Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 12 Transcript - 2002 Part 2 / 2

Note: This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.

Stories from the hurricane highway I am your host for this podcast Mark Sudduth of hurricanetrack.com so glad you could join me as we continue to look back and revisit the year 2002 this is the second part of taking a look back at that eventful year most years were eventful in my career um even if some were less eventful than others uh and you'll see what I mean by that as we continue down this journey of taking a a an in-depth look a more intimate look at what my career has been like the people that I have interacted with and some of those stories that you won't hear anywhere else right here on stories from the hurricane Highway the original podcast made possible by you all on patreon it is exclusive for you on patreon as well as our hurricane track Insider supporters the world of crowdfunding at tell you it's really amazing what you're enabling me to do and I appreciate it and it's good to be back here as I bring you part two so let's recap real quick part one of the year 2002 I started off with this big project for East Rockaway and Freeport in New York on Long Island that culminated with a big event in early June up in Long Island where Jesse bass and myself went to the big unveiling of this uh large public awareness campaign part of the project impact initiative State Farm was a big sponsor of it and the summer of o2 very busy in the early part of the summer with lows hurricane fares that's what we called them hurricane fares kind of like a a job fair or a health fair well we had hurricane fares and I guess some of these companies still do that even to this day so we were very busy with that I was working with Jesse still working with my good friend Mike Farrow he went around some of these places with me Florida the Gulf Coast Atlantic Coast southeast United States you name it and then of course all the way up into Long Island it was a very busy summer I was working also with John Van Pelt of the storm study project out of Raleigh and his enthusiasm for getting the word out about severe weather very infectious we all just did a lot of traveling a lot of talking to people hundreds and hundreds of people would come out to these events as weather was a big ticket topic of conversation you know we didn't have social media not like we do now you know you had email and you had other means of communication but Mark Zuckerberg had not quite come up with Facebook yet that was still a couple of years away and you know there was other social media in its early stages but not like we have now where everybody talks about the weather on social media um pretty much all the time you know we would do it at these hurricane fairs you actually did stuff in person back then now so much is done online and that's kind of what I'm getting at but it was a lot of fun uh Jesse John and myself uh and Mike Farrow we all did a lot of good work back then uh and had met a lot of people had a lot of fun doing it so you know the summer came along an early part of September in the hurricane season we encountered a tropical storm Edward down in the Daytona Beach area I talked about that in part one and it was not a big deal at all but remember I was remarking at what a success it was with this rather innocuous event overall that I was able to capture in time lapse the rotation of the low-level Center that naked swirl of a sheared storm moved onshore uh to the Daytona Beach region and Jesse and I you know went up happened to several several stories up into a hotel and I went out on the balcony and I set the video camera up for I don't know an hour or so and you know processed it later many days later on my computer on my Mac and did a time lapse and lo and behold you could see the rotation of the low level Center it came almost right over us and it was really really neat to do that and that of course was in early September and so we waited you know in great anticipation with baited breath as they say Jesse and I uh John was also available to go on a mission if need be and so we were waiting when will the next you know significant hurricane threat take place when where how bad all that kind of stuff and so around mid-september uh you know right around the peak of the hurricane season of course we had our chance so to speak uh and again you know we're very careful that we don't wish for Destruction we don't wish for the anguish but we want to be able to put our talents to use of course we do and I know I certainly do and so we're watching those tropical weather outlooks we're watching to see when is the next event going to manifest itself and lo and behold around mid-september Isidore was born and that's spelled i-s-i-d-o-r-e um Isidore was born and it had the makings of a pretty bad hurricane potentially for the central Gulf Coast is what it looked like and so Jesse and I got all fired up about it you know reading the advisories reading the discussions and I got to emphasize remember there's no Twitter there's no social media like we've got now that just floods you with information and it's really information overload these days and um you know kind of fast forwarding a number of years since those times and and the Advent of social media and really the last couple of years here I've definitely learned to filter some of that out using mute and unfollow or snooze or whatever but we'll get to that later that's just a little tease of what we'll talk about in the next season of stories from the hurricane Highway probably starting in December of this year but that's a long way away so remember we didn't have social media like we do now we had message boards and Jesse and I were very active in paying attention to a website and a message board called storm2k.org storm2k.org um you know and that's still around today by the way a very very great site and you got crowdfunding we talk about that the pooling of money to promote ideas and wonderful creativity and also crowdsourcing I love that that whole idea you know you fund with your money and you fund also with you know consensus your brain thoughts um people that contribute ideas and and all a whole lot of people looking at the same thing helps you to resolve problems and to figure things out and today we try to use social media though it's kind of hard yeah it is isn't it it can be but back then it was a lot easier I think because we could just go to storm 2K you know what is so-and-so thinking what is this guy thinking what is the consensus of The Message Board what are they saying and Jesse and I would turn to that quite often and uh so Isidore's Brewing um and oh I gotta mention too we also paid very