Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 17 Transcript - 2004 Part 3 / 8

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Hello and welcome to stories from the hurricane highway I am your host Mark Sudduth this is the podcast where we take a look back at my career the miles down the hurricane Highway this is the episode 2004 part 3 for March the 25th 2020 and in this episode we really start getting into the meat of hurricanes here you know the big time you remember that year 2004 was a very very big season and we are really starting to get into some of the more compelling stories of hurricane intercepts for you know me personally and our team the hurricane intercept research team as it's called the hurricane track.com field crew whatever the band of merry men you want to call us um we were there and so 2004 you remember that season you know we had Alex then we had Bonnie and we had Charlie uh and then Gaston and Francis Gaston actually made landfall before Francis uh because Francis came off the coast of Africa and took a long time to get over to the United States then of course we had Ivan and finally Gene at the end of September 2004 but it all started out with Hurricane Alex at the very end of July first few days of August and that is the topic of conversation for this episode of stories from the hurricane highway so I'm glad you could join in again this is supported by patreon and exclusive for our patreon subscribers supporters subscribers just isn't the right word is it I don't think so it's not like I send you a magazine each month it's our crowdfunding group that makes this possible as well as our hurricane track insiders that have some of you have been with uh me supporting my work my projects and that filters down to the rest of the team uh volunteers different people that have helped out over the years some of you have been doing this for 15 years helping out so here you go this is the next episode as we journey down in this situation the hurricane Highway goes down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina that's where we were for Hurricane Alex so let's begin uh so remember we had this idea of the hurricane landfall project the old Isuzu Rodeo that I bought in 1999 it went it went through many hurricanes itself was going to be sort of relegated to becoming a crash test dummy if you will we were going to put it out in a hurricane put instruments on it meteorological equipment uh cameras unmanned cameras that would just record everything just like they do when they test aircraft and vehicles for crash tests survivability engineering studies whatever I wanted a way that we could record what happens in a hurricane at Point Blank Range and this was the way to do it back then you know you know how we do it today it's come a long way and this is where it starts that's what I'm talking about we start to get into the meat of that project this is it man this is all the other stuff was the uh you know the appetizer and you know the warm-up you know they bring you the bread when you go to a nice restaurant then you get your appetizer this is the main course here we go this is the beginning of the main course anyway so Alex uh formed at the end of July and it was right off the Southeast coast and we were ready we were not going to have the hurricane landfall project Isuzu ready just yet and this really wasn't a viable candidate Alex for leaving the Isuzu out but one component of it that was ready was the ability to take our anemometer and have it record good solid Digital Data and record that broadcast it to the website we had the webcam and I really wanted to have that for Alex out there on the Outer Banks and it would it would come off the Chevy Tahoe uh you know remember we bought the Tahoe in 2003 and so there it was you know the first couple of days of August and Alex was approaching the North Carolina Outer Banks it was not forecast to be too significant but you know it it turned out otherwise as we'll get to so um Jesse bass and John Van Pelt and myself the three of us were going to tackle Alex on the Outer Banks and we set out um August 1st 2nd somewhere around there went down to the Buxton area and uh on down to Hatteras Village and Hatteras itself uh like where the literally owned Cape Hatteras Hatteras Island you know south of Rodanthe and all that pretty close to the Ferry Landing down there I think that it was a um a Holiday Inn ex well I don't know if it was an Express I think it was just a Holiday Inn that was out there this is way back in 2004 some of you folks that listen to this that know the history of the Outer Banks I think there was a Holiday Inn out there but we stayed at a hotel in Hatteras pretty close to the fairy landing area and this is really interesting in this episode we're going to finally get our first taste of crowd sourcing if you will uh you know we talk about crowdfunding it helps to fund stuff and makes it financially possible but also people that step up that offer their expertise maybe a place to stay whatever you'll see it's coming in this episode Hurricane Alex was the birth of that and it's just amazing how that's evolved over the years since as well huh so there we were um waiting you know Alex is a tropical storm Hurricane Center had it coming the center of it