Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 1 Episode 6 Transcript - 1999 Part 2/3
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Well hello everybody Mark Sudduth hurricanetrack.com here welcome to another chapter another installment another episode of stories from the hurricane Highway we are talking about the year 1999 and this is part two in part one I went over uh a lot of the things that were happening earlier that year in the early parts of 99 the big storm surge map project and that I was doing with the Army Corps of Engineers and the project IMPACT program and I was also doing my hurricane tracking Maps remember 1999 was a really really big year one of the Benchmark you know Shining Moment years of my career and we got all the way through into the summer time you know I had my website hurricane99.com that's also the year that I purchased hurricane track.com from Network Solutions uh the internet registrar site uh everything was rolling people were enjoying the site already you know it was it was full steam ahead for all things hurricane track and for me in my business in my career um you know I had my second child in May his name Nicholas we call him Cole for short so I have two boys at this point and um you know and now we're into hurricane season the hurricane season of 1999 and it was predicted to be yeah fairly active by Dr Gray who was still alive back then of course doing his forecasting seasonal forecasting uh at Colorado State University so we're in the summer of 1999 and I had purchased we kind of left off in part one that I had purchased my first quote-unquote Chase vehicle and that was an Isuzu Rodeo manual transmission green in color and the very first thing I did is put these decals on it uh the hurricane intercept research team and so remember it was uh myself and there was people that I had started to meet through the early years of the internet there especially as the internet became more interconnected through early instances of what we now know of as social media the geocities websites and through email and people knowing my website and so forth so there's a couple of players involved here there's me and you know I've got this vehicle and it's going to have a a weather station mounted on it at Davis weather station I did all that and then I had this good friend of mine that I had worked with during Hurricane Bonnie remember 1998 his name is Jamie Arnold and he was still in atmospheric sciences student at UNC Charlotte and of course he said after Bonnie you know yes anytime something pops up if I'm available to come down you know we can chase these hurricanes together that's what we well intercept them is the more accurate term and then I was also working with a guy named Eddie Smith Eddie Smith was at the New Hanover County Emergency Management part of a project impact internship or something like that he was working with Dan Summers office Dan Summers was the director of Emergency Management back then in New Hanover County and so we had you know all these moving Parts all these uh players if you will that were willing to help out if the need arose and in the background to all of this I'm still working on these big projects right the the 21 Coastal counties of North Carolina all of these storm surge Maps this Monumental big project and I had been working on it for several months starting in very early 1999 and it was about to come to fruition the maps were coming out we were going to give them away through the grocery stores and through a drugstore we had a drugstore I don't think it's no longer an entity in the Carolinas it was called car drug k-e-r-r and it was based out of Durham they were one of the sponsors and one of the active participants in this program they helped with some funding and they also helped of course with distribution and we would have a big media presence I mean this was a really really big deal it was the first time in the history of the United States hurricane program that we were going to distribute storm surge inundation maps to the public in Mass you know and available by the tens of thousands so all of this is going on we get into early August and I think I last talked about this meeting that we had out in Dare County uh with I think it was the area C North Carolina has different areas um I guess ABC I don't know if there's more than that but it was an area C Regional hurricane planning meeting or something of that nature and I went out we were finishing up everything on this project I went out there with the Corps of Engineers representatives and we were just forging ahead here we go the maps are coming out soon whatever you know and at the same time it looked like the hurricane season was going to kick in uh to high gear um so there we are that's the stage being set it's August and as you know after about August 15th the hurricane season usually ramps up climatologically speaking and that's what happened and so right at the end of August there um a tropical wave a disturbance developed down off the coast of Florida in the Bahamas and we had already gone through the ABC storms of that year and so now we were up to Dennis the first name storm of 1999 was Arlene and we would revisit that again six years six years later of course in 2005 but that's many years down the road okay uh just wait until you I mean 1999 and by the way this is part two there's going to be a part three I kid you not 1999 is going to take three weeks to cover because there's a lot to cover so Dennis tropical storm Dennis soon to be hurricane Dennis I've got a computer remember I had my Gateway 2000 right and I've got my website hurricane99.com I'm able to do what we now know is blogging doing my text version of the hurricane outlooking discussion uh you know blog if you will and it was very very popular it really caught on quickly and I was making friends in the Wilmington area with different businesses including one of the Media Partners now through cumulus media that bought up some radio stations in Wilmington that were at one time independent including Wave radio and wgni radio where a gentleman by the name of Mike Farrow worked at wgni as a disc jockey and WG and I build themselves as all the way back to the mid 90s when our hurricane Siege began with uh Bertha and Fran and then Bonnie 1998 was Bonnie um WG and I build themselves as the hurricane Information Station and Mike Farrow was very in tune as to how to talk about hurricanes it was always very captivating the station did a really good job Bertha Fran Bonnie gave them a lot of uh practice honestly and so as a as a side note as a what they call a program note next week's chapter of this podcast or part three or whatever you want to call call it as a sub chapter at this point I guess right I'm going to be with Mike Farrow we're going to sit together in a room where he works now at a different radio station and he will be my first guest finally we're getting into the the point where we'll have guests all right and so Mike will join me next week um we're actually going to record it this coming Sunday so next week's podcast will feature Mike Farrow and we're going to kind of go back a little bit and talk about the Hurricanes of 96 98 and how that got all of us ready for this big sort of climax in 1999 with Dennis and then what would come 11 days later and that of course was Floyd in case you wanted the plot ruined that's what happens but it's how we get there that I think you'll find very interesting so as you can tell there's a lot of people now involved with what I'm doing so there's a lot of cast members that come in so to speak to this story so Dennis is coming I'm able to keep up with everything very well uh on um the computer on my workstation in my house in Leland North Carolina I lived my wife and I my two boys an infant newborn and my now two-year-old son at this point in time Nathan um you know I worked out of my house and so anytime I had to leave I didn't have a laptop and even if I did have a laptop I didn't have wireless internet back then there may have been an early iteration of it available through GTE or maybe even Sprint at that time maybe a t i I don't remember for sure I know I inquired through some different channels that I knew you of people in telecoms in southeast North Carolina nobody really had a viable solution but I didn't have a laptop and that was really aggravating because if I left the house maybe I wanted to go to the beach and see the swells or any of the early rain bands from Dennis or something there was no way to you know keep in touch