close attention back in those early days of working together Jesse and myself uh of of Joe bastardi and I hadn't mentioned him before it just kind of slipped my mind um got introduced to him probably from Jesse maybe somebody else as well in 1999 2000 somewhere around there and by 2002 Joe and I were corresponding via email Joe was still working at AccuWeather at the time as their hurricane guy um you know Joe's controversial he's very outspoken um and people you know there's definitely a big polarizing attribute to Joe people either love him or they hate him and that sounds harsh but it's true because Joe definitely speaks his mind and he makes very bold forecasts so forth and so on and he's got a good track record especially in pattern recognition I mean and you know sometimes you got to take into account these Bolder almost outlier positions from time to time as long as they're not too extreme and at the time I didn't think Joe was too extreme and so we paid close attention to him we emailed him from time to time as well and got his input into things uh and it proved to be very helpful and so the big deal with Isidore it looked like as I said it was going to come in through the Caribbean there the Yucatan Channel area turned north towards the Gulf Coast maybe Louisiana Mississippi and be a significant bad hurricane but you know there's always a but something you know there's a there was a change in plans let's just say so Jesse gets mobilized you know at some point here I say all right come on down to Wilmington uh several days later as the evolution of Isidore progresses you know I said all right come on down to Wilmington and let's get going and uh that probably would have been somewhere around the 19th or 20th of September a few days after Isidore's Inception way down in the Caribbean Sea it was moving up towards Western Cuba and as time progressed I said all right Jesse time to get going uh let's uh let's do our thing come on down so he heads out around the 20th 19th 20th somewhere around there and um he's driving and he's got a a pretty good Trek out of Southeast Virginia to get to Wilmington it's about a five hour drive or so and Isadore had really intensified uh becoming a category 4 hurricane if I recall very powerful it was just menacing and it looked like it could turn north and again head into the central Gulf of Mexico and really threaten the uh region that we know just a few years later Katrina threatened back you know obviously in 2005. um so Jesse's on his way we're all just hyped up about it it is a big deal and then something really bizarre happened um and Joe bastardi saw this coming the Hurricane Center forecast uh as Isidore was coming towards the gulf had it moving on a Northwest heading into the South Central Gulf of Mexico well what happened uh the steering currents collapsed and Isidore kind of went more West with time and actually ended up off the tip of the Yucatan moving into the Yucatan itself a Southwest motion I kid you not and buried itself over the Yucatan for a couple of days and this was like what and that really threw a monkey wrench into our plans uh Jesse and myself to cover this um because you know what it is like it really I said look when he got to my doorstep uh I got some bad news for you and you know I don't want you to be mad it was something like that he's like oh no you know because again I'm going to emphasize remember we do not have um the ability to send pictures you know screenshots Twitter posts anything like that like we do now you know I could call him sure but I didn't want him to wreck his car right so I waited for him to get to my house and I was like you know you're not gonna like this uh and he's like what happened that's like it buried itself you know into the Yucatan and I don't think it's uh it's coming out for a while and so for the next like two days uh through that weekend I think he's on his way down Friday maybe so we spent all day Saturday and Sunday the 21st and 22nd waiting for Isadore as it just Mills around and completely unwinds loses its core all that kind of stuff over the Yucatan Peninsula devastating for them certainly and it did it moved across the northern Yucatan and just kind of sat there until finally it looked like it was going to emerge uh by Monday or so of the following week and head towards Central Louisiana we just weren't sure what was going to be left of it it was this big sprawling mess right and it's you know again re-emphasize and I'm going to do this a lot more because I want to make sure people understand we're not upset that oh man there's not going to be a category 4 hurricane in Louisiana because that's that's devastating we know that but you think you're going into one thing you know you think you're going into one situation and it turns out it's something entirely different now obviously this is beneficial for people along the Gulf Coast you know this is this is good news for them but it doesn't help us for what we're planning for it messes with your psyche if you will you think you're going down for this big huge event and then it's not and so that really does start to mess with you and you're going to see that theme coming and rear its ugly head many times throughout these stories as we progress Over episodes and you know beyond this one you'll see so you know we sit around my house watching TV I remember the movie Monsters Inc monsters incorporated that Pixar movie was out on VHS or dvd back then at this point and I made him watch it I had kids you know by this time I had three kids and uh I remember I made just you watch monsters incorporated uh oh man you know because you can only watch the advisories in the satellite pictures and what Joe is saying so much you know and boy this this this scene would repeat itself in spectacular fashion over and over again throughout the rest of my career a lot of waiting so that's what we did we waited and then finally early in the next week it was time to go Isidore moved off the Yucatan Peninsula by Tuesday the 24th and Jesse and I are headed out uh for Louisiana Mississippi somewhere like that so we finally get to go we go down um I-95 after getting out of eastern North Carolina we go to I-10 from there cut West along the Florida Panhandle uh you know through Alabama mobile Mississippi and into Southeast Louisiana so we go to New Orleans first and you know trying to figure out what what are we going to do and I need for you to understand another really important point and this is interesting because you think okay it weakened it's not a category three or four it was a tropical storm at this point re-emerging into the Gulf and they weren't really sure if it was going to make it back to a hurricane or not all this technical