coming just off of Cape Hatteras in that vicinity um maybe makes landfall maybe it doesn't and there was quite a bit of uh people down there on the Outer Banks a lot of people in Ocracoke which is an island um you know you go across Hatteras Inlet and there's Ocracoke Island there's a large Canadian population down there relatively speaking during the summer Canadians like to come down and enjoy the Outer Banks so there's a lot of people down there and they really didn't call for evacuations it was not like this long track Cape Verde hurricane that gave us days and days and days of notice and that Alex didn't look too threatening and so there was not this big push to evacuate I mean we were able to just drive on out there no no roadblocks nothing checked into the hotel no problem and so I remember we got up in the morning of August 3rd and I remember at some point that day or maybe late at night on the second somewhere around there these little things that stick out I remember John saying he's a hurricane you know he was reading one of the advisories from the National Hurricane Center and it was upgraded to a hurricane so he's like he's a hurricane and we were like wow you know the first hurricane of the Season here we go and it's really true you know remember the movie Jaws when the mayor is talking to the police chief about the whole shark problem up there in Amity Island and he says You Know Chief you know you say Barracuda and people kind of look around what what do you say but when you say shark you know at a beach Town people really take notice and the same thing I believe holds true when we talk about hurricanes and tropical storms that when it's a tropical storm people tend to oh it's a tropical storm it should be okay but when you say hurricane it's got a certain ring to it I think we can all agree to that and you know it was upgraded to Hurricane Alex and so it kind of heightened everything even more so what had happened I had an email and remember no social media yet not like we have now but I got an email we had email I got an email from a family in Hatteras Village the Harrisons uh Robert and Vicki Harrison emailed me around the time that we were leaving they were following our work on Hurricane track.com my blog post Etc um back then they weren't called blogs it was just you know the the hurricane outlooking discussion or whatever text version now it's a video but um whoa how long we've how far we've come right um I still do blogs but it's just so much easier to do a video These Days uh anyhow the Harrison sent me an email and said you know we live in Hatteras Village I understand you're coming to the Outer Banks to our area if you need anything we're right there in Hatteras Village we own a fish house uh we live here we're permanent residents let us know if you need any help and so you know hey thanks I appreciate that I wrote back and told them that and anyhow uh one very important note at this time in 04 none of our Sprint Technology worked except the phone the actual voice part the Sprint data cards that we had didn't work on the Outer Banks they had they didn't have roaming agreements yet like they do now and so these air cards that Sprint was donating as part of our partnership weren't working so we did not have wireless internet on this Mission and so that was a big problem so we had to get data email whatever at the hotel plugging into the telephone modem you know that route remember those modems those were horrible but especially when you think about what we have now but it was what it was right so we went over to the Harrison's house early that morning as Alex is coming and met with them talked to them real nice family and um we literally had brought with us like a hundred feet of phone line remember that landline phone lines you know you got a younger crowd that tunes into this maybe maybe you know what I'm talking about what's a phone line it's a hundred foot of phone cable and we uh we're gonna work with them to plug in to their house you know unplug their phone plug our phone in our our phone line in and plug it into our computer and have it come out 100 feet into their front yard I kid you not this was the arrangement and I would sit in the Tahoe with the weather instrumentation on connected so that we could at least get information out and get information in and so that was the deal so we put the anemometer uh on top of the Tahoe in this special Outrigger that was built by Edwards Crane Company here in Wilmington that the six foot pipe slid down inside this shaft if you will you run a pin through it to tighten it off the Chevy Tahoe is about seven eight feet tall or probably less than that because it has to go under whatever six feet whatever it is plus the roof rack and then you put the pipe on there we were basically looking at about 14 feet above ground level for the anemometer just shy of um of five meters which is about 15 feet and so we had everything ready to go and we drove down there Alex is coming uh Jesse had his vehicle a Ford Explorer I believe it was something like that John had his Dodge truck I think John came with his Dodge truck you know uh or he just rode with me I think he I think he did he went out with her with his Dodge truck if memory serves and um anyway we're all together and Alex