Stories From The Hurricane Highway Season 2 Episode 1 Transcript - The Makings of a Mega Season

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

You're listening to stories from the hurricane Highway the weekly podcast series that takes an in-depth look back at over two decades of tracking hurricanes technology behind the scenes stories and much more I'm your host Mark Sudduth so glad you could join me and thank you for supporting this exclusive podcast via patreon in this episode we pick up where we left off with season one as we begin our journey again down the hurricane Highway and the Epic year of 2005.

well hello everybody good to have you back for the second season of stories from the hurricane Highway and boy oh boy do we have a good one to start off from uh this go around it is Wednesday December 2nd 2020 that I am putting this together that is the drop date of this episode and again it's great to have you here thank you for supporting this through patreon one of the exclusives that we offer here that is not available anywhere else and it's great to have you aboard we're going to pick up on where we left off but before we get to that let's do a little bit of a recap of where we have come from up to this point in time

so we began the podcast series stories from the hurricane Highway a year ago in December of 2019 and the goal was to make a podcast available that really gets into the nitty-gritty of how I started this whole thing with hurricane track the hurricane landfall project the many hundreds of thousands of miles driven and all the experiences of those miles the technology that was developed the people that we met along the way those details that you would only get if we were to hang out you know and just start chatting around the campfire so to speak or over dinner somewhere dinner after dinner after dinner I guess because we're talking many many years of stories and that's what this has been all about we started off at the very beginnings of my career how I got into all of this the education background early experiences early influences from people and we made it all the way through the 90s the early 2000s and up through the year the very busy year of 2004 and I left off with sort of the teaser at the end of season one of the podcast that we would be getting into the Year 2005 this December and here we are so where do we start um I mean first of all you remember if you think back 2005 was the busiest season to date at the time and we had a total of 28 name storms a very high Ace index that year very damaging hurricanes most notably of course was Katrina that was also the year of Rita and Wilma 2005 was also the first year that we went into the Greek letters uh exhausting all 21 letters of the normal list of names that we use and we went into the Greek alphabet and the season actually went on past November through December and into January of 2006 believe it or not they just kept coming and coming and coming so this first episode that we're gonna resume stories from the hurricane Highway with we're going to talk about the ingredients of the mega season what were the aspects of the 2005 season that made it so busy and that is what we will get into in this episode well now I want to bring in my colleague Greg Nordstrom from Mississippi State University he and I are going to speak over Zoom so the audio is going to be a little different uh Greg thanks for joining me I appreciate you being a part of the podcast uh how you doing I'm doing well it's it's great to be here and it's good to talk about hurricanes exactly that's uh that's the topic of the day and so um we look back at other Seasons uh besides 2005. before we get into the ingredients what are some other really what we call Mega Seasons that stand out in your mind that go above and beyond your typical active season what were some of those past Seasons be before we jump to o5 well one that comes just off the top of my head it's a 1933 season which if I am correct I believe that's the highest Ace ever accumulated in a hurricane season and what to me makes that so exceptional is what did we not have back in the 30s we didn't have satellites right so unless it you know was going through a shipping channel or you know there was actual observations of a storm my question is how many more storms are out there that you know we couldn't quote unquote see so to me 33 really stands out um I believe it was 20 named storms that year so not quite the same number as 2005 but when you look at the Ace Ace was actually ahead of it and that's without satellites and really knowing how many true storms there was so from 1933 to 2005 we had other big Seasons but then all of a sudden the Euro five as we now know uh until the year 2020 had the record for the most named storms tremendous amount of damage um that was surpassed uh by 2017 interestingly enough but until all of that until 17 and then this year 2020 o5 stood alone and there was a reason why that season was as busy as it was and since that's what we're picking up on with this uh resumption of stories from the hurricane Highway we're looking at 2005. so think back let's go back in time now 15 years and think about April 05 what did we have we had um you know we had the internet right we had um you know access to the web we had satellite data we had information from people like Colorado State University Dr Bill Gray was still alive at the time we had private weather firms but we didn't have social media like we do now you know Facebook had just been invented 04 somewhere around there Twitter wasn't really a thing yet we had message boards we had websites we had blogs we had television weather and so the the forecasts for the 05 season if you can think back they were basically focusing in on what ingredients well there are several the first was the water temps and I believe at the time it was the highest recorded I think 2010 was even warmer water temp-wise but the MDR was was really really warm and a lot of the warm water was packed close in the Caribbean the gulf the eastern and Southeastern part of the United States which I think played a factor later in the sea you know when you saw later in the season where you had more enclosed developments you had a lot of moisture you weren't seeing a lot of dry air of course you had this the sow coming off Africa which is typical but in general the atmosphere was pretty moist uh you weren't seeing the vertical wind shear and also back then if you think about it um you know because technology in 15 years has really changed dramatically and the models have so much better now than they were even 15 years ago a lot of it was pattern recognition and that's becoming a lost art you would look at the water temps but not just above water temps where they were focused and there's something called the Atlantic tribe or Atlantic triple signature and that was another thing that I was looking at that year where it's not just you have the warm water that focus of warm water was coming from the MDR through the Caribbean into the Gulf and off to Southeast U.S and it's almost like this alley this uneducated alley of rising you know energy and Rising motion towards the United States and you know a lot of the old school forecasters used to look at that setup and when they saw that they're like you know this is going to be an active season