when I was out in the field there was no Twitter there's no updating patreon or anything you know you don't post a video to YouTube or Instagram none of that existed so here's what I did I would go out and take video and I would narrate it you know okay I'm standing on the beach and here's the waves in the wind and I didn't narrate often usually I just kept my mouth shut believe it or not and I just videoed what was happening and then I went back to my office in my house in Leland and I would use this little device called a Snappy you guys remember that it was called Snappy look it up on Google sometime in in the archives of all things internet Snappy it was a digitizing device that would capture images or snaps uh to your computer and I learned about it believe it or not through Rush Limbaugh on his radio show uh on Wave radio because Wave radio was a News Talk station I was very involved with them with my work so I got introduced to rush and conservative talk radio For Better or Worse right and I remember Rush doing these commercials you would if you had enough money you could pay Rush Limbaugh and he would promote your product uh product placement right and he talked about this device called Snappy and I bought one and it worked it really did so I could take snaps of my video and post them as jpegs with my updates what we now know of as Twitter or blogging WordPress or whatever I was doing back in 1999 it's not like I invented it but I was one of the few people that was doing it on a regular basis and certainly one of the few people may be the only person that was doing it as it related to weather especially semi real-time reporting go out capture some stuff come back post it online and that really gave me an advantage because I could go out shoot this video take my observations mental notes of them Etc and then come back and post it on hurricane99.com with pictures and it really helped the website to become very popular very quickly so Dennis is coming and I'm talking about my plans to intercept Dennis wherever it comes in it was not clear at the time would it make a direct landfall would it just skirt the coast you know who knew and you think about 1999 the computer models I mean it's a struggle still today right and you know back then it was even more so we only had a three-day forecast we didn't have a five-day forecast like we do now and so there was a lot of uncertainty of course but Dennis was forecast to strengthen and become a formidable hurricane off the Carolina coast towards the end of the month of August there in 1999 and so I set my plans into motion I was gonna go out and intercept it whatever that meant wherever that meant so here ladies and gentlemen is where something changed and came into my life that just was one of those moments where if it was a movie you know if you're watching a movie about me or whatever and someone said ooh this next part this is where everything changes this was it I got an email from a producer with CNN her name was Linda Roth produces for Jeff flock who was the Chicago bureau chief back then and they were going to send a crew down to Charleston and uh follow Dennis up the coast and they wanted to work with me Linda found my site hurricane 99 she thought what I was doing was very interesting and that's what happened uh she's yeah hey Mark we'd love to work with you do you know Jeff flock and I was like sure I know him he's like the the Jim Cantore of CNN very animated very well spoken newest hurricane stuff there was like him and John zarella uh Gary tuckman and others that could cover hurricanes uh Kathleen Koch was another one and they did a really really good job for CNN covering hurricanes it really did compete with the Weather Channel be to be honest with you and Jeff was like the guy you know I thought wow that's awesome so sure I'd love to work with you guys there was no pay they weren't going to pay me it was just would you like to work with this and I thought sure why not so that's what happened I went down uh and met them North it was actually in Mount Pleasant in the Charleston area we met at a gas station so there's myself by myself in the Isuzu and uh Jeff flock who was the the reporter the main guy right the talent as it's called and you know Linda Roth the producer and a couple of I think there was a sound guy and a camera guy and we were just gonna hang together for the next couple of days now remember I didn't have a laptop well that really irritated me so I turned to a good friend of mine who was my astronomy and physics professor at UNC Wilmington back when I went to college now we're four years after that I had stayed in touch with this guy his name was Dr Brian Davis and we stayed in touch ever since I graduated he and I got along famously we would go out and watch meteor showers together he lived right here in Wilmington of course and I hung out with him and his family and you know he was a friend not just my professor and um I asked him do you have a laptop in the University that you would be willing to loan me to help keep up with hurricane Dennis and he talked to his Department people and whatever I don't know how he did it but he did he Grant he got permission to loan me a laptop and of course I didn't have a way to have wireless internet and no we didn't have Wi-Fi like we do now I don't even know if we had Wi-Fi back then in 99 did we some of you Tech Geeks out there you'll know I don't think we did and if we did I certainly wasn't aware um you had a modem that you plugged in I don't even think we had cable modems yet but maybe we did I don't know uh but I remember when you were out in about a hotel a condo whatever you plugged it into the phone line and it made that god-awful noise you remember that and it would connect and you would connect it like 28 8 or 56k or something like that if you were lucky 36 6 or whatever and then 56k whatever the laptop could handle with its internal modem so that's what I did I got hold of a laptop and I was using a subscription-based website called weathertap they're still in business today how about that as far as I know and they had radar and other neat satellite images and so forth um and I wanted that computer generated radar as we called it and uh to be able to see what Dennis was doing so here I was I got the laptop I took off to Charleston Mount Pleasant area met up with a CNN crew and they start filming immediately and off we go towards Wilmington and vicinity what I didn't realize was that they had threw their people in Atlanta I mean it was CNN they had unlimited money I guess they basically rented out an entire condominium complex down in Carolina Beach which was going to be as about as close as you could get that we now knew to Dennis Dennis looked like it was going to come up just off Cape Fear and then maybe take a right turn out into the Atlantic and maybe dilly dally around out there so Carolina Beach would be a really close approach for us so um I got permission from Emergency Management for myself CNN being media they were in and we all were going to go down to Carolina beach and cover the hurricane together I would be on CNN it was like here we go and so here's the thing all right I got very distracted by all this and kind of left my wife and two little boys in a lurch in that I never really did much as Dennis was approaching to prepare the house didn't get a lot of supplies I mean and I'll admit it you know it was a it was a mistake that I made of not taking care of the homestead and it was my first lesson in a very difficult lesson in Stress Management when you've got a family who is In Harm's Way while you work in the field of said harm right then I wasn't like just going to work at a grocery store or you know delivering pizzas or something are going to be a manager at Corning you know those are important jobs I'm just saying I'm working the hurricane and so of all people I should know about preparedness and I remember on the way back I can laugh now but I did have a cell phone back then it was through Singular Wireless I believe is who it was and I remember my wife calling me from the landline at home reading me the riot act it was not good and you know you don't have anything for us you're leaving your family high and dry oh it was bad and I remember I stopped at a uh at a quick stop a convenience store on the way up in in Bolivia somewhere on Highway 17 told Jeff and everybody let's get some gas whatever I'm gonna run in I got to get a few things and you know I spent a little bit of money on some batteries and some water and some Snickers or