Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 15 Transcript - 2004 Part 1 / 8

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hello and welcome to stories from the hurricane Highway the podcast I am your host Mark Sudduth in this episode finally the year 2004. uh this will begin the season finale of season one of this podcast series for those of you that may be tuning in for the first time this series began back in December and it takes a look at the very beginnings of my career with an inside look and some intimate details of how I have done what I have done for 25 years or so where it all started all those miles going down the metaphorical and obviously quite literal hurricane highway so this podcast series uh we'll just continue on and on and on hopefully for years to come and it's going to be from December through May it is an off season treat and special perk for being a supporter on patreon and our hurricane track Insider subscription service that we have had since 2005 and we'll get to 2005 in December see that's how this works so we're going to have like a season and season one December through May at the end of 2019 through May 2020 and we will end with the year 2004 obviously a very very big hurricane season that year and it'll be divided up the year 2004 as I go over many many stories from that year this will be divided up into several parts and will get us through uh the rest of March here this is being published on March the 11th and this will go on into May and then we're done I'll have some kind of a special episode to kind of recap everything and you know kind of seal it off if you will with okay we're done goodbye that's season one we'll we'll do that sometime in May and then it's on to the 2020 hurricane season and after that just so you know I will be producing a new podcast that is called hurricane you not y-o-u but you like University and it is kind of like a Master Class uh expert series type uh podcast that will look at very specific aspects of the world of hurricanes from you know hurricanes 101 I mean if the theme hurricane U like hurricane University if we're gonna go with that theme we got to have like you know hurricanes 101 so that'll be that'll be an episode we'll talk about computer models in an episode we will talk about preparedness and but the thing is I'm gonna be the host and every episode will have a guest an expert in a particular area that we are going to go over and hurricane you will start up in June and it'll run through probably September or October with several episodes and it'll be available first on patreon and then a week after each episode is prepared and put on patreon and hurricane track insiders then it'll be made public on YouTube and apple podcast and wherever else I can publish them I know this is a lot to keep up with the bottom line original content and you guys are helping to support it and that means so much to me and the feedback that you have given me really really helps to motivate me further and so here we are we're going to look at the year 2004 part one of several parts this will probably be six parts long as we get through that gargantuan season of 2004. all right so where did we leave off well remember 2003 the big event was Isabel and our work with CNN it was Jesse and John and myself Isabelle big moment out on the southern part of the Outer Banks the Crystal Coast Area uh Jeff flock and the CNN crew as well as pretty much everybody else all the media that was covering Isabelle Lowe's and Sprint loved it they loved the exposure we set a real good example I think I mean we collected data we were very responsible you know we did what we always do we were out there uh not to goof off and just stand in the wind we had a purpose and that really Shone through I thought pretty brightly and we were rewarded for it myself personally the team the hurricane intercept research team again at this point it was me Mark suddath Jesse bass Eddie Smith who I'd started working with in 1999 by the way it's allergy time and so I'm gonna start sounding more and more congested and throat clearing is these podcasts go on over the next few weeks the pollen and the air we're going to have more pollen than we had snow here in southeast North Carolina this past winter go figure but I didn't want you to think that I was catching some kind of a other cold and we'll just leave it at that I am fine I just have these little bit of allergies that I've developed over the years as I've gotten older anyhow um myself Jesse and Eddie Smith and John Van Pelt that was the core of the group and we were ready to go in 2004 um Lowe's renewed my contract in 04 you know with more hurricane fares to go to I was producing their hurricane awareness guides I was doing media tours I mean this was it this was what we had all kind of been moving towards we had a good Core group of us working together Jesse's vehicle he had a Ford Explorer I believe it was that he had outfitted with an arm young anemometer just like I had done with the Isuzu and I still had the Isuzu remember we bought the Isuzu in 1999 first put it to use during Dennis and then Floyd we last used the Isuzu in 2002 during Hurricane Lily held on to it