so we go back 15 years and there were signals even without the sophisticated climate models that we have today they did exist to some extent back then and even in March April May of 2005 we don't know as much as we know now in advance but there were some pretty clear-cut signals and different entities private sector public sector you know Colorado State similar to 2020 we saw the o5 season kind of coming uh well ahead of time didn't we it was well telegraphed yes definitely I mean again yes we were limited 15 years ago compared to what we're seeing today but there was clear signatures again with the water temps the lack of wind shear moisture I mean hurricanes they like warm water moisture in the atmosphere and the lack of wind shear and you put that together the next piece of the puzzle is where do these storms form right if if you look back like 2010 they form further out in the Eastern Atlantic so what happens a lot of times is when they get going too quick these storms tend to recurve out to sea right the majority of of the storms that really affect us and hurt us here in the United States are the ones that form close of course we do get the long track ones you do see the Cape Verde hurricanes you know the you know some of the like the 1928 Lake Okeechobee or you know those type of storms you get those things but in general you're going to get the more in close development and that is where the Bermuda or the subtropical high is really going to play a factor and that was another key which 2005 was we had for the most part not the entire season but for a lot of the season the placement of that high really prevented these storms from curving out and with them forming closer it's just again had that alley which is connected to that triple signature where they were forming in the Caribbean and it was just a train of them coming towards the United States

foreign so you mentioned the tripol signature expand upon that and try to describe for us what exactly is a tripol signature the uh before the season really gets going uh because when you get in those hyperactive season Mega season really the water becomes above normal all over the place but early you know before it gets going you know April May I always like looking at Sea surface anomalies okay you got to be careful because even if an anomaly is showing it's colder it doesn't necessarily mean the water is cold it is cold it's a departure from some kind of an average or a normal exactly but I look at these anomalies and the pattern you're looking for is that warm pocket that above normal water from the MDR moving through the Caribbean into the Gulf in the southeast United States then you want a colder pocket more in the central Atlantic and then above that you got another warm pocket more in the northern Atlantic and that signature in general tends to cause hurricanes to form to kind of move towards us and again it's just an unimpeded path of rising motion and energy that really is just pointed right towards the United States and does it always work perfectly no because nothing and weather ever works perfectly but that is a clear-cut sign and something that old school meteorologists have been looking at for 50 plus years that when you see something like that that's typically going to show you the path of the storms and also the placement of the high is going to block a lot of these storms from escaping