something I mean what a terrible example but these are the stories I told you stories from the hurricane highway I was on the hurricane Highway which was U.S 17 for this one uh the hurricane highway is Everywhere by the way it's a big metaphor but sometimes it's real and so I'm on the hurricane highway there and it got bumpy my wife was very upset and so we stopped in at my house I had to get a few things you know told Jeff and everybody I got to grab a few things I got to take some things to the family I didn't let on that I was having this little mini crisis and I went in and I reassured my wife as best I could poor Rebecca poor Nathan poor Cole but yeah I said look it's probably not going to get much closer than than whatever power might go out get some tropical storm force winds it's not going to be as bad as Bertha and Fran and Bonnie I'm very confident of that and I was I wasn't just feeding her you know a bunch of uh Hui I mean it was pretty obvious that it was not going to come barreling into Southeast North Carolina with a direct hit so I left them a little bit better off and off I go with the crew uh it's funny I can remember these little details we stopped at Burger King it's still there on Third Street and Oleander Drive or what we now know or not nano which is also 76. uh Highway 76 that's the number but in town it's called Oleander Drive that's where it begins right off the Cape Fear Bridge as you come into Wilmington over the cape for Memorial Bridge you cross Third Street there and there's a Burger King and we stopped there for dinner um I don't like Burger King nothing against them I just never had an affinity for it but whatever uh I was adrenaline pumped are you kidding me you know I'm what 28 years old and just my career is at a peak and everything's going you know a million miles an hour and I'm ready to go I didn't really care about eating nevertheless we finished our little meal headed down Carolina Beach Road drove to Carolina beach went into this condo and you know it was gosh I felt like I had done it all my life I fit right in with the crew they miked me up I mean they mic'd me up in in South Carolina it sure did I mean as soon as we met at the at the gas station in McClellan in uh Mount Pleasant they miked me up and recorded everything I mean I had a camera guy riding with me in the Isuzu Jeff was riding with me um and I mean it was unbelievable now uh before we go much further I'm going to do something else I wanted to do in this series and that is to play a clip so I'm going to play a clip of what they call a package and I'll set this up you know like they do when they show a movie clip for a famous actor what's the clip about well we had been in Carolina Beach for a few hours they filmed a bunch of stuff from Mount Pleasant and my stop at the house and Leland Etc and they built together what they call a package and they edit the package in their sat truck yes they brought a big old SAT truck down from Atlanta one of those quarter million dollar sat trucks and it's parked outside this condo complex and um Jeff was in there with Linda and the sound guy and the camera guy and they're talking to Atlanta I'm in the Isuzu you know talking to people on the phone whatever and they're putting together this package for the evening newscast on CNN I mean it's obviously 24-hour news but they're putting a package together that would air in prime time and so I'm gonna play a clip of that package this is exactly what they ran during Hurricane Dennis my network appearance on National Television for weather coverage 1999 here it is Hurricane Dennis we are chasing a hurricane we'll get ahead of it and we'll be on the north side of it right now meet Mark Sutter he runs the Wilmington North carolina-based hurricane intercept research team feel the wind his goal get a piece of tennis and enough information that can help the vulnerable Carolina coast better prepare in the future we set off in a green 96 Isuzu Rodeo outfitted with GPS roof mounted anemometer barometric pressure gauge and computer-generated radar suddath points Us North from Charleston trying to get close at first he's not hopeful then Hurricane Warning went up changes the ball game completely a team member tells him it's coming closer and faster than he thought suddath determines Carolina Beach North Carolina is the best place to be let's see what old Dennis is doing in a blackened beachfront condo he fires up his radar to confirm look at all that out over there boy that's got hurricane force winds in it for sure safe in the knowledge he is as close as he can be we go out to survey the beach as the effects of dentists begin to hit the shore perhaps you can see the effects of this wind right now we are getting sustained maximum sustained winds at about 50 to 55 miles an hour right now we are going to be spending the next 24 hours or so with the hurricane intercept research team this is Mark suddath you've got a specially equipped vehicle you've come directly into the East right into the teeth of the storm for research that's correct first of all what are you doing what am I doing while I'm here like you said for research this community is a project impact Community to build a disaster resistant community and I'm here to learn from it and teach others what I know to get them better prepared I know you've come equipped with radar anemometers all sorts of things tonight if you're able to see on top of your vehicle this is a a mounted anemometer that goes up to 175 miles an hour and then if we get inside maybe it's a little quieter on the vehicle right now the sustained wind is 43 miles an hour we can look at the gust our gust was 53 miles an hour we have uh the barometric pressure shows a thousand and one millibars and if you look at the Hurricanes barometric pressure you can see this would keep lowering as it gets closer all right so obviously that was a big rush it really was you know Mark was famous now I'm on CNN it was a big deal and they ran the package and um we did some live stuff as well and in fact I was right there in the parking lot Jeff flock is interviewing me he comes over to the Isuzu asked me what's going on what are the win readings you've got a mounted anemometer up here Etc and I'm showing him the Davis console of live win readings from this parking lot and you know there's this whole thing about standard elevation to measure wind it's got to be 10 meters or whatever I understand that in the realm of Science and Engineering but I'm here to tell you you're not going to ever convince me that if you're standing in a parking lot if you're on top of a car you know if you're on your balcony wherever you are and the wind is blowing unless it is being generated by a fan or a jet you know it's it's man-made it's the wind do you understand what I mean the wind speed if it's if it's between two buildings if it's it doesn't matter if it's because of the hurricane and it's not a jet engine or an airplane blade or a you know anything man-made um it is the wind so if I'm measuring wind nine feet above the ground it doesn't matter that it's not 35 feet above the ground if the wind says 38 miles per hour 52 miles per hour whatever it is as long as that instrumentation is reliable the wind is blowing that fast you get me some people don't agree with that and I'm like yeah obviously haven't been in a hurricane have you or stood outside in a nor'easter or what the heck ever you stand on the beach and the wind is blowing through your hair and you could measure how fast it is it doesn't matter that it's five feet eight inches off the ground or whatever your height is of your head anyhow I get aggravated about that because I took a lot of flack in the early part of my career from different scientists we'll talk about that in future episodes future chapters uh you know well the wind readings are just whatever because it's you know a geographer and he's not a meteorologist and are you kidding me anyway I just think some of these people were jealous that they weren't were not out there measuring in the field they were stuck in a lab somewhere that's just my opinion whatever we're all on the same team that was my point I digress so there I am on National Television we're live showing the win readings you know 50 60 miles per hour whatever it was and we're talking about the hurricane it's just offshore the core of it and I'm telling you folks it was very exciting it was so exhilarating it was just it was a dream come true Mark was a hurricane guy you know I don't want to say an expert but I am on television