stuff about the inner core disrupted you know whatever right but Jesse and I were going gung-ho nevertheless but remember folks we do not have unmanned cameras at this point the Isuzu Rodeo the green Isuzu Rodeo with its anemometer a great anemometer you know the pressure sensor the lightning detector that we've got and our video cameras uh including my scuba housing that I could put a video camera inside of we are the unmanned cam if you will and it's very much the manned camera and the manned weather station we got to drive the weather station into the hurricane that's the way things were done at this part of my career I think you know that but I'm just as much as we do unmanned stuff now that's not the way it was back then and so you have to think about it you know you know the ending of this you know is a door maybe you know the story it turned out it was not a cat four landfall and thank goodness right you know it's like whoo some of these you just go man in these early days like Floyd when Eddie and I are going down to Florida what if it had barreled right into West Palm Beach as a cat four and a half and we're in a little Isuzu Rodeo yeah you just look back and you go you guys were so lucky if you really think about it but whatever divine intervention whatever you call it um we did luck out and and these hurricanes of my early years were not all that terrible compared to what was coming uh just funny how that works isn't it so we go down into Louisiana we get like stuck in New Orleans more like lost uh we didn't have GPS like we do now and you know no Google Maps no smartphones no and New Orleans is tough to negotiate I'll be honest with you real easy to get stuck down there and you get misdirected and and we weren't sure where we were going to go so we ended up in Houma uh the first night stopped by Lowe's the next day met with them you know shot some b-roll stuff some interviews probably talked to some media and this is getting on towards uh Wednesday uh Isadore is slowly gaining strength getting a little bit better organized so forth and so on and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do now the biggest thing is because it's all spread out and discombobulated most of the energy is going to be on the east side of it well away from the center unless it can consolidate a core again over the very warm Gulf of Mexico but it just didn't look likely so we decided we won't go for the center in this case let's put our knowledge to use we know the right front quadrant is going to be active the onshore flow into Mississippi is going to be pretty bad so let's just make our stake our claim in Mississippi if you will so that's what we did and we ended up in Mississippi for the landfall um we got there we drove out to Gulfport went out under the Yuri Pier down there at Gulfport Harbor that vicinity and um I gotta say you know for it not being a major event it was very dramatic and this comes ashore uh late in the evening of Wednesday September the 25th in in early morning hours of the 26th Thursday um and it did it re-intensified to about 65 miles per hour maybe 70 something like that and lots of media was down there uh out on this pier if you've never been there you don't know what I'm talking about the Yuri Pier it's like this paved um drive you can drive out there into the Gulf it looks like a finger sticking out into the Gulf from satellite and it's right there at Gulfport Harbor now after Katrina and all that it's been rebuilt and it's very wonderful and modernized but there's boat slips there's little fishing piers there was a restaurant out there called uh the white cap and um you know you could park and people would have a good time you know drinking carrying on making out whatever right and so people were out there checking out the scene media was out there the winds were cranking we went back off into Gulfport grabbed some snacks I remember this distinctly back when I used to eat terrible this was part of that and we'd go back out there uh we we encountered some folks from Texas Tech University they were setting up a mobile anemometer station a weather station uh right on Highway 98 not far from where we were so we interacted with them for a little bit a lot of excitement in the air you know this ex-hurricane not too bad event moving in you know not dangerous and life-threatening oh my gosh Katrina's coming nothing like that but it was dramatic the waves if you don't know the Gulf of Mexico it's usually flat generally and the Mississippi sound is usually very flat almost like a Mill Pond and when it gets agitated the waves get very dramatic there's a quick run up and The Surge is able to come in very quickly there along the Mississippi sound and so what I did in the not so smart days but again I was the unmanned cam okay I was the camera guy period so I'll preface what I'm about to say with that um as conditions deteriorated we stayed out there uh the police and fire department folks didn't shoe us away they said yep you can stay out there you're getting good win readings you know let let us know whatever and I was like cool so we stayed you know they said just use common sense because we're not coming to rescue you it's like all right and the media left any other Storm Chasers there was only a few out there if I recall they all left and the waves really started coming in and man it was spectacular and I just put my big boy pants on and kind of got that adventurous you know side to me gripped this heavy scuba housing with my camera in it and I just let it roll I really did I just I got out there in it uh would set the camera down for some great low angle point of view shots of the Waves coming in from a bench perspective they have these benches out there and yeah I took a lot of risks I know that you know there could have been a two or three foot higher wave not a rogue wave but just a larger set of waves could have swept me off my feet I could have lost my balance I could have hurt myself yes it was dangerous but I got some great POV point of view shots of the wave action and the storm surge coming in at Yuri Pier washing across the roadway and man it was exciting I remember thinking about my children and it's not like oh he was dying and he thought about his children what a what a wonderful warm thought it was more like and I remember thinking of Nathan and Cole Nicholas we call him Cole for short and Mallory has like man if you guys knew what your dad was doing I'm out here and I'm living my dream I'm documenting this storm the way that I want to document it showing the effects the only way I know how I don't have unmanned cameras there's no GoPro yet it doesn't exist you know I could have you know maybe lashed the camera the scuba housing