through O3 and then we had an idea of what we wanted to do with it in 2004 and we will get to that so Sprint uh discovered my existence and using their product for wireless data back in 2001 one during tropical storm Berry down on the Florida Panhandle I was on The Today Show uh Jesse and I were down there tackling uh Barry and we were using a Sprint phone and the Today Show Carrie Sanders the correspondent did a piece and boom Sprint saw it and the rest they say is history and you know we got technology and I never had a phone bill after that I do now but that's a story for another day all good things come to an end um now we have crowdfunding and patreon so there you go uh it's funny how all of that works the the incredible cycles of how all of this gets funded but Sprint stepped up in an 04 because of the visibility that we had provided uh through our work with all the major networks especially CNN during Isabel Sprint rewarded me and my group with a sponsorship of their own not only technology hardware and no phone bill but actual funding and so we got into 2004 with a tremendous amount of funding and that really really helped um boy I wish we had the technology back then that we do now can you imagine but you know what everything evolves in the world of technology and it's a process and we can look back now and see how that process began and o4 was a very very big step in the evolution of where we are now it really really was so um not much to really talk about in the beginning of 2004 you know we went to the National Hurricane conference Jesse and I that was in Orlando and if you saw the tracking the Hurricanes 2004 documentary that I put together many moons ago uh you know how it starts and by the way if you have not seen it it is available on our hurricane track Insider site for all of our patrons so if you would like to watch it and it's commercial free send me an email or message me through patreon my email is hermark h-u-r-r-m-a-r-k gmail.com get in touch with me and I will send you a link to the documentary page it's kind of like our own version of Netflix I don't have millions of titles like they do and I don't have 12 million subscribers like they do or whatever it's probably more than that but we do have a library of original content that I'm very proud of and the tracking the Hurricanes series every one of them starting in 2004 is on there so get in touch with me if you would like to get a link to that page I'll send it to you bookmark it I'll keep adding stuff to it over the years to come it's yours this is what you have earned by supporting our project so um 2004 the uh beginning of that documentary starts at the National Hurricane conference with Dr Bill Gray the late Dr Bill Gray the pioneer of hurricane seasonal forecasting now of course the helm has been taken over by Dr Phil klotzbach but that iconic moment where Bill Gray is on stage and he mentions that the um that the the worst is coming so to speak in fact I'm gonna just play a clip for you from that documentary and let you hear for yourself what Dr Bill Gray said and how it was going to set the stage for what was to come in the 2004 season so here it is a brief clip from the opening of tracking the Hurricanes 2004 and Dr Bill Gray's very prophetic foreboding of what was to come for 2004. in the last 38 years how many times has Florida been struck with a major hurricane what would your answer be one that's right one that's it I don't think the average Floridian knows how lucky they have been and what's coming there's a lot of trouble coming Chris was right I want to emphasize it more there's trouble on the way

ah yes so we remember that well and we know what happened all right we know what happened but before we get to that there was an event that took place that was very much in line with this whole idea of the hurricane Highway this metaphor that I use uh of how the map of the hurricane Highway has unfolded over the years sometimes the hurricane Highway goes right down I-95 or I-10 or us-17 North through eastern North Carolina or the hurricane highway is Highway 12. you know you understand it starts to become a metaphorical literal blend and what have you but it is also very apt to call it the hurricane Highway because of where else it goes It goes into winter storms because we do testing in winter storms we've talked about this and for the first time ever in 2004 it took us into Tornado Alley and as they say Let Me Explain so John John Van Pelt worked on a project called the storm study project and his background in media and radio and marketing was uh incredible still is and he was working with us with Jesse myself and Eddie and really wanted to try to help accelerate things so he put his marketing skills to use and got in touch with uh Barons the weather company I believe they're based in Alabama or Barren Weather Services as I think what is what they're officially called um and they were developing some software in cooperation and conjunction with um XM Satellite Radio now we know it is Sirius XM or whatever uh it was called mobile threat net and it was satellite based data transmission that would allow you with a device Tethered to your laptop to receive radar satellite