is coming and um Jesse was just up the road a little bit the outer bands are coming Alex is moving pretty quick he's going to get in and out not a huge hurricane but boy it was intensifying uh that's the thing here it was definitely picking up and um I remember the night before Jesse got some pictures of beautiful lightning uh he's a good lightning photographer you know and just this anticipation that Here Comes This hurricane but here's the other part that's really exciting remember in the first episode of 2004 part one um that mobile threat net that we had that we went out to Tornado Alley with well we were using that on the Outer Banks so we had at least satellite based through XM XM weather is what it was called through Barren Services we had data coming in via satellite and we had our position plotted so we had this radar signature of Alex as it's crawling up just off the South and North Carolina coastlines and so we were on top of it from the get-go uh so you know there it was coming on up it's coming up the coast we're down there in Hatteras um you know Jesse went around and shot some b-roll you know in Hatteras Village you know he didn't want to venture too far from where we were but you know we were getting the job done documenting what was going on uh Jesse went over to Frisco and you know again ventured around where we were at the Harrison's house in Hatteras Village proper all right so as it goes along uh throughout the day Alex intensifies and it becomes a solid category two with wins over 100 miles per hour all right so it's coming up the coast it's broad daylight the Tahoe sitting right in the front yard of the Harrison's it's got the instrumentation on it you know John and I are in there Jessie's in his truck uh and we're ready you know it's like wow we're gonna actually get very close to the eye of a strengthening hurricane here which is pretty rare to do and there was virtually no other Storm Chasers if you will down there I won't say that there weren't any but there was very few for sure and very few media interests at all so we kind of had the place to ourselves and it was wild you know it comes in and the wind is coming in from the East and the Northeast and Alex gets real close the winds are coming up um pretty pretty incredible rain bands uh Jesse comes closer to where we are he's not venturing far off anymore um we're keeping an eye on everything we're nice and safe we're in contact with the Harrisons um updating hurricane track.com as best I can it's almost like updating Twitter if you think about it uh we're taking video and we're Gathering all this data and we literally have live wind and pressure data right there on the Tahoe and it really starts to rock and roll you know by um uh early afternoon late morning early afternoon that northwest corner of the eye wall comes right across the cape and goes over Buxton down to Hatteras Village and we just get nailed with it you know just incredible winds you can hear the power lines the wind going through the power lines the roaring sound it was phenomenal I'm not gonna you know pretend that it wasn't it was truly fascinating and absolutely exhilarating and to be honest not a single ounce of fear none there was no oh I'm scared and you know that comes later if you know the history don't worry there's going to be a point where we all get scared but it's not Alex I'll say that um so it's exhilarating it's absolutely incredible But please understand it's not just because we're in a hurricane all right it's because we're collecting this data while we're in this Beast that to me to John and to Jesse was equally as important and maybe even more so than just being in the hurricane we had a reason to be there that was going to help scientists at the National Hurricane Center we didn't know it yet but it would so the afternoon wears on you know and it just cranks up we're getting 50 60 mile per hour winds on the vehicle um the rain bands are just incredible I had never seen anything like it like this especially out in the open like that on the Outer Banks remember I went through Bertha I went through Fran Dennis Bonnie Floyd all back in the Wilmington area and those you were either at night or you know not quite as strong or whatever Alex Outer Banks wide open area broad daylight strengthening very very Benchmark hurricane for all three of us uh so as as it goes on Alex eventually reaches the center of the storm the center of the hurricane is now um parallel to us you know it's just off to our East then it moves north of us and if you know the Outer Banks and where we're located you know what comes next as it moves North and then starts to fade just east of North and in fact it was always on a slightly east of North heading what happens the wind comes screaming down the Pamlico sound and pushes the Pamlico sound into Hatteras Island there which is basically where we are it's oriented generally east to west it's on a slight tilt in an angle but the wind is coming and pushing the sound perpendicular to Hatteras Village Ocracoke that area and The Surge starts to come up and we're like all of a sudden I look around of all the excitement all the exhilaration of everything and John and I are looking around and there's water all around us the yard at the Harrison's has water in it and