National Television because I study hurricanes I am into hurricanes I intercept hurricanes whatever you want to call it there I was and it was so just mind-blowing it really was and um I was a natural I mean and I'm not bragging I'm just telling you I mean I didn't fumble I didn't screw up on TV you know it was and and the feedback from Atlanta was just amazing they were so thrilled Linda's bosses Etc the news director there the the news Gathering director on up the chain of command they were very very impressed you know this guy from hurricane99.com knocks it out of the park like he's been doing this his whole career and yet this was the first time it was really something Jeff and I hit it off very well the entire crew and I did it was really amazing so we're down there Dennis comes close not a direct hit the wind is cranking I drove out all the way down to Fort Fisher and Beyond I went down to the ferry the Fort Fisher ferry that goes over to Southport and right at the edge of where it says New Hanover County right when you come in I mean as far south as you can get on 421 in the county and here's where I did something that I just always wanted to do you know I was by myself the the crew stayed back at the condo I told him I'll go out and shoot some b-roll and if I get anything good you're more than welcome to use it and I was getting wind measurements and pressure readings and all that probably talking to a couple people on the phone from time to time no we didn't have text messaging back then I wasn't aware of it if we did so here's what I did I drove down to the end of 421 and it's it's raging pretty good it's not out of control or scary or anything but it's rocking and rolling pretty good and I turned off the Isuzu put the keys next to me on the seat and the passenger seat and I just laid back in the seat you know with my back against the back of the seat and just took it all in listened to the sound the wind the rain the rocking of everything little pieces of Pebbles or sand and who knows what hitting the Isuzu and it would Wax and Wane and you know it would get ferocious and then it would slack off and I probably did that for five minutes didn't talk to anybody no radio on nothing just me and the hurricane and I didn't get out because I don't like getting wet and wind balloon that is a horrible feeling uh yes uh I'm like a cat I I don't like water I don't like being rained on when it's windy let's just put it that way and I've got enough sense too don't get out of the darn truck you never know what's gonna happen it's not just the hurricane I mean there's who knows what's out there snakes Gators I mean whatever over so I did I just sat there in the in the Isuzu and I just had a moment where it was myself in the universe and this hurricane and just I don't know it sounds weird I know it but just it was almost like the spirits of everything else before me in nature um previous hurricanes maybe lost souls from other hurricanes I don't know but something just seems to talk to me when I do that and I do that pretty much ever since and I've done that ever since anybody ever been with me on a mission that where the hell is Mark well he's out doing his Indian thing because it does it reminds me of something the the Native Americans would have done that that connection to Nature that connection to the earth and the energy of the atmosphere you know you can call it religion a religious experience you can call it you know like in Star Wars they call it the force you know it binds the Galaxy together well you darn right it does and it definitely connected with me during Hurricane Dennis there uh and then it was time to go the moment was over and I can't sit out though forever or people are going to start saying where's Mark put an APB out for me and send the sheriff down to make sure I'm okay uh so a few minutes into that I turned the Isuzu back on drove around a little bit clocked some good wind speeds saw some trees blowing across the road it was pretty crazy you know and I'm driving through it and just I'm in my element I'm like man you're intercepting a freaking hurricane on purpose you know you're down here at the farther south that you can get in the county CNN's working with you you know your wife and kids are okay back in Leland I know I talked to them a little bit everything's good it really is it's not good it's great and so we try to get some sleep uh Dennis goes by and um it's very slow mover I remember the next day I put a uh a video camera out on the balcony uh of this condo remember CNN rented out the entire condo so I put a video camera on a tripod out and I just recorded the next day for whatever it was a couple of hours I think the tape would run for 120 Minutes and um uh the the hotel had power we never lost power in Carolina Beach I kid you not and so I plugged it in I plugged the video camera into the wall outlet and I I recorded just the ocean because here's what I wanted to do I wanted to see the ocean moving with the flow of the clouds and the wind and that was very interesting to me and I would run it through time lapse when I got back home uh remember I had a power Mac G3 remember we talked about that in the last episode here the part one that I was doing all of my work on the storm surge project using a power Mac G3 and I had this editing software that I could take video and create a time lapse and I did that that was the first time lapse that I had ever taken was during Hurricane Dennis uh from the balcony of this hotel room or condo in Carolina Beach and it was really really neat you could literally see the clouds and because of the wind and everything lining up on the ocean and the waves and the motion and all of that that everything was connected you know the onshore flow it was God it was just brilliant it was really really neat um so Dennis goes off into the Atlantic a few hundred miles offshore if that Mills around a little bit CNN hey thanks for the work with us Etc I guess they went back to Atlanta and I went back home Dennis lurks offshore stalled out you know the drill right steering currents collapse the trough that made it turn lifted out and there it hung right off of Hatteras right off of Rodanthe the Outer Banks for days just destroying the Outer Banks high tide after I mean come on where have we seen this before right and I mean I don't I don't laugh you know how I mean you just you can't help it it was relentless and it's just churning away high tide after high tide and uh the outer banks are just getting cut up and I'm gonna tell you man I was like oh I wish I was out there but there was no way to get out there it was cut off uh but I really yearn to be out there and then it looked like in the forecasting and then the models that maybe around September the 5th Dennis was at the end of August into early September here it milled around out there for several days it really did now it started to kind of swing back around it did this clockwise Loop and high pressure started to build in over the Northwest Atlantic I mean you guys are smart enough know to figure it all out now right you know high pressure built back to its North trapped it and it moved back towards the North Carolina coast so we had a dentist part two it's going to make landfall and it was strengthening again obviously when they sit out there and they Mill around for a while over uh the same area they up well sheer gets them dry air whatever and they weaken so it was a tropical storm but now it was coming back and it was forecast I believe to be a hurricane if if it wasn't it was very close and so around September the 5th uh which was ironically the anniversary of Hurricane Fran just three years prior September 5th 1996. here we are three years later in Hurricane Dennis now tropical storms strengthening again making a run for what we call down East North Carolina the Crystal Coast Area and the southern part of the Outer Banks um you know Cape Lookout maybe Beaufort Morehead City Atlantic Beach that region we call the Crystal Coast and down East North Carolina Eastern Carteret County off the Pamlico sound and Cape Lookout and vicinity so uh CNN was probably covering it out on the Outer Banks I wasn't there I was kind of on my own so what I did I got my good friend Dr Davis to go with me hey Brian his name's Brian Davis called him up hey you want to go with me I'm gonna head out and whatever so I picked him up uh he lived off of um like in the uh uh Porter's Neck not where was he is off of like Sloop no not Sloop Point let me think hold on Dr Davis lived in Northeast New