and other Telemetry data for severe weather things like that hurricane tracking different products and remember this is before the age of ubiquitous 3G 4G um cellular coverage cellular data Verizon Sprint at T and T-Mobile we're all still working on it and so there were vast areas of the country that were still untouched by mobile data we just weren't there yet most of the coast was covered but not the Inland areas and so um Barren Services was uh coming up with this product and John convinced them to donate three units one to himself one to Jesse one to me that we could field test during 2004 and report back to Baron Weather Services uh what we thought and it would help them you know it's a test drive basically and um so it's like a sponsorship partnership and so John got these units and um we all started using them and learning them Etc this was in the early spring of o4 the National Hurricane conference is in very early April of that year uh and again that came and went and now John worked on this um this partnership with Baron and boom we got these these pieces of hardware and software called mobile threat net and so we had all talked that well maybe we could go out to the Great Plains and test it out there during a severe weather outbreak funding was not an issue I had plenty of it and I would fund that through my funding sources Lowe's and Sprint I would uh I would seed that project if we wanted to do it by the plane tickets whatever and you know we just needed something to pop up so we were in agreement that uh Mark and Jesse and John and and Jesse of course Very Much dialed into severe weather an excellent photographer of severe weather lightning um you know big weather geek just like me and so he had his finger on the pulse of severe weather much more than I did I was more the hurricane guy John was very good with the marketing he understood severe weather as well of course so each of us had our roles and we were ready we were this you know it was like the Three Amigos except not quite as comedic uh as the Three Amigos were but we did we all got along well and we all had our our own purposes and our own strengths that we brought to this group of The Three Amigos if you will and we were ready to go you know to take it out to the Plains and we just needed the opportunity and I remember that May of 2004 uh there was this very dramatic video that came out of Attica Kansas around mid-may I think it was from Scott mcpartland a storm chaser from New York I think he's Brooklyn or queens or somewhere he had gone out uh and you know with this storm Chase group Back Then There Were hundreds of storm chasers now there's tens of thousands um just so you know but Scott had gone out there and you may have seen this footage it was in Attica Kansas and a tornado was going across the shot from right to left and it goes over this house and the entire house seems to just lift straight up in the air in the vertical extreme Incredible video very close up he had zoomed in on it tripod footage you know just remarkable and that got a lot of people fired up you know it was a fairly busy tornado season uh 2004 was so we knew that the opportunity was coming and lo and behold we are approaching the uh the Memorial Day weekend and the Storm Prediction Center convective Outlook suggested a substantial risk of tornadoes and and severe weather on a general scale right in the heart of the alley Oklahoma Kansas Nebraska that kind of thing right in the middle of Tornado Alley the classic twister prone area and so we all got on conference call coordinated and pulled the trigger I purchased three plane tickets I remember this detail and I told you before it drives my wife nuts how can you remember these details and you forget other things in in life you know I don't forget anniversaries and stuff like that but it's usually did you forget to take the trash to the bin or whatever right or forget to put your laundry away yes I can forget those details but I remember this one the plane tickets round trip from Raleigh Durham to Kansas City was 185 dollars a ticket I kid you not so we're all set to go very excited about it and something else is going to happen that weekend and it was Friday that we had all convened in Raleigh all right I think it was like the 28th or something like that May 28th can you remember what happened that weekend of 2004 Memorial Day weekend 0-4 you know Bueller anyway right the opening of a very very big movie for Weather Geeks you know 1996 was Twister all right and so fast forward now to 2004 and it was the movie The Day After Tomorrow the big global warming weather catastrophe tent pole movie of 04 produced by the same people that brought us independence day uh okay so here it was big time opening weekend and by the way that movie is based on a book called The Coming Global superstorm I believe that book was a collaboration between Whitley streber and Art Bell just so you know you might want to look that up I think it's called The Coming Global uh superstorm something like that all right so the day after tomorrow Big Time movie we all went to Raleigh and met up and and John man he was so good at this he convinced the movie theater to let us pull