uh to a bench or something but I never even thought of that I will say this though we had another scuba housing I forgot about this but it just came to me that I had bolted on top of the Isuzu so we had a roof cam at least that you know had like a two hour tape in it or something like actually I think it was a six hour tape I bought one of those 180 minute tapes and yes I know that's three hours but when you put it on EP for extended play on these old digital eight cameras it would run for six hours it wasn't very good quality compared to what we have now obviously but that's right I remember that I had the roof cam going so Jesse drove the Isuzu around kept it out of the Surge and he was taking wind readings noting them on the anemometer on the Isuzu pressure readings Etc and I was out there you know filming it Point Blank like a storm chaser would do you know Jim Ed's Mike Tice Josh Morgan whoever and you know that's what I was doing that's how you had to do it and I gotta admit it was a rush because we nailed it and the surge came up several feet eventually to the point where we had to abandon the pier it's called Yuri Pierce not like a long wooden Pier it's kind of like out in California I think you can drive out on those things um you know Santa Monica Pier but again that gives the the idea of a pier it's like a jetty that's paved that's the best way to describe it and now of course it's like I said it's really well done after Katrina a lot of money put into it um so we left we had to get out of there and I remember distinctly there was this car that somebody left out there and I'm going to use air quotes they quote left it or forgot it uh and it got inundated by The Surge Jesse filmed that and um I believe that I have like an un you know just a raw Isidore set of video on YouTube and I will put a link to that in the podcast post on patreon when I post this so check that out and you can see some of this footage there I believe it's there and if not I'm sorry I'll find it I'll put it on there eventually um but Jesse filmed I remember this little small car somebody quote left it out there and of course it got rolled up by the storm surge big dumpster was washed across the road and it was pretty significant it broke up some Piers it caused damage you know a few million dollars in damage disruptive to the economy for a day or two heavy rain you know all the impacts they that come with a tropical storm it was significant enough you know to be to be an impactful event uh he and I you know crashed out uh 4 a.m at the Holiday Inn the same holiday day in that Mike Tice filmed what he calls the battle at the beachfront of Hurricane Katrina three years later it's true Jesse and I crashed there I remember that Texas Tech group they also crashed there maybe a couple other Chasers did as well got a good night's sleep woke up the next day it was time to head back home I remember I had like an oil leak or something we had to get some oil at Walmart maybe one of my tires had a leak or something there was always something going on is the way it is but we never got stuck uh never ever have been stuck of the hundreds of thousands of miles I've never been stranded during a hurricane or a tropical storm Mission just so you know uh but anyway we got out of there made our way back home and I remember when I got back home I went up to the mountains where my parents lived at the time and I was real proud of what I had captured and I showed them and they were just like oh man they just like that's dangerous because it was I was in the waves you know and it was if the video is on YouTube like I think it is I can't wait for you to see it and when you look at it you got to remember we filmed that ourselves those are not unmanned cameras not the smartest of ideas but again what are you gonna gonna do you know people film Wars they film Wildlife you know astronauts go into outer space and do dangerous stuff to you know learn more about uh space exploration it's risky football is risky I mean you get CTE for goodness sakes hurricane research documentation storm chasing it's risky but you know I guess there's far more dangerous things that you can do and we got lucky so that is a door all right we got through it no problem yay tackled it Jesse and I are very excited about it got some data and sent it to the National Hurricane Center some good win readings uh about nine feet off the ground was the anemometer height and you know the center passed west of us of course but we were in the right front quadrant in the right spot the correct spot and we we did a great job so now fast forward not even two weeks later and another hurricane comes calling through the Caribbean and potentially towards the Gulf of Mexico we had Josephine and Kyle before that which were not events for the most part but then there was Lily and Lily got its start you know almost not starting at all way down in the southeast part of the Caribbean from a tropical wave that barely made it uh it looked like it was going to die Recon went out oh we couldn't find a closed circulation I think they stopped advisories on it at some point and re-initiated them you know as it looked like it was coming back uh from the dead so to speak how many times have we seen that scenario uh so Lily's coming along it gets into the Gulf in early October and this one really has the makings it looks bad on the computer models uh almost the exact same kind of track that Isador was supposed to take and we started thinking are you going to run into the Yucatan again and so I was ready to go and this time I would be joined by John Van Pelt from Raleigh the storm study guy and so he drove down to Wilmington and he and I took off at the very end of September and again this is barely just a few days now after I got back from Isidore so off I go uh with John and I remember we were going to work with CNN my good friend from Floyd and Dennis Jeff flock was going to work with us exclusively and he had a crew a cameraman a producer all that stuff and his own vehicle the SAT truck and then a separate vehicle and we were going to cover it together and like a big CNN expose whatever from Morgan City Louisiana oh you're in for a treat when you hear this so John and I make our way down there and again Lily looks bad this one looks like it's got somebody's number you know somebody's number's up here we go so we make our way down there and we get to um Slidell and here's one of those intimate stories that I talked to you about that I that I say this is why you listen to this podcast at least one of the many reasons I hope we stopped in Slidell and my wife I will preface this my wife is always asking me how do you remember these details when you forget so much in our