it's you know sound water sea water for the most part you know the Pamlico sound is generally brackish but you know it's not rain it is some rain but it's freaking storm surge and it's coming up quick so we're like yeah we got to disconnect this phone thing and we probably need to go because right across the street at Hatteras Harbor uh uh the ground is higher there and there's all these vehicles parked over there from the locals that know that's the highest ground around and we're like we got to get out of here so we unplugged the phone line from the the laptop in the Tahoe and you know throw it out the window whatever and uh it's time to go so we drove out of there and the water now is almost up to the front grill area almost up to the Chevy Tahoe logo for real on the Tahoe it's coming up quick just pouring in off the Pamlico sound as this 105 mile per hour Category 2 hurricane is just blasting the Outer Banks and we get over to this Hatteras Harbor area Jesse's already over there he films us and we're on High Ground now now we're looking down several feet onto Highway 12 onto the Harrison's property there's a cemetery next door Etc and the storm surge is just roaring in there absolutely incredible I mean just to see it doing that the wind pushing on the water forcing it into the land honestly it was remarkable and it really left an impression on me that to this day I'll never forget but it was never frightening we never worried about losing the vehicles we never worried about our safety we were worried about the Harrison's you know because the water was coming up and they yeah they survived Isabel which was a devastating hurricane for that part of the Outer Banks a year earlier roughly uh and the water was almost up to the first floor you know their house is elevated and the water was almost it's not like on stilts elevated but it's up and you know several feet and the water had almost reached their first floor and we were across the way at Hatteras Harbor watching that and um it was just you know uh I want to say frightening but it was we felt helpless like these poor people that were helping us and now they're going to get flooding in their house this is awful you know it's a very helpless feeling and you can see them scrambling to try to grab things and stuff was floating around and it was just not a good scene it wasn't horrible but we got a real taste that you know wow you know these things they impact people uh you see it firsthand it was it was a very surreal experience to witness it you know from Hatteras Harbor there on our little piece of high ground and um so uh while we were out there I do remember this we were able to I think I can't remember how we did it but I do know that we sent an email or filled out this online form at the amateur radio uh website for the hurricane center it's called wx4 NHC that's their call sign wx488c and they have a website wx4nhc.org and they have an online report you can fill out and uh we either did that or send them an email directly somehow we submitted our data that we had got a gust 105 and whatever the pressure was Etc and they actually put that in one of the intermediate advisories that was really cool to see it show up in an intermediate advisory that a wind gust was recently reported from Buxton or Hatteras Village whatever it was of 105 miles per hour they didn't you know name Us by name but we knew that that was us and uh uh so you know it leaves thankfully you know Alex moves on out and it actually strengthened pretty good out in the North Atlantic from there which they seem to do that don't they it's remarkable how many times they just keep on strengthening when they first get started usually when they come in if they're dying they stay dying but when they start strengthening they stay strengthening it's just incredible how that seems to work uh the ones that either just scrape the coast or you know 25 50 miles offshore um anyhow uh it starts to die down enough and we're able to get out and about ever so slightly ever you know a little bit more driving around just a little bit but there's storm surge everywhere uh and cars are flooded they're inundated houses are flooded and the wind you know Alex starts to accelerate and the wind really starts to drop off as the afternoon progressed and we did some surveying you know took video of what was happening and um talk to the Harrisons and they yep yeah when they had water come in the first floor there uh but you know it wasn't too bad and they're they're used to it and they had a game plan and they were ready to bounce back you know they made it through Isabel and they'll make it through this uh and you know we we just were in awe of what we saw it was in and out like hurricane in a day you know you get these big suckers that come in that just take days to get here Irma you know even Michael a two to three day event leading up to landfall you know Alex was fairly quick and it wouldn't be the first time that that happened obviously you'll hear about other very quick storms and as we go through these uh next many many years of stories from the hurricane highway but Alex was really fascinating because it was in and out and sure enough by late afternoon almost to early evening we were able to start leaving and we got off of uh Hatteras and