our vehicles up right in front you know we had these storm chasing looking trucks my Chevy Tahoe John had a Dodge truck Jesse had us Ford so he pulled the trucks right up in front and they reserved some seats for us right in the middle of the theater uh they did everything except have a red carpet for us right you know so that was fun we got to see the day after tomorrow together and you know it's a big popcorn movie you throw logic and you know science out the window for the most part that you're not going to have a complete meltdown of everything in six weeks you know but it was still at least you hope not right um but it was still a very entertaining movie especially for those of us uh that are Weather Geeks you know that that was that was one of those movies that you just say wow it's amazing what they can do with computers and so afterwards we had to retire to our hotel Jesse and me John you know lived in Raleigh and tried to get some sleep because Saturday the 29th was going to be this big day so we got up bright and early 5 a.m got to the airport jumped on a plane flew out to Kansas City John rented in a suit not an Isuzu sorry a Subaru Outback I believe it was all-wheel drive right and away we went uh and that day was huge uh the Storm Prediction Center had painted in a high risk right in the middle of the alley Northern Oklahoma all of the Eastern you know almost two-thirds of Kansas and a good deal of Southeast uh Nebraska big moderate risk surrounding that Northern Oklahoma pretty much all of Oklahoma except the Panhandle all the way up to Southwest Minnesota just a large area of your classic violent long track tornadoes big supercells baseball hail you name it this was it everybody was going to be out there from the uh Storm Chaser stringers that shoot for Networks to the research groups the nssl you you know it's twister in real life and here comes the Three Amigos all right in our Subaru Outback never been in a tornado well thankfully it's funny how that slipped out no we have not been in a tornado never seen a tornado never been tornado chasing per se you know certainly not out in the Great Plains zero Real World experience and I gotta make that perfectly clear none of us have ever been out there I take that back I think Jesse was out there in the year 2000 with a group but this was not our thing you know and I certainly hadn't been out there before John hadn't been out there before Jesse I like I said I think he was out in Crosby Texas somewhere around there I think it was the year 2000 and he went with a group of people but again we are not tornado Chasers okay we're the hurricane guys so just remember that all right so we go out uh everything worked perfect grab the vehicle off we go and we headed down uh I-35 the Kansas Turnpike got to Wichita and the hours took away and it's really remarkable because the wind is just roaring from south to North across the plains and you got to think man the source of this wind this southerly deep moisture flow which is one of the main ingredients I mean that's what was so fascinating about it is you could see one of the ingredients that's gonna be that's in place already for a major outbreak you could see it with your eyes you know you can't necessarily see the water vapor you can see clouds and there was a lot of cumulus clouds low-level cumulus clouds are a big indicator of a big day but that strong southerly flow 25 30 mile per hour constant right out of the South and we realized you know I remember we pulled over we got out to take some pictures and just to stand in the Wind on the Great Plains there in Kansas and to know this wind is coming all the way from the Gulf of Mexico transported on the west side of a strong Western Atlantic Ridge hint hint right the same Ridge that would deliver all those hurricanes into the United States just a few months later you start to see the connection here why it's important for us to Branch out and study other aspects of the weather because they are all connected even if Loosely connected whether it be winter storms and the relationship of them and how they are similar to hurricanes in terms of their impacts heavy snow instead of heavy rain high wind it's not hurricane you know conditions but close to it you can still have hurricane wind warnings Storm surges at the coast so forth and so on disruption you know I call winter storms you know the cousins of hurricanes but tornado chasing so to speak what is the connection there besides testing this equipment with our uh Barren you know partnership that we're doing what is the connection well as a geographer and a weather person uh whatever I mean I'm not a degreed meteorologist but as a geographer a physical geographer uh the connection was clear and now we can see and look back and realize that big outbreak and the one before the whole pattern that produced the big tornado season of 2004 was directly correlated to the Hurricanes that we were going to have later because the Western Atlantic Ridge was strong and without that Western Atlantic Ridge pumping the moisture on the western side of it through the gulf and up the plains you don't get the landfalls that we had and we made that connection even if we didn't