daily lives it's true I don't know but it's just the way it goes but here's that detail John and I pulled in in Slidell and we went to Taco Bell I know Taco Bell right and remember I've got wireless internet now thanks to our growing partnership with Sprint so we take the laptop into Taco Bell in Slidell Louisiana we get our food I remember I got a chicken soft taco and some nachos that's pretty much what I always get grilled chicken you know nachos and cheese and a Pepsi it's not the worst thing you can eat I guess but yeah I'm just you know rationalizing there so we sat down to eat our food and you know we're already kind of nervous this Hurricane's coming and you know at this point it was gaining speed intensity uh and we were in for a surprise we sat down we looked at everything and there was a special advisory issued for Lily that it was now a category 4 hurricane one of those special advisories that they issue those are rare you see a special advisory come out that means that something you know uh not good has has happened and the special advisory came out and we were like oh boy here we go and uh I remember we read it and it was you know proclaiming how it was up to 145 miles per hour or something like that I mean it was a solid category four and this was around 1 pm um Central time or to Eastern time that this happened I remember it as plain as day we're sitting there trying to enjoy our food and the headline was something like Lily strengthens rapidly or something like that to a dangerous category 4 hurricane I mean it just those moments get seared into our brains because at first it was like actually moderate hurricane you know we'll see what we can do and you kind of get this hubris you know admittedly yeah we can handle anything well man this became a cat for and you know they said uh that reports from the air force uh plane indicated that winds were up to 135 additional strengthen is possible Etc pressure was rapidly dropping and you know it was it was it was a really really big deal and uh this was on October the second I'm you know early October and boy we threw our food away we went up done no appetite it's time to freaking go you know minutes count because now the pucker Factor if you know what that is goes up hugely hugely uh or as Donald Trump says bigly and um and it's okay to quote a controversial politician if it's something funny right it's fine and it's true it was you know the pucker Factor goes up in a huge way bigly as Mr Trump would say and boy we were just like oh gosh this is bad it's exciting but in a very fearful way if that makes any sense at all so off we go we threw our food away had only a few bites jump in the Isuzu haul butt out of Slidell around New Orleans down into Morgan City scramble to go grab some food somewhere and load it up on just a bunch of crap Reese's Cups Pepsis chips uh I mean I look back at that and I go dude how did you even survive all that whatever but we did and we met up with Jeff flock and his crew at a Holiday Inn in uh in Morgan City Louisiana and I kid you not next door to the Holiday Inn was a building that was being constructed and it was in the wood frame phase just mounds of plywood everywhere pretty big building I don't know if it was another hotel or whatever but it was sizable and then they're in the wood framing phase and so just tons and tons of loose plywood loose two by fours no stacks of it whatever and we're just like ah wonderful it's a shrapnel Factory next door to the hotel well Jeff you got your shot when this cat 4 comes in here that should be exciting and um so here's something that we were gonna do this was our our big moment our big moment for Lily um sometime over the summer I had uh uh corresponded with and otherwise talked to Folks at Hurricane research division down in Miami and met up with a friend of mine who's now a good friend of mine that I met first that year named Stan Goldenberg uh in fact I need to kind of go back I kind of forgot this I apologize yes show notes might be a good idea but I like shooting from the hip I think it's just more natural that way but I tend to forget things so earlier in August I had gone down to the hurricane research Division and done a seminar about what I wanted to do for the future what I have done in the past so forth and so on I actually got mocked uh by some of the scientists there it was a big controversy within the administration they were kind of irked that this guest was coming in and it was because I wasn't a meteorologist um I was a geographer a lowly geographer and not a degreed meteorologist and certainly not a PhD so a few of the scientists openly mocked me and you know I was like whatever you know I'm just doing what I do like why you guys got to be such you know tight wads about everything yeah it's just it was story for another day uh the details of it were basically well you know we're the only ones that can collect win data because we're scientists and I just was like that's BS you know I can be a scientist too I'm an earth scientist you fly through the air and collect data from your planes and obviously that's admirable and it helps to move the science forward well who the hell is doing it on the ground we are that was my attitude and I didn't let it get to me at least I don't think I did but I took away some very good advice from those that didn't mock me and my team uh and that was get that anemometer as high as you can try to get it up to around 12 feet if you can off the ground so that the anemometer can avoid ground interference and especially from your windshield so from August until Isadore and Lily and all that I um uh it figured out a way to secure a six foot steel pole one inch in diameter into the Isuzu I got a company to help weld something on so forth and so on you remember I had pretty much unlimited funding from Lowe's and it didn't cost that much but yeah we rigged it up so I could put like an outrigger on the Isuzu and boom now because the Isuzu is six feet off the ground at the roof uh I had a six foot pole I was at 12 feet or four meters and that was big you know okay we can do that and and and and and and very important they wanted me to have Digital Data in a record like in in recorded format not just take my word for it oh we got 112 miles an hour well can we see a record of that that was your highest gust but what's the record what you know we need some Digital Data high resolution data every minute if possible and that was available uh the RM young company that made our anemometer um made a Data Logger that was twenty six hundred dollars I think or 1800 or something like that it was expensive and I bought one because again Lowe's was behind everything I was doing so I bought one and we got