Hanover County not far from the water I cannot remember exactly where kind of the Ogden area of New Hanover County and then east of there towards the water anyway I went and picked him up it's neither here nor there just me trying to remember uh and off we go during the day and there he is me and this physics Professor uh smart is all get out man just and it looked like I told you before he looked like a wizard I I think I mentioned that he did he looked like a wizard um a beard and just everything about him well this little hat um and anyhow off we go we go over to Atlantic Beach in Morehead City area first not much action out there then we head out Highway 70 and then go out past Beaufort out into Eastern Carteret County now uh into the town of Atlantic and sea level and Stacy these are very small little coastal towns out there a few hundred people right and trees are down you know and it's ramping up because Dennis is starting to intensify and I do remember I called into the National Weather Service in Newport Morehead City to get some information from them didn't have wireless internet so once we left Wilmington we were on our own in terms of what Dennis was up to where it was going how strong it was or whatever and uh we did we went out to Eastern Carteret County uh Highway 12 starts out there believe it or not and um I mean if it connected over to Pamlico sound it would you know connect in Ocracoke but um Highway 70 turns into 12 out there you go out through the North River out towards Cedar Island and we we drove out there and the water was coming up storm surge from Pamlico sound and the core sound the wind was just blasting you know 50 60 70 miles per hour the Pamlico sound was whipping up it was really remarkable uh we got some good wind readings called them into the Weather Service got some pressure readings good video documented everything and it's so funny I remember Dr Davis talking about watching the seagulls aimed into the wind and the way the wind would go over their bodies he said look at them you know the Bernoulli effect their tails being lifted because of the wind you know the physics was coming alive so I got I got a live physics tutorial from Dr Davis while we were out there it's really fascinating to do that and to understand things from his perspective as well and it was a moment that I will always cherish you know that um there I was with my former college professor chasing intercepting whatever you want to call it a uh an ex-hurricane almost a hurricane again it made it up to 70 miles per hour and it made landfall it sure did in eastern Carteret County in vicinity and um you know brought a lot of Surge and water and you know rain and a lot of rain and that was the story and we all got back from Dennis and already something else was coming and that was Hurricane Floyd a classic Cape Verde monster hurricane one of those hurricanes like Irma you know that just seems like it's out of basin like Isabelle like it belongs in the Westpac a typhoon one of those big sprawling hurricanes and it seemed as if it was destined to come at Florida slam into the southeast and just be a monster so Floyd became the story obviously it grew in size and intensity I was tracking it talking about it on hurricane99.com you know it was it was on everybody's mind and it and it was coming just days now after Dennis and Dennis dumped you know six eight ten eleven inches of rain depending on where you were so Dennis put all this rain down as a precedent you know preceding Floyd that's very important to note so Floyd's coming and I'm ready for it um I talked with Jamie Arnold you know let's do this together uh this list looked really bad if CNN's going to cover it again they're going to work with me a little bit you know I'm working with Emergency Management our storm surge maps are now out there into the public they're on television everything again is steamrolling forward but in a really positive way and now it's ramped up more levels right because Floyd I'll never forget the advisory where the forecaster I think it was Miles Lawrence says you know it's 135 knots we're going to leave it at that because that should be enough to get everybody's attention for now or something like that it was knocking on the door of category five approaching the Bahamas approaching Florida it's very much like Dorian to be honest with you um that we had of course in 2019 so it's you know all hands on deck a massive just gargantuan cluster F of an evacuation takes place and changes everything we know and we'll deal with this in later chapters about evacuation for the southeast United States and for those of you that remember this you know what I'm talking about millions of people left Florida and funneled into Georgia lots of people I don't know if it was Millions there's not that many people in Coastal Georgia but Georgia evacuates well let's start over Florida Georgia the coastal Carolinas all at once bad I mean it was just a massive screw-up of planning Regional planning local planning FEMA States local a nightmare so I started the Floyd field Mission with Eddie Eddie Smith uh we're gonna work with the Hanover County Emergency Management indirectly working with FEMA indirectly working with the Corps of Engineers and indirectly working with the National Hurricane Center I mean we're all related here we're all on the same team a lot of people know who I am now whatever so this is a real big event so we're all going to try to coordinate as best we can so Eddie comes with me we leave Wilmington we go down to Savannah and Savannah is just this like I mean Mass Exodus of people uh my cousin had a house out on whitmarsh island so we stayed there I dialed into her internet you know AOL or something you know that old yeah the modem talking to the other compete and just you know exhausted and this was the very first time Dennis was not so bad I got plenty of rest Floyd was my first lesson in sleep deprivation while you are working oh that's horrible why do we have to sleep uh I mean uh if we could just not have to sleep we'd be a lot more productive so it was terrible I was so tired and I'm updating the website you know it's very popular and I'm trying to update the website what we again I keep referring to and what we now know is blogging I'm trying to keep up to date with what's happening with the hurricane I'm trying you know my family is dealing with it man the pressure was just immense and on top of that I'm not sleeping and it just it was nuts so Floyd is coming they didn't know how close this category 4.9 was going to get to West Palm Beach to Cocoa Beach to Jacksonville to Savannah and on and on North right because this type of hurricane driving into the coast of Georgia for example would put a massive surge probably on a historic level I mean this was a really big National Emergency this everybody was talking about it it was huge so there I was in the thick of it Eddie and Eddie with me uh we departed my cousin's house went down to Jacksonville Florida got pretty close to the western side of tropical storm winds Etc I remember we stayed at a Holiday Inn there near the airport um the wind started cranking up I filmed as much as I could we did a lot of filming with my uh my digital 8 video camera uh Sony digital 8. a lot of filming everything we could pictures whatever um I guess we took pictures it would have had to have had a film camera nobody had a DSLR back then that I was aware of maybe we did but I think we just filmed everything with my video camera um and uh Floyd started to make that turn and it was not going to come barely into Florida directly or Georgia but it still looked like it could hit possibly Charleston Myrtle Beach maybe Wilmington so we left and I said I warned you I told you guys 1999 was Mega huge you know any way that you want to describe it that is off the charts that was 19.99. remember the massive evacuation traffic that I talked about now we saw that as we would be leaving the Carolinas going the opposite way right to Florida when we left Jacksonville um as Floyd was making that turn around mid-september there um the uh everybody was gone so it was so empty on I-95 North out of Jacksonville we were going to go into the Carolinas again that you could just sit on the interstate and have lunch honest to goodness no cars at all and to this day that was the emptiest I have ever seen it I've seen it empty for Irma I've seen it empty for different hurricanes Rita in Texas we talk about that in the future but this was and it still is the most empty we have ever seen the interstate