realize it we made that connection standing on the side of I-35 the Kansas Turnpike our hair blowing in the wind you know it was remarkable it really really was and to see the ingredients of that outbreak coming together you could feel it you know there was just something metaphysical about it you could call it spiritual fine we we all felt it uh we also felt the urge to keep going because you know what we call initiation when the uh the cap breaks the the atmosphere starts to bubble and when the cap breaks as the atmosphere warms the sun heats the ground the ground heats the air the air bubbles boom you get convection and when that happens this the supercells are just going to take off they're going to explode and so we had to try to make sure we were where we wanted to be when that happened now where was that well we decided let's get on down to South Central Kansas in and around the Mulvane Medicine Lodge kind of southwest of Wichita close to the Oklahoma border somewhere near Attica Harper County that region beautiful countryside holy cow man I just can't convey that enough it was absolutely incredible um and so that's where we wanted to go that's where most of the discussions the online we were reading stormtrack.org a great source of information back in the day remember no social media not like we have now we were reading any discussions from the SPC and you know we were looking at our Barons mobile threat net on our laptops John was driving I was shotgun Jesse in the back seat Jesse and I both running mobile threat net on our devices on our laptops yeah we all had cell phones but we don't have radar scope right we don't have Twitter and Facebook was just starting out from Mr Zuckerberg we weren't a part of that yet we didn't have the appropriate dot edu we didn't have a harvard.edu address or a stanford.edu so we couldn't get in not yet but point being we're kind of on our own and now we're using Baron's mobile threat net and uh watching the radar Etc uh so we we positioned ourselves just right and got down into South Central Kansas the afternoon wore on and sure enough the dry line sets up initiation goes uh as planned and the thunderstorms erupt the atmosphere comes to life and the supercells get going just these Titanic gargantuan Blobs of energy rotating supercells the atmosphere itself rotating horizontally because you've and what where what does that mean well you got the strong southerly wind coming in at the surface to several thousand feet and then you've got the wind coming in with the front from Southwest to Northeast above that and so the atmosphere begins to roll basically in the horizontal like a pencil on a table and then you blow up these thunderstorms and this is a simplification of it uh vertically convection goes through that rolling atmosphere and you bend that atmosphere in the vertical with downdrafts or updrafts depending on the situation and you get tornadoes that's you know the very simplified way of putting it and all of that began uh setting into motion quite literally now fortunately the supercells were not moving very fast because the later you get into the tornado season as we learned the slower the flow is the supercells don't race from Southwest to Northeast they move fairly slowly 15 20 25 miles per hour as opposed to March and April when they can move in some cases 50 to 70 miles per hour no kidding that's a true thing and it's generally that's the rule of thumb the later in the season you go the slower the flow and the supercells tend to slow down and that was a good thing so um it started so the supercells get going and uh we're ready we're watching the mobile threat net and I had an HP laptop you know just checking it out it updated every few minutes so we're down there near Mulvane and the afternoon is wearing on remember it gets dark pretty late out there this time of year um after 8 30 9 o'clock probably so we got plenty of daylight left uh Chasers are reporting tornadoes developing in Oklahoma large hail you name it and so we wait we're in Harper County on a country road just kind of hanging out we got the mobile threat net going and by the way the mobile threat net has our GPS and so we know where we are in relation to the storms and we are some of the only people in the world that had this at the time and that's a fact you know more some people had it but it wasn't like everybody had radar scope or whatever that you that you have now on your smartphone we had it in the vehicle and so you just had to line yourself up with the vector of the supercell and it'll go right over you you can't miss and it's just a matter of what does it produce a tornado or not you know there's no guessing if you just get yourself lined up the thing will go right over you and that's exactly what we did if we don't want to go right over us because that's that's just dumb you want it to pass to your Northwest by about a mile or so preferably two to three that's the safest way to view a tornado in my opinion not gonna do the Reed Timber um and and other groups driving an armored vehicle into a tornado nope that's not my thing and it wasn't Jessie or John's thing either so there we are we're waiting and the supercells are