everything ready and didn't use it during his adore did take it for Lily so fast forward back to the story there are we are John and I got the Isuzu ready I got the anemometer set up at uh 12 feet 4 meters the Data Logger is going to be running I mean here we go and this is a cat4 uh and we were really really nervous this was a Wednesday night into Thursday October 2nd into 3rd we were all sitting around in the lobby of the Holiday Inn and I got a um message from somebody uh from the Army Corps of Engineers that I had worked with and people that I knew from Project impact and FEMA and all that a phone call like a voicemail a guy named Alan McDuffie a friend of mine at the Corps of Engineers here in Wilmington and remember he called me and you know hey Mark this is Alan can you give me a call I really got to talk to you so I called him up and he said that they at FEMA headquarters Etc the Hurricane Center you know you got to get out of there you know we're really worried about you different people that knew me knew what my ambition Etc they just were not secure at all with me being there you know and they were like you know this is a cat four coming 20 to 25 feet of surge even if you survive the hurricane he said you're going to be stuck there potentially for a week or more and it's going to be miserable all the creatures that are going to come up out of that surge you know Highway 98 is Elevate or Highway 90 is elevated down there Highway 98 is on my brain from Mexico Beach uh Highway 90 through there is elevated in a lot of spots you know it has to be but Morgan City is you know it's right next to the river Etc and then you get the golf coming in and just it was people were legit worried for my safety and practically begging me to leave please leave and go to Lafayette I'm like well of course let me see what happens we got time and if it stays this way after we get some sleep doesn't lose intensity we can get out of here in the morning okay and I was like uh you know it we can jump on Highway 90 and be out of here in no time you know that was my response take it or leave it uh Jeff flock his crew they were all concerned that hotel management was concerned and this was bad I mean Steve Lyons remember him Dr Steve Lyons was the hurricane guy on the Weather Channel um he was worried I mean this really looked like a catastrophe in the making so we ate our junk food and tried to get some sleep uh John and I shared a hotel uh room I remember tried to get some sleep the air conditioner humming some of the early outer rain bands were coming and I remember and let me go back remember when I told you in Isadore that I was thinking about my kids like yeah kids yeah I wish you could see your dad he's out here he's killing it he's doing what he wants to do and you know it was very positive I laid down and tried to get a little shut eye late in the night there of October 2nd and I thought about my kids again and this time I could hear Alan and I could see the faces of Max Mayfield Mark leave your life is in danger I thought about my kids as like ah for the first time I was scared what are you gonna do you've never been in a category 4 hurricane you've never been in one in Louisiana either you know two strikes against you uh and what if we get stronger you know and it really worried me so I I was committed when you wake up you set your alarm for that 5 a.m advisory for Central Time 5 Eastern when the 5am advisory comes out if it's still a four and it's not like it's Just Gonna Roar into Shore all of a sudden they don't do that you know oh my god It sped up 30 miles an hour and it's here 12 hours earlier I mean that hardly ever happens on a forward motion trajectory yes they can change trajectories like Charlie did where you change the angle of approach that's one thing but when it's coming right at you perpendicular like Lily was I had a few hours you know one o'clock in the morning whatever it was that I was trying to go to sleep and John was worried about the same kinds of things the commitment was yes when we get up and read The 5am Advisory if it still as strong we'll leave and you know CNN can do whatever the heck they want I don't care and we'll go to Lafayette and so um it was probably around 10 minutes to five I don't know 4 30 4 40 whatever um it wasn't quite 5 A.M now you ever been somewhere and there's a lot of background noise because of an air conditioner or whatever and then the power goes out and because the power goes out it wakes you up you ever been in that situation it's really weird if you haven't and yeah you're in a deep sleep you got a lot of stress a lot of concern John and I were able to get some shut eye and the power went out and it made me wake up and it was that weird like oh where are we and it was windy you could hear stuff rattling and I had this Panic for a moment I remember I was like John John get up I think it's here because it was just like a moment of sheer terror is it like 7 A.M and we slept through everything is it really here I mean it was so weird I wrestled him out of bed what is it I think it's here and I looked outside and I mean it was really raging those Out of Rain bands had come on in you know this is a cat for a hurricane man it wasn't messing around and I looked at everything I was like not quite 5 a.m and I hit the space bar on the laptop to get it out of sleep mode isn't that crazy how you got to do that right and it it it it came back to life and I logged into the Hurricane Center site and it had just falling apart in those few hours Lily ingested dry air moved over the cold water upwelling wake left by Isadore and as we say in the business it's but fell out of it we actually use a three-letter word for butt but you know what I'm saying and that's exactly what happened it had started to rapidly weaken and I was like oh thank goodness you know here at the hurricane tracker you know well I wanted to be in in the most intense hurricane possible if I could ever do that that's how I felt internally and I was relieved you notice like okay like you know realistically yeah you don't want to be in one of those right and that's what happened it weakened and I was relieved so we stayed obviously got our wits about us John's blood pressure came back down went downstairs and got ready for some live shots with CNN got our suzu ready and the anemometer was up on top of the pole everything was ready to go Data Logger was logging and our plan was to leave Morgan City go out 90 and turn South on some secondary road down to Avery Island and intercept what was going to be left of the eye wall the core sit still when it goes over us remember we had wireless internet now from Sprint got to keep emphasizing that and we had um weathertap radar it's