like you know something out of a movie it really was remarkable um so we drove up into the Carolinas got off near uh Walterboro or somewhere or Beaufort I don't know and tried to make our way over to Charleston different roads were already being closed so we had to make our way over there and at the same time very important to note at some point in here we triggered Jamie Arnold to leave Charlotte remember he was an atmospheric science major there and drive to Wilmington meet in Wilmington we will all Rendezvous and Wilmington it looks like it's headed to Wilmington um Eddie myself Jamie would all meet up Eddie will go to the EOC the Emergency Operations Center and resume his work with Dan and all the people there the FEMA folks whatever and Jamie would take over where Eddie left off that was the deal so we get up through the Carolinas uh in into South Carolina cannot get to Charleston it's just you can't they wouldn't let us so we weaved our way up through Florence finally go east from there somehow make it over towards Myrtle Beach I guess through 501 or something and we got to Myrtle Beach and it's a freaking Ghost Town nobody there no police or nothing empty and we went down right to the Waterfront filmed it a little bit I mean and it was just raining like nobody's business because Floyd was interacting with a cold front the trough that was coming to turn it interacting with it squeezing out that moisture it's mid-september now you know the Dynamics are there and it's unloading this rain like just unbelievable rain rain and rain and rain and more rain so we leave Myrtle Beach Eddie and I get up into the um you know Cherry Grove area into South uh North Carolina South Carolina border region um and you know past some of those golf courses that are out there beautiful golf courses down in Brunswick County uh and they're filling up the road's already filling up there's already big puddles and I remember calling in Eddie calling into the EOC to speak with Dan and the Weather Service relaying this information we're already getting roads that are almost impassable and remember we're doing this in my Isuzu Rodeo just keep that in mind so we get into Wilmington right around Nightfall a drop Eddie off at the EOC I meet Jamie at my house in Leland and he leaves his truck there my wife just so you know this time I was ready my wife and my my little two-year-old Nathan and my infant son Cole they all go to Greensboro for this I'm like I'm not dealing with everybody staying at home ever again you're out of here so uh luckily we had the the money due to both of us working gainfully employed money was not a problem and so she took the the boys to a hotel in Greensboro and yes we planned ahead and all of that worked beautifully I mean I didn't have to worry about them so Jamie and I get you know some water and whatever and you make sure we got our Davis computer batteries everything's ready and we talked to the EOC Dan Summers and we're gonna go here's our plan you ready for this you're gonna say wow Mark you've definitely come a long way the plan is to go to Wrightsville Beach and sit on the beach well not the beach beach but own Wrightsville Beach as Floyd makes landfall that's what I wanted to do and the EOC gave me permission you know hey you must know what he's doing so we got to the checkpoint at Wrightsville Beach Wrightsville Beach PD phones it in EOC says that's fine off we go so a drive out there we look around drive around a little bit it's late in the night Floyd's closing in we're in constant contact via phone to the National Weather Service uh gentleman by the name of Tom Matheson was the morning coordination meteorologist I think that's his title back then I know he worked there and there was also a guy in there a guy that worked there named Chuck I don't remember his last name off the top of my head I just remember when he would answer the phone he would answer it Weather Service truck and so I referred to him as Weather Service truck uh we were constantly talking to them to get information and to send them information it was really remarkable honestly so there uh Jamie and I were in my Isuzu Rodeo anemometer on the roof barometric pressure gauge inside Etc got my video camera got a little handheld Spotlight that I could plug into my cigarette lighter we tried tried to drive up Lumina Avenue that's the main north-south street on Wrightsville Beach that all of the cross streets go through uh but it was flooded uh north of Johnny Mercer's Pier and so better turn around you know Banks channel the Intracoastal whatever was filling up waves were coming in they're over washing the dunes and um I did a couple radio station interviews with wgni and wave radio called into the Weather Service oh yeah we're getting overwashed I mean it was it was pretty neat I'm gonna be honest with you to be able to give people real-time information but we're stuck see we're stuck out there we cannot leave if we want to at this point and so we go to Greensboro Street look that up on Google Maps Wrightsville Beach North Carolina and then look at Greensboro street that goes east to uh where it dead ends at the Atlantic and that's where Jamie and I made our stand and there's like this wooden barrier so that you can't drive out the public access way onto the beach people walk there and there's houses and condos on either side of where we were on this little Narrow Street Greensboro Street and of course we're the only vehicle out there I mean 99 of all the rest of the vehicles were gone all the people were gone probably a few people straggling behind but it's virtually empty so we're filming everything of course looking at everything like wow these waves would come up a couple of them went over the the Isuzu you know splashed over us and I was like oh my gosh this is like part of me was thinking this is a dream come true I'm in storm surge from the Atlantic it's happening this category three now two you know was once a four is coming it's going to come right over us and we're telling the Weather Service all of this the water's coming up around us and I was never scared not a I'm not lying I was I was in like Hog Heaven man it was it was remarkable Jamie was a little nervous you know like you want to back up some I'll be all right I was so confident we call that hubris by the way I realize that now that's overconfident because ignorance is bliss like I didn't know I knew but I didn't know you don't ever know until you go through it I guess and you know that would come a few years later right in 2004 but we'll get there later uh I didn't know so there we sat storm surge coming up uh the eye wall whatever it's raging it's incredible and then poof it just drops to nothing the eye comes over and it's it's is it's just just it still is this room that I'm in right now my office here not a breath of wind truly remarkable and see you know see things floating in the water right on Lumina Avenue several feet deep and I remember I took a lot of video and I got a lot of high water marks as it happened because here's the scientist in me and this is the point here I'm not out there as a thrill seeker it's exciting No Doubt but I'm able to do my job it's got to be the same feeling that a firefighter gets when they get to go do what they were trained for when paramedics are on the spot they're doing their thing you know even folks in the military doing what they are trained to do it's not necessarily fun but it's exhilarating and it's what you're there to do you're doing that job so there we were you know I was able to document video wise the the The Surge the high water and I would give that to the Corps of Engineers days later we'll get to that and we did something with it so the eye comes it goes the backside comes around and we wait for hours and hours um Wrightsville Beach police come out they're out there in their larger SUV and they see us and we're like we're ready to go okay follow us they said they knew a way out and it's just getting to be first light and we're able to get off Wrightsville Beach make our way through Wilmington it's still raining to beat the band now all these streams Creeks Rivers you name it gullies whatever they're flooding you know and the water's Rising fresh water it's already happening we get back to Leland by some miracle as the lights just coming up come down my street it's called post office Road where I lived in Leland and it's underwater I mean it's like a foot and a half deep and I just screwed I shouldn't say this but like screw turn around don't drown I I gotta get home to