coming we line ourselves up with the flow and they're heading right for us but again just off to the northwest of us that's where they they should pass and it was remarkable you know uh the sky had this beautiful Anvil come over the Cirrus Anvil tops of the clouds mamatus clouds up there way up at the high part of near the stratosphere kissing the stratosphere the tops of these thunderstorms blowing up 50 60 000 feet uh severe thunderstorms tornadoes you name it the outbreak is commencing in this one cell heads our way it's got this big bell-shaped bottom uh Jesse knows all about that he's guiding us directing us as to what to do where to be so forth and so on and it's very slow moving you know that's the good thing again it wasn't just racing off to the Northeast and we're waiting you know when when will we see the wall cloud the lowering base of the supercell when would that happen and so we positioned ourselves out on a dirt road the rolling planes out there all set in front of us beautiful sky kind of a orangish pink color to it and you can see a few groups of Chasers out there I mean now there would be thousands everywhere but there was clumps you know you could look in the distance with binoculars or whatever and you'd see five or six Chasers over on that Hilltop and not a hill but the Rolling Hills out there uh and you look down the road a half a mile there might be three or four over there whatever they were around and maybe a couple of them would drive by with their Mesonet trucks kind of like what our buddy Derek Thompson has and what we have on the Tahoe or had back in the day an anemometer pressure sensors humidity sensors all that kind of stuff the storm chasers were out that's the bottom line but it wasn't hordes of them like we have today and so I'm I'm just as eager as I could possibly be man I'm about to just like a kid waiting to get into Disney World you know uh you know Jesse when we're gonna see the wall cloud when's it gonna happen I mean it was crazy he's like just be patient you know not all of them are going to do it and this might not make a tornado you just don't know and we wait and we wait and we wait and finally the base of this supercell begins to lower and we start to make out with binoculars John's looking through the binoculars the beginnings of a funnel cloud and Jesse's oh photo Cloud there it is you know we're all so excited and it happens it starts to drop this funnel and it's just like you see in the movies and on TV you know documentaries The Wizard of Oz you're right you know what was that from the 30s that they made that movie 1939 or something and they did a really good job of that I I thought um and it was just mesmerizing this finger just comes down out of the clouds touches the landscape kicks up the dust and the dirt and just dances across very gracefully you could barely hear the roar it was probably two miles away something like that uh just incredible I called my family almost in tears you know just oh wow daddy is seeing a tornado in my little kids they couldn't they're like what you know whatever and my wife same thing all right great day great you know Dad's on the phone he's seeing a tornado woohoo you know he's like whatever but for me it was a very very big moment uh as a weather geek and so forth you know just incredible and um you know we're standing out there taking pictures taking video and we look up and this large swirl is above us supercells were moving in and they were just developing around us and in the field behind us a tornado drops I kid you not a small rope tornado but a tornado nonetheless and then another one just up the road a couple miles I mean it was literally right out of the day after tomorrow tornadoes everywhere well that's an exaggeration there was several of them the one that was three miles away whatever going off towards Wichita a small rope tornado behind us and then a larger what they call a stovepipe tornado developing up to our Northeast and so we jumped in the Subaru and started chasing and Jesse snapping pictures taking video tornadoes dropping honestly here and there you know they would be short-lived some of them and they would they would retract and go back up into the the cloud base it was just crazy uh and John did a great job of driving these dirt roads we didn't see much hail which I was disappointed in I I'm fascinated by hail I think it's an interesting phenomenon uh and I kept asking Jesse you know when are we going to see the hail core he's like bro we don't want to get into the Bears cage where the hail core is it'll destroy this truck This SUV or whatever it is and you know and you get stuck and that's just a bad thing we don't want to see hail I was like all right uh so we head on out kind of chasing this one tornado and it developed into a very large wedge kind of triangle triangular wedge-shaped tornado not a large wedge like some of those uh big tornadoes you see like Moore Oklahoma and whatnot but large enough you know it was there and um just incredible we were all so excited uh the baron system worked perfectly uh we couldn't have been happier you know we knew exactly where we were in relation to the supercells uh we had an incredible Day