uh through Buxton on up uh across and moving North now up towards uh Avon and and Salvo and waves and Rodanthe and we saw the evidence of storm surge What's called the rack line some people call it thatch you know all that crud that grass and Reeds and stuff that gets pushed up it leaves a high water Mark it's like Nature's High Water Market shows you how high the water got It's called The thatch line or whatever or the rack line and um we saw that we documented that and I remember there was a Lexus a Lexus car that was uh mired in some of that junk uh up there um I think just north of uh uh of the Buxton area uh somebody trying to leave and they got swamped and their vehicle was was you know flushed into the surge um and we left you know like oh okay well there's that and um went back you know to our you know Jesse went on home to Portsmouth John went back to Raleigh uh I went back home to Wilmington and was just like wow you know I can't believe that and Alex went on off into the North Atlantic uh and you know continued to strengthen I I don't remember if it became a cat 3 that year I'd have to look that up I don't have everything memorized but it was a memorable first hurricane of the 2004 season um and uh that was August 3rd right so after that I had a talk that I was supposed to do just a few days later uh over in Morehead City North Carolina along the Crystal Coast with a uh it was like a small hurricane conference like a community Town Hall Hurricane conference and I remember I scraped together some video uh and put a few highlights together and I showed it at this conference and people were just floored you know and remember this is all video that we took we had to take it ourselves there was no unmanned cameras yet that's coming but it wasn't ready yet and uh I was at that conference I was with um a good friend of mine uh that was a meteorologist out of New Bern now he's down in Savannah his name is Jonathan Myers and he was at this conference uh different people in Emergency Management were there um and I remember I was and literally I think it was like the very next week or whatever it's just a few days later and it might have been just two or three days later I remember I was just exhausted like it was like coming off of you know an emotional High you know I was like wow I mean it was so amazing to experience the full force of an intensifying Cat 2 hurricane that I was still you know truly and what is it exasperated I mean he could just tell that it really left its mark on me but what was really interesting and foreshadowing of what was to come as we sort of wrap up this episode here uh while we're watching all you know uh or doing this conference sorry why were you know so I'm at the conference Etc while all this is going on of course we're still watching the tropics that's what I was trying to say of course we are and um so other things are starting to still Brew there's tropical waves coming across off Africa through the open Atlantic the main development region and into the Caribbean and you know back then we didn't have what we do now with these 20 30 yellow orange red you know high probability medium we didn't have that like we do now um but we were all watching you know the tropical uh the uh Atlantic tropical weather outlook was signaling that maybe something's going to try to develop towards the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico uh as we move through the you know these next several days towards August 10th 11th 12th around there and we were on top of that right and so what comes next and this is what we'll talk about in next week's episode um truly defined everything that came after that was the you know if we were like yeah let's get this hurricane landfall project thing going it could be pretty cool a lot you know we weren't like lackadaisical about it but what happens next with the B and the C Storm Bonnie and Charlie and you know if you if you know you know right and if you don't know wow you're in for a a real real roller coaster ride there um that's what's next for next week's episode is Bonnie and Charlie because those two events literally redefined how we were gonna have to do things going forward and Alex was the start and who knew right that Alex would be the first of six landfall missions that the crew would have and remember it's myself it's Jesse bass Eddie Smith and John Van Pelt there's four of us and you know you can look back and you go wow that was incredible but had we known then what we know now you know I don't know it's like would you have still done it uh and I can't wait to talk about that for next week as we do jump into Bonnie and Charlie but as I sort of summarize things up here and wrap this episode up it was very important the data that we collected in Alex and I want to talk about that just for a moment and then we'll call it a night here with this episode so we have this Digital Data Logger uh which is twenty six hundred dollars or something like that it's just crazy expensive thank goodness for lows and Sprint funding this operation back in the day now we have crowdfunding and um you know obviously extremely happy about that probably even more so considering how many people you know are chipping in it's nice to have a corporate sponsorship or partnership no doubt