be fair I could see the lines on the road and whatnot and it wasn't Raging Water you never want to present the idea that you think you're above the laws of physics but sometimes you make dumb mistakes and I mean it never nothing happened I was able to get home but uh which we really try not to set a bad example but I'm telling you these are the stories right these are what happened this is what happened uh it's probably about a half a mile where I drove through this pretty deep water and I was thinking oh my gosh my house probably gonna have water in my house we get there Jamie and I go in and we just crash we're so tired and we are out like that and I woke up hours later Floyd's leaving you know trees are down it's just chaos um he tries to leave he's able to leave I think that day he may have left the next day I can't remember for sure to be honest with you um and my wife and children are up in Greensboro Jamie's able to head back to Charlotte it took him you know quite a while and he documents some really incredible stuff on the way back to Charlotte on Highway 7476 and Floyd goes into the record books you know it dumped a lot of rain 20 plus inches in some places added to the preceding Reign from Dennis and it equaled this cataclysm in North Carolina that up until Florence was our biggest natural disaster uh and you know the hog industry the chicken industry poultry turkeys whatever you know this major Overland surge of water from the rain and I tried to go out and document as much as I could um I think I did a pretty good job of it to be honest with you I really got to play filmmaker a little bit you know getting those low angle shots of washed out roads you know did as best I could to document the the history that was unfolding you know and you know keep my mouth shut when I was filming you know not just talk over everything and holy cow this is incredible just shut up and film you know sometimes that's very helpful and that's what I did and Floyd uh uh set records uh it isolated Wilmington for the most part it was just devastating you know all the way over to eastern North Carolina um Kenston Goldsboro Greenville you know Princeville remember that the just the stories out of there the rescues of animals people you know millions and millions of um of animals killed unfortunately uh the the disaster from the environmental side of things with hog lagoons leaking chemical plants I mean it was a royal screw up because Floyd interacted with humankind in a way we hadn't ever seen before you know it was unprecedented you don't want to use that word unless it's necessary and Floyd did set a new precedent that 20 well 19 years later would be broken by Florence who knew uh well I mean I guess history does repeat itself so um you know it's mid-september 17th 18th or so beautiful Skies Floyd's gone water's rising and it goes on for days and days and days for all that water to drain away and my projects are all just you know Sky High right I mean I am on the top of the world you know I'm Leonardo DiCaprio on the Titanic I'm king of the world I mean it was remarkable you know I looked like a friggin genius to people that knew me you know that I had started this out of college had this feeling about wanting to get hurricane awareness out there make it a big deal make it different make it Innovative you know the storm surge Maps were just a huge success um they were distributed to all the coastal counties in North Carolina from Brunswick all the way up to the curateuck and Beyond Dare County Hyde County Terrell County you name it you know little towns Edenton you know um New Bern boy wouldn't that come to you know full circle just 19 years later with Florence um my career was on uh hyperdrive it really was it was incredible uh you know the news interviews you name it and so uh the hurricane season comes and goes uh my website's very popular and we had our fifth hurricane you know you don't say in a row but it was certainly seem that way Bertha Fran Bonnie Dennis Floyd so in the fall of 1999 I made a poster uh you know how people sell those posters of hurricanes and I wanted to make one and I did a montage a little pictorial history of all five of those hurricanes and it's called the hurricane Coast and I would sell it off my website and back then didn't have PayPal or anything like that so you had to mail me a check and I think I talked about it on a couple of radio shows and maybe on WECT our NBC station here I went and spoke to a rotary club about it and I sold enough posters several thousand dollars worth they were full color 20 by 28 posters of all of these hurricanes called the hurricane Coast and word got out and I sold enough that I reinvested that money and we'll get to it eventually uh into something very very important that we go into the year 2000 okay we'll talk about that when we get to it but that was my first fundraiser it was amazing uh outside of my maps right and you know and so I raised some money that way the response was incredible people were putting these posters in Office Buildings in their condos you know whatever it was really really neat uh and my name was out there and so we get to the fall and there's this uh Summit coming up uh like a convention but they called it a summit and it was a project impact Summit it was the first full year of project impact really taking root and they were going to have a summit in DC of all the different communities in the United States now there was I think seven of them maybe more uh all around the United States everything from earthquake mitigation Wildfire flooding in Tulsa yeah they do they have flooding in Oklahoma of course they do you know West Virginia uh Deerfield Beach Florida Wilmington North Carolina and and other cities um East Rockaway and Freeport in New York yeah yeah that's going to come up soon too all these communities we're going to have a summit a convention if you will in Washington DC and I went to that as part of our delegation if you will from uh Wilmington and took my family with me and they had these Awards they were giving out to these different communities for advances that they had made and there was a lot of corporate uh involvement big companies you know from GE to Lowe's to the big power companies um you know Dominion power you name it you know what we now know is Duke Energy it was Carolina power and light Clorox Corporation Proctor gamble some of the coal mining operations I mean these were big corporate entities that had lobbying power in DC and they were doing things to help their communities and so it was just assumed that they were going to get all these Awards and kind of be recognized for being good stewards of the community you know giving back to the community and and that's fine you know we applaud that right little did I know that 1999 would end with me getting one of those Awards and I didn't know it I didn't when they uh when they talked about and I can't remember off the top of my head you'd think I you should know the name of the award it's like an outstanding Achievement Award or something um I'm ashamed I don't remember what it was called uh but they they were talking about the three nominees and my name came up I said oh you got to be kidding me New Hanover County Dan summers in his office the County Commissioners Etc nominated me and uh Clorox I think was nominated by whoever their parent company is or whomever and I can't remember there's like a paper company or there was a third one and I won uh I won over those companies uh as an individual that advanced hurricane preparedness on a new level because of my tracking Maps but more so the Innovation the innovation in in the storm surge maps and working you know by myself basically one guy with all these big companies with FEMA with the media to get the word out about storm surge and more importantly the bigger message mitigation and clearly as much as I like to talk right when I went up there to get that award from James Lee Whitt the director of FEMA at the time I was speechless I looked out into that crowd uh I I some once in a while I joke on my video discussions I know I've said it I could probably sing the national anthem if I could do a good job that is at the Super Bowl and it wouldn't phase me I'm pretty confident in myself that I could do that when I got this award I was frozen solid I I think I was like oh oh thanks Dan and I mean it was just ridiculous I remember my arm cramped up because I was so floored that after just four years in this business I had won an award from the Federal Emergency Management agency