filmed and photographed four or five separate tornado events and the you know the night Came Upon Us as they say the supercells raced on off to the Northeast there was flash flooding tornado damage you know houses wrecked we would come across areas and there wasn't I don't think there was any deaths that day fairly sparsely populated areas that these tornadoes hit very well forecast so people took heed went into their tornado shelters Etc so I don't remember for sure but I don't think that it was a big catastrophe as far as the human toll but you know for us it was remarkable really really remarkable and uh we went to the uh to a hotel uh up in um Kansas City or somewhere I don't even remember just somewhere between Wichita maybe it was the outskirts of Kansas City that night and this is still the same night the night of the 29th and I kid you not we were due to fly back the next day on the 30th back to Raleigh and that's exactly what we did we got up you know had breakfast somewhere went to turn in the rental car and we flew back to Raleigh Durham and so there it was three guys who had never purposely gone tornado chasing if you will you know and well that's what it was went out and saw five tornadoes using a new piece of technology and when we shared that Jesse posted a nice write-up on it I'll put a link to it uh in the patreon uh post when I post this podcast episode I'll put a link to Jesse's write-up that he did it's like a blog post that he did at his website uh vastormphoto.com don't worry about remembering that I'll post a link to it um but you know here we were all of us went out there very little experience right and we use this technology and we posted it he on his website me on Hurricane track.com word got out people talked about it they were like you guys you what you know like people had been chasing tornadoes for years and have never seen one and we went out on the first try using this technology and we saw four or five at least maybe even more than that little short-lived tornadoes that would come down and then disappear but we did it and we came back and it was like a dream like did that really happen and all of a sudden it's Memorial Day weekend is wrapping up and it's time for hurricane season and you know the forecast was for a fairly busy season if I recall uh from Colorado State University um you know it it looked like we could have a hurricane season right and we all know what happened um and so that wraps up part one of looking back at the year 2004. when we get to part two next week uh I'll I'll talk about some of the activities that we did with Lowe's and Sprint just a few stories to share there as we lead up to the first hurricane and Big Time experience for us and what we learned from you know going out on the Great Plains Etc uh for This Tornado Outbreak when we get to the first hurricane and that was Alex in early August of 04 that'll be covered in the next episode so before I wrap up uh what did we learn you know just briefly we took back what we got we reported to Barron's you know how wonderful the software and the hardware worked and remember it's so important to keep the perspective here we take it for granted I use radar scope a great app you know and it shows where we are in relation to any weather from the lightest sprinkle to the category 5 hurricane Michael I mean it's incredible what we have at our fingertips now on our smartphones on our iPads and our tablets otherwise but back then we had to do it with uh XM radio and baron Services mobile threat net wow what an incredible uh Testament to the technology that our Collective education and experience got us into position we knew what we were doing and then the technology guided us to where we needed to be and we saw almost a half a dozen tornadoes in a single afternoon and evening you just have to say wow you know and not many people know this story you know I'm not known for tornado chasing you know that's not my forte but again that connection and I'll say it again the season the tornado season and it kept going into June and finally died down as they do but the signs were there of that strong Western Atlantic Ridge and we all know what happened after that and we will get to those stories over the next several weeks we will go through Alex we'll go through Bonnie and Charlie oh yes the infamous Charlie we'll get to Gaston and Francis yes Gaston was before Francis how could that be well stay tuned you'll have to tune in to a future episode to learn how that could be it makes sense if you think about it uh and then of course we had Ivan and the great Ivan right and then Gene yes a lot to go through now you know why 04 is going to take me several weeks which is a good thing we want to stretch this out and I can't sit down and do six hours all at once all right so there you go that wraps up this edition of stories from the hurricane highway I appreciate you so much it means so much that you're listening from your side uh it's awesome so thank you very much for supporting this project and I hope you're learning something along the way uh I am Mark suddath for hurricane track.com the first part of a look back at the year 2004 until next week I'll talk to you then