but you know now we have the world where we can have hundreds of people all chip in and it ends up in the same with the same result that you're able to do things so back then of course we had these big corporate partners with lows in Sprint and we were able to afford this technology and I had you know great help from people like my very best friend from Grade School uh his name is Jason and you know he lives up in the Raleigh area works for SAS Institute as I mentioned in another episode SAS Institute is a statistical analysis company in Cary North Carolina and he wrote this program that would talk to the anemometer and it would gather the wind data and store it in a digital log file because that's really really important and that's what I'm going to emphasize as I close it out here we have this file that begins early in the afternoon or late morning whatever it was uh you know we pick a start Point once we were stationary at the Harrison's house and then we drove over across the street which is just a couple of tens of yards away so it's still geographically the same area so we had very accurate vehicle mounted data 14 feet above the ground with the anemometer up on that mass that I talked about we were basically in the same spot again plus or minus you know 10 20 30 yards whatever you know for several hours so that was really important because I took that data uh and I parsed it out you know to where it was just the the main part of Alex and I sent that to the National Hurricane Center and it really mattered to be able to have an observation from somebody and a group of some bodies that knew what they were doing you know it's not a tower mounted in 10 feet of concrete you know hardened whatever Tower uh we'd love to have that where everything's 10 meters and it's solid in the ground Bubba well you gotta take what you can get and this was really really important to us because you know Max Mayfield the director of the National Hurricane Center at the time was extremely grateful and you know to see it show up later in the tropical Cyclone report and I do believe in that situation we got credit for it I have to go back and look uh but I know it was in the report I know they got it you know Dr Jack Bevin Dr Richard pasch you know Max Mayfield Ed Rappaport Stacy Stewart all the guys down there from you know the um that era now those younger fellas and there now um it really meant a lot to us folks and and it it was that's what I want to emphasize that we captured something that that helped and it's just one observation point but it was so important because they had verification that at least the wind gusts were category two you know and that's right there at 14 feet you know flight level where the airplane is flying which was probably out over the ocean the hurricane hunter five thousand feet maybe fifteen hundred but I doubt it I doubt they got that low um I think they probably did five to ten thousand feet back then for Alex um you know so your open air observations to do a drop signed or whatever you're always going to have higher wind speeds because you don't have any impediments out there no frictional effects Etc but just to get these gusts you know in the radar signature looked you know it kind of coordinated with that and uh it all um made our data even more believable and it was just a really really good feeling to contribute to the science in a way that was truly greatly appreciated Max really appreciated it he was still a little concerned that we're out there having to do it in person you know Max is a very very good man and he wasn't you know going to ignore the fact that you know well you guys are out there you got to be real careful I mean that's how he talked he was like your grandpa talking to you uh and he cares about you but we had data and he knew that it meant a lot to us to be able to contribute that data so that's a real big Point here that we weren't just out there to be out there you know we had a reason uh and we succeeded you know we were ready and or at least we thought we were all right I laugh because I know what's next huh boy oh boy so there you go so that's Alex Hurricane Alex the first um sortie as they call it right the first field Mission out into the Atlantic hurricanes of 2004 along the beautiful and vulnerable North Carolina Outer Banks uh the band of merry men we all survived and we would live to fight another day and it wouldn't be long you know you know what comes next Bonnie and Charlie and we will talk about that on the next episode of stories from the hurricane Highway in a week alright so as always thank you so much for tuning in it means more to me than you will ever know it's fantastic your support on patreon on Hurricane track Insider that's what makes this all possible and again this is my gift to you these little inside stories of the hundreds of thousands of miles literally literally literally uh down the hurricane Highway and in this instance like I said at the beginning it was Highway 12 along the North Carolina Outer Banks for Hurricane Alex all right well you have been listening to stories from the hurricane Highway as always as I've said thank you for tuning in I hope you do so next week because this is where it gets really interesting have a good one I'll talk to you again next week