a service still in existence today weathertap.com we didn't know where we were on the radar but you know no in geography you could look at the map and the radar and okay we're roughly here and you could approximate where you need to be you know we could do that no big deal so that was the plan let's go down to Avery Island it's where they make Tabasco sauce I believe and we're going to intercept it there so uh we start leaving Morgan City Jeff sends his b crew kind of like the second unit of a movie production you got your first unit and then your second unit so you sent the second unit with us a camera and a sound person I believe it was and they follow us in a van and they're gonna you know go and shoot b-roll and just track us while we're tracking Lily while Jeff does his uh point of view uh shots his live shots from the hotel at Morgan City for CNN so off we go kind of taking it easy getting out of Morgan City going down Highway 90 the power's out the lights just starting to come up that grayish blue horrible Hue that it's got When A hurricane's coming that is the worst because there's no visibility there's just not and it's terrible I had a handheld Spotlight I'm just making sure you know because remember that anemometer and you know where I'm going with this is 12 feet off the ground it is and so it's like a Barb up there a hook a grappling hook you know just waiting to snag a branch a low hanging telephone wire whatever so we were very careful to get out of Morgan City the wind is coming up tropical storm Force gusting the lines are getting tickled by the wind and they're sagging and whatever right there's a lot of Hazards we get out of Morgan City we're out on Highway 90. off we go 35 40 miles per hour it's blasting rain the the sun's coming up it's more light out and we finally get off the exit to the secondary Road the state road to go down to Avery Island come to the stop sign you know we stopped I literally had the roof cam running I don't know why I said literally and like you wouldn't believe me or something but I did I set the roof cam up remember I had that in Isadore and it's recording everything so we're going down this road we make the left turn stopped at the stop sign there's nobody else out there us and the CNN crew behind us and we drive under Highway 90 it's an overpass and we go down in just a few houses out there it's very flat it's kind of windy probably in between bands it's not too terrible and we're going about 30 35 miles an hour the roads all rumbly it's not the best road and um we're driving along and I see coming into view you know just a moment too late a low hanging telephone wire not one of those big thick power lines I mean I would have seen that it was a you know telephone cable something like that a wire that had been tickled by the wind like I say and it sagged just enough that it was actually down at the windshield level oh and I slammed on brakes and it wasn't enough and it captured the anemometer it snagged it it hit the pole went up the pole snagged the anemometer ripped that thing off broke the pole out of the base that we had that little Outrigger base bent it like at a 45 degree angle or so not quite 45 I wasn't going that fast and it was Game Over You know and John was like whoa whoa we hit I was like hit a effing power line I definitely remember cursing and uh I got out and walked around and the anemometer was in two pieces broken shattered on the pavement the CNN crew got out they're like what happened man something hit you that's like no I hit the F and pop pers more cursing and luckily they weren't rolling tape and um at least I don't think they were and um uh I put the pieces in took the uh the six foot steel pole was so angry that I just you know you know screw it and I lifted it over my head in some revolt against nature and just threw it into the ditch uh the drainage ditch got back in the Isuzu and I turned to John I go literally I remember the words well that's the end of that that's just go back somewhere and you know we got nothing and I was like so he was remarkably like calm and like thinking that I was going to lose my you know what and I got over it I'm like you know you know nothing else you can do no reason to keep on being upset about it we got pressure reading so let's try to figure out where the eye is going to come in and we can observe with our eyes we can film with our video cameras and we'll get some pressure readings so we drove around the area a little bit ended up over in Abbeville um we went into the the Town Square I had to use the restroom I remember this all that junk food I ate had caught up with me and we pulled into the Town Square like this the Civic uh what do you call it the municipal buildings the the police department whatever the center of town all it was like their EOC and we pulled into the parking lot I ran inside to use the restroom um it was dark and I had to use my bar phone my flashlight and not a flashlight I didn't have those back then but just the light of the LCD screen just to see what I was doing uh and um a lot of reporters there police fire you know whatever it was literally their Emergency Operations Center and um so uh we came back out or I did I came back out maybe John went into I don't know doesn't matter I definitely had to go so came back out got in the Isuzu and do you remember the NBC reporter David Bloom he died in Iraq covering the war from a pulmonary embolism from sitting too much developed a deep vein thrombosis DVT and it went up and killed him he got a pulmonary embolism and he died very very unfortunate very tragic well David Bloom saw the Isuzu and the hurricane intercept research team logo and you know thought well this must be something went over to John on the passenger side and asked what we were doing we told him and so forth and so on and they did an interview just a real quick interview and it was on NBC Nightly News that night uh we filmed a few things and eventually made our way back towards New Orleans um after spending maybe one more night in Morgan City Lily came in lost its intensity I think it made landfall around 80 miles per hour I kid you not and I recall lyxian Avila or Avila Lexi and Avila uh I called him a villa but anyway uh the forecaster talked about something like it just as soon as Lily strengthened it it just as quickly and lost it or something and I'm sure this will be studied for years to come as to why this happened because we have no reasonable explanation you know but there was I mean it was cold water from Isidore it got some dry air in there and some other things and it just went poof well relatively certainly from where it was at Cat four uh and thank goodness right and so John and I wrapped up what we were