was it that kind of rounded out that project or that field Mission um

and uh the 17th I'll save this picture cuz it's a screenshot or whatever it's an interesting one and uh what did I do
what did I okay almost didn't sa that was weird computer problems um this
picture this was March 17th reminder
this is from the Texas do out of Bowmont
uh they posted added a screen cap of it uh March 17th 8:43 a.m. the I 10

Interstate 10 folks the interstate huge Corridor of everything
for that part of Texas and Louisiana so the Texas DOT says reminder
I 10 at Texas Louisiana State Line closed due to flooding will reopen once
water has receded and roadway has been evaluated for any damage and I'm and I
mentioned I was like man can you imagine how disruptive this must be for countless people not even Ike in
2008 caused that much travel pain for
that area that's true this was incredible uh how disruptive this big flood was uh in
2016 so wrapping up things there at the end of we'll go through the end of March here um there were aerial photos that
were conducted by various like the Air National Guard and Noah and so forth and
I'll save this one this will be very appropriate as we wrap up this episode picture number 30 to make it a nice even number you can literally see our camera

on the pole I cropped it in everything a little yellow box there uh in this aerial
photography that was you know put out I guess by um probably Civil Air Patrol something like that working with Noah or somebody uh what's interesting too look in the picture there are three vehicles submerged you know the water is definitely in those Vehicles right next to the camera it's like what why
wouldn't be the last time that happened would it you guys that know you know right if you know you know so yeah uh an

amazing accomplishment there from uh the
teamwork of Carrie and myself me working
far far away here in North Carolina to help him and um he went out a few days
later several days later by about the 22nd and um
picked up the cams talked with the people and uh everybody was they they
had started to come back this was several days later the water had drained away uh Carrie mentioned I do remember this how bad it smelled it's just that musty damp I mean it's got to be awful right uh but he went out on the 22nd harvested the cameras spoke with people a couple people gave him a hug um some people were crying I mean it was remarkable they really really
appreciated that they could see and they had shared it on different Facebook groups we had I don't know the stats but thousands of people were tuned in
watching and it just kind of showed the utility of this beyond the wow factor
you know it wasn't just eye candy we're not trying to um objectify a bad event

it was helpful you know it served a purpose scientifically we could look at time lapse we could look at the way the was flowing it served the Curiosity part you know we want to see what's happening there was a lot I like that word utility here and we knew our cameras were important of course we did over these years but the new version of this box a
little bit bigger than a lunchbox and it could be strapped we're using zip ties back then and bungee cords uh and that changes it's going to change in 2018 like I said before when we get Brent introduced to the cast of characters here he would bring the concept of a ratchet strap hey how about that we're getting there um but folks it
was working it was amazing and uh what a what an a just the the amount of joy that it brought us to do something that was appreciated and actually served a purpose and we knew we were ready for the 2016 hurricane season
so um what else is going on let me see a
few things here as we wrap up March um evidently I'm talking about the
Tahoe here for some reason um 2016 March 23rd

2016 let me see what this guy is asking
about so yeah this guy Christopher Owens
on Twitter this caught my eye so I figured I would address it says to me on March 23rd 2016 um at Hurricane track you know was talking to me watch some of the 0508 videos today and it made me wonder how many miles does the Tahoe have on it has to be a lot and I said very good
question right now around 410,000 miles

and it actually needs a new engine working on that um I think I remember
this that we did replace the but I thought we replaced the engine we had a rebuilt engine put in there was it in
2016 anyway Chris responded back that's
remarkable sounds like it has been a good vehicle for you consider considering the work it has put in so I thought in 2013 somewhere around there that we did put a new engine well a re a used engine new to us right uh but yeah

so that's a good marker there I estimated when the guy tweeted at me around 410,000 miles in March of 2016

interesting we do know the Tahoe continued to work because I drove it down for all the Hurricanes that are coming up that we will start to get to in the following episodes all right so
we wrap up March 2016 good work there in the Deweyville flood and the little minor flooding over there in Houston to warm up to this all of this leads us to the next episode
which will be the tax day flood and that's literally going to be the title of the next episode The Tax Day flood uh
for Houston that'll be in the next episode uh and to tease it for you just to set it up uh tax day uh basically a month after

this happened in Deweyville uh roughly a month later this ridiculous upper level
disturbance whatever moved through Southeast Texas and just unloaded rain on the Houston area
resulting in pretty catastrophic flooding for a good chunk of the area
and um we were out there absolutely and
we would discover even better technology
that would Advance the camera project even further and we'll talk about all of that and more in the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway as always thank you for tuning in I'm your host Mark suth I'll talk to you again soon [Music]

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