little old me a geographer not a meteorologist you know and there's no that's it was just I followed my dream I followed my passion I stayed with it I got lucky breaks but I didn't give up and I was able to work with some really amazing people and collectively we made amazing thing happens but happened but that award was given to me because I was the Catalyst I was the one that drove it forward it was these were my ideas that I wasn't going to let anybody tell me no and so I got that award it's it's a glass pyramid that has the FEMA logo inside of it it's really remarkable it's a classic kick butt government award I mean it weighs like five six pounds it's amazing and um I mean it was truly an honor you know it was the Clinton administration's idea to create this program project impact I had met a lot of great people we had this tremendous hurricane Expo in Wilmington uh back in June of 1999 I didn't mention that earlier it just kind of dawned on me now that I didn't mention that but we were so connected in such family and to get that from my family so to speak my career family really meant a lot to me and it would it would really help to open a lot of doors um even if I had to push them and we'll talk about that later so that's how it all ended the greatest year to that point four years after I started um you know it was like being Rocket Man right it was really amazing the Pinnacle of My Success to the to that point uh and really making an impact on the concept of making hurricane awareness attractive non-sensational important and Innovative and that's what happened uh and on top of that in those years from 95 when I graduated college through 99 in Hurricane Floyd I had been in five hurricanes you know and uh had done a lot of remarkable things and remember what I told you about the video that I took during Floyd during the eye and I made sure I captured that high water as it happened you see when the the water comes up in storm surge if if uh you get a still Watermark the high water mark inside of buildings and sometimes on the outside but usually inside it leaves this little debris line it's like little pieces of grass cigarette butts whatever it's just you know crud in the water and the water recedes and as long as there's no agitating wave action you get this distinct line you've all seen it you have to know what I'm talking about it's called a high water mark and that's what the core or the local weather service and the storm survey team will use they get the elevation of the building they go back and they reverse engineer it if you will and figure out okay the water Rose six feet above ground level the ground level is nine feet above sea level so the surge came up 15 feet 9 plus 6 is 15. that's how it works and they rarely if ever get video of the high water mark not in 1999 they didn't and I gave that to them for Floyd and to me it was uh I remember it was like December it was it was a while later it just took a while with the busyness of everybody it may have been even after I got the award from FEMA uh I went out with um a gentleman named Alan McDuffie from the uh Wilmington District of the Army Corps of Engineers and in the in the same Isuzu that I sat in we went out to Wrightsville Beach I remember it was cold so it had to be winter uh in probably December and um we did a survey he brought his survey and Equipment you know all that stuff they use and we print it out on a big giant printer at his office uh off of Darlington Avenue here in Wilmington uh this huge picture of a frame grab remember the snappy yeah see everything goes full circle that Rush Limbaugh told me about on the radio I did a snap you know now you can just do a frame grab or a screen grab everybody knows that so I did a snap or an image capture if you will of the high water and actually we did several of them so we had lots of reference points we printed them all out we went out there surveyed the spot did all that he does with the GPS and it was remarkable to watch this guy work and we determined the exact storm surge elevation sent that to the National Hurricane Center and when you read the Floyd tropical Cyclone report and they talk about storm surge at Wrightsville Beach that is because I was there and I recorded it by hand you know now we do it with unmanned cameras thank goodness you learn a little bit of things over your career it's more a lot more safe to do it this way uh but that to me was just like I knew that you know once that report came out and I read it uh and it talked about storm surge you know and it gives you all these values the one from Wrightsville Beach was because of myself and Alan McDuffie and the weather service and the EOC at Dan Summers office believing in me allowing me as a earth scientist as a geographer you know you don't have to be a meteorologist to go out and do something remarkable in the weather and this really showed me that more than any other time if I ever had any doubt this really helped to remove it that it's okay you know a geographer can do these things and I did it and that's how I ended 1999 the greatest year so far of our stories here uh on the hurricane Highway and boy what a what a four years it was the old hurricane Highway ran pretty much smacked through Wilmington and North Carolina as a whole didn't it you know if it was you know literally my Street Post Office Road and Leland uh or Highway 7476 you know which went underwater numerous times in these hurricanes it seemed or Highway 17 or Highway 12 out on the Outer Banks you just it you know the hurricane highway is many things and in those early years 95 26 well 96 through 99 obviously when the land Falls that metaphorical and literal Highway was very busy very busy with activity uh and as we ended 1999 remember that Gateway 2000 yeah uh we had the worry that at midnight 1999 into 2000 you know that something weird would happen called Y2K uh it didn't but remember all that that has nothing to do with anything except I remember that and um that's how it all you know we ended the decade uh we entered a new century uh just remarkable and so that's it that's the story up to this point but it is but it isn't like I said this is part two and we'll wrap it up here uh next week when I do this part three will go back and revisit 96 9899 again with Mike Farrow like I mentioned earlier in in this update in this update this podcast here episode it's late while I'm recording this I gotta go to bed um it's the only time I can have it nice and quiet in the house really uh Mike is going to join me we're going to record this on a Sunday coming up here um but he's gonna um join me and we're gonna re-look revisit everything from his perspective in the radio business we'll reflect on some project impact stuff how we covered hurricanes back then versus now and so forth and so on and so that'll be part three that'll drop uh a week from when this one does so there you go a lot to cover I told you 1999 was going to be big and I think I lived up to that expectation uh quite a bit there so um as always I appreciate you tuning in very very much this podcast series uh really important to me I've always wanted to do something like this love to write a book about it one day but this will suffice for now uh your support helps to make it possible the patrons here again I'ma reiterate it over and over you are the only ones that get to listen to this you and our hurricane track.com Insider members some of whom have been a member of our you know Subscription Service it's really a crowdfunding effort now honestly um you know subscription sounds like you know Sports Illustrated or something right yeah magazine you get in the mail this is a family this is a group of us and uh you guys make this possible so it is an honor for me to be able to tell you these intimate stories because you're not going to hear them anywhere else you know there's no book out yet and this is not just available out there in the wild so it is my honor and my privilege to be able to do this and I thank you very much for making it possible uh for me to be able to afford to do this that you support my family and you support my project and so this is my gift to you and I love doing it so thanks for listening um that'll wrap up part two of chapter five which was 1999 and we will get on part three in a week all right thanks as always for listening I do appreciate it I am Mark suddath for Hurricane track.com you have been listening to stories from the hurricane Highway the year 1999 part three drops next week I look forward to telling you all about it then