doing um went back to the uh to the hotel in Morgan City first I remember now it's coming back to me Jeff was like what the hell happened yeah he saw the Isuzu in the bent Outrigger that had been you know welded and bolted up and it was bent and we told him and probably did a quick interview and it was a little bit about you know well sometimes you lose you know we didn't get the data we wanted but again it goes with the territory and he did he talked about well what happened with your little Outrigger up here and yeah whatever so we got some sleep and the next day made our way back I'm gonna head home um stopped up off at the Irish Bayou it's right off of I-10 up there on the north side of New Orleans just before you get to Lake Pontchartrain Lily had an impact all the way up there pushed the lake into there there's a little bit of a storm surge documented that a little bit a bunch of dead rats in there and alligators and other things and it just continued documenting you know the aftermath as best we could and started making our way back home we got to Montgomery Alabama around 10 30 11 o'clock at night or so and John got a phone call from somebody that he knows we had checked into a hotel over in the Northeast side of Montgomery and somebody called him and they're like you know is he like really really oh wow I was like what I said hold on okay yeah yeah that's amazing and you taped it great I got to see it all right thanks bye he goes you're never gonna believe this I was like what he goes you remember that footage they shot yesterday of us in Abbeville Bill and it was on NBC Nightly News it was like yeah he's like they used it on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno I was like what it's like Yeah and I don't know exactly what it was some bit he was doing about CNN and the Iraq War and all that but you know I'll see it when I get home my friend taped it for me I said okay so sure enough ladies and gentlemen John and I were on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno by accident Jay had done a bit about CNN and their crawl that they did at the bottom uh the Iraq War was going on of course uh and um or maybe no I'm sorry we weren't quite there yet I think that started in O3 but the Afghanistan we were on the offense of the war against Terror my bad uh you know things were ramping up after the September 11 2001 attacks and CNN was of course all over it and uh so they had this crawl at the bottom of the screen that was just constantly there with little tidbits you're familiar with that and so Jay did this bit and it was just something funny about you know how CNN's trying to be more hip with the crawl and then he had different funny phrases and as part of his bit and in the background for his b-roll when they pretended you know oh yeah here let me show you here's a clip and it was It was supposed to be CNN they had the CNN logo which they can do it's called fair use and then they had their own crawl and they had these little funny things you know like you know President Bush vows that he'll bust a cap in saddam's butt or whatever you know something for some cheap laughs well the b-roll was NBC footage that just needed some b-roll and what did they use they used the David Bloom interview with John and me and and other Lily shots from their Lily coverage for this 45 second bit whatever it was so sure enough there's John Van Pelt and Mark suddath on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno during Hurricane Lily the Highlight take it or leave it of 2002 after what a heck of a year it really was and that that was just weird and funny and you know entertaining at the time right just like okay that's different uh yeah we we learned a lot you know there is defeat yeah we lost the anemometer and we learned about low-hanging power lines and you know all sorts of other stuff and I learned that people care deeply you know Mark please leave you know all of that uh and so 2002 came to a close and um things could not have been any better my career just again on on firing on all cylinders possible all kinds of projects wrapping up momentum forward lows happy Sprint very happy lots and lots of media exposure my website doing very well collecting data learning from scientists getting mocked by other scientists you know it all is part of it I made a good friend with John you know Jesse and I are working well together and um just really excited about the future and our wireless internet was something that we you know this was the first full year of using that after Sprint discovering Us in tropical storm Barry in 2001 so as we looked ahead to 2003 and I'll tease it with this as I get ready to wrap it up you know I had my eyes on bigger and better things Lowe's was very very happy with what we were doing we expanded or well getting ahead of myself I'll say this in the fall of those years that's when Lowe's prepared their budget a lot of companies do that and their fiscal year I believe began February 1st each year so I had to get my budget request in what are we going to do next so I went up and I met with the folks at Lowe's Robert Eggleston was my point of contact there with community relations and different people in marketing a guy named gray Abercrombie and some folks that work with NASCAR hint hint right and there was this Groundswell this beginning festering idea that Mark and his hurricane track hurricane intercept research team phenomenon needs a flagship vehicle you know this Isuzu has done well but maybe we can get something bigger and more substantial yeah let's think about that and that's how I will leave it off and we'll look forward to learning more about that when we delve into the year 2003 in the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway next week all right so we did we wrapped up 2002 on an incredibly high note uh and as we get ready for O3 things are getting ready to change even bigger and even better from there so there you go uh the year 2002 you know those two storms Isador Lily those events unbelievable but that's how it happened um and as always of course you know you listening on that your side there whenever you listen to this you can download it and listen to it in your car your podcast device iPhone Android computer doesn't matter um you know it's just awesome that you're there I really appreciate it I hope you're enjoying these stories there's a lot more a lot more where they came from and I'll continue with 2003 as we go down the hurricane Highway even further next week all right so again thanks for tuning in as always I do appreciate it so much I am Mark suddath you have been listening to stories from the hurricane Highway wrapping up the year 2002 take care and I'll talk to you again next week