as we know the 2005 season gave us several very powerful hurricanes and the interesting thing is the ones that made landfall that were so devastating starting with Dennis Dennis was darn near a category five and then of course Katrina in terms of United States impacts reached category five at one point that was followed in September by Rita and then in October at the end of October we had Wilma also a category five and in July they're around the same time as Dennis we also had Emily which made landfall down in I think the Yucatan ultimately it reached category five at one point but the point is we had these four cat five hurricanes in the western part of the basin that they didn't track like the year before you know 2004 we had long track hurricanes like Ivan that became category five and they they developed way out early whereas the ones in o5 you're Katrina eurita your Wilma your dentist scenarios those hurricanes really didn't get going and reached their Peak intensity until they were west of 70 to 75 degrees longitude and so there was only a short amount of time really before they made landfall um what was the reason behind that if you can recall and kind of think you know yeah we didn't have Ivan Francis where they just come Trucking across the Atlantic and we think about years since then 12 years later 2017 Irma Maria hurricanes way out in the main development region the MDR as you call it we didn't really have that for the ones that had the biggest impact on the United States in o5 can you kind of think back and you know why was that why did they become such late bloomers well just to keep it simple I mean these long track storms are rare while some of the most famous ones are long track I think 1900 was another long track one if I remember correctly um these storms have to Traverse the entire Atlantic and there's so many if you want to call land mines in the way right so in general 9 out of ten hurricanes that form East to 35 West longitude they typically go out to sea okay but that one out of ten will make it so it's difficult you know you got to get through the islands think how many hurricanes Hispaniola which is not good for them but it's spared the United States so you got that you know blockade Islands you got a huge path of ocean where you have you know it's not like you have high pressure blocking it the whole way you'll have little segments where there's a weakness and that storm will move off to the north it's called a touch and that Tut sometimes will grab it and basically to keep it simple pull the hurricane out even with Irma in 2017 you notice that it actually Dove to the Southwest which is kind of unusual so it there's a lot of landmines in a way depends on where the high pressures are at it depends on the exact track it depends on if there's a pocket of Shear that opens it up and you get dryer entrainment there's just a lot of things I mean to get a category four or five hurricane atmosphere has to be basically perfect and then on top of that it's gotta get through all these know again land mines on the way towards the United States so with 2005 you did have storms that formed out in the Eastern Atlantic it's just most of those that form went out they didn't they didn't make it the whole way um the ones that formed close to the United States that's typically the Hurricanes that hit the United States form within five days of the United States so when these storms are forming close there's less chance for it to hit those landmines you know it was forming the Western Caribbean and it starts moving North it's not going to go through Espanola and even if it starts to curve at that point it's still got to get through Florida it's still going to affect the east coast of the United States so when they form close what made 2005 really impressive to me was I know that Ace wasn't quite as high as 1933. I believe it's still second all-time 2005. but most of that Ace was accumulated near the United States and that's what makes it really dangerous and you saw that also in 2020. we didn't get the long track ones but that Ace was accumulating even though it wasn't you know top five or anything but still the majority of that Ace was accumulating near the U.S and again you know look at look at Katrina forms right right off Florida and we know how bad that got we just got lucky that it went through you know eye wall replacement before landfall Rita same thing it got going pretty quickly there I mean when they get going close to the United States it's hard for them to miss well I find it fascinating that as we look back at the o5 season there was really a a very small chance from the experts uh climate Prediction Center was looking at it that we just came off the o4 season which itself was incredibly destructive a lot of activity those long track hurricanes um and you know the odds that that was going to happen again or exceeded in 05 uh was basically only one percent it's true I was looking it up the other day trying to refresh my memory on it and yet it exceeded 04 which was incredible and it was interesting to note some of the different factors and we've learned a lot since then in the 15 years since 2005 that when you have a tropically convective inactive uh Dateline region of the Pacific in other words and another way to put it is Noel Nino and an inactive Pacific the Atlantic tends to be the one that takes over and it's interesting that in o5 anytime there was a deep convection whether spawned a name storm or not out near the Dateline around 180 degrees longitude in the Western Pacific there was a lull in Atlantic activity and anytime uh that that convection near the date line was squashed the activity in the Atlantic was on fire it was just incredible and it seemed like it was about every 30 days and what do we call that phenomenon now that we know a lot more and when we knew about it then but that phenomenon that circles the globe about every 30 days or so that was prevalent in o5 and you know what I'm talking about mjo yeah the Madden Julian oscillation and we've learned so much more about it now in the 15 years prior but boy that teleconnection there that the the Ebbs and flows of what happens in the Pacific absolutely impacts what happens in the Atlantic but I got to tell you Greg I'm still you know 15 years later absolutely stunned that the amount of CAT5 activity west of 70 75 degrees longitude that you know wasn't like we had a whole bunch of um category fives out in the open Atlantic all four category five storms that formed formed in the western part of the Basin that was incredible it really was and uh um you know 15 years later we almost kind of repeated it in 2020 but we get to 2020 in another podcast no going with what you're saying it is exceptional and sometimes you know whether records are made to be broken and and you know let's be realistic is as good as we're getting and as technology improves we still have a limited data set you know yes you can go back to you know Spanish fully and you could go back to the 14 15 1600s and definitely see how these storms you know within reason where they were and what they affected but they had to affect people in order for you to get that information but you know you really look at it we don't have a huge data set and then going back to what you were saying if you just keep things simple and I think a lot of times people over complicate stuff if you keep things simple you just think of it rationally it makes sense if you look at the globe in two-thirds of tropical activity occurs in the Pacific and now the Pacific is not producing these storms well what's the point of hurricanes and typhoons and Cyclones what's the point it's to take heat out of the tropics and redistribute it to the middle latitudes and then even further north into the polls right that's a natural process that Earth does well if you have a natural process and an area of the world where two-thirds of this process usually occurred is not occurring the globe tends to have a way to make up for that and that's what exactly what you're talking about without that activity in specific if you look and this is something you can go back historically and see time and time again does it always work perfectly no but in general if the Pacific is not active and it's well below normal the land is going to make up for that and again it's just a natural process of redistributing the heat from the tropics to the mid-latitudes

so we know what the ingredients were going into the 2005 season they were pretty well seen ahead of time even 15 years ago with the technology that we had the climate modeling and so forth and as early as December December 5th 2004 you know not long after the o4 season wrapped up uh agencies like Colorado State University led by Dr Bill Gray as the lead author at the time on those forecasts you know they were calling for an above average season as early as December and then those forecasts were revised through the spring of 2005 and in the end of the summer and then by August it was obvious what was happening and it became more of you know well these are memos from the Department of the obvious than a forecast because it was happening it was already happening and we were exceeding records uh in in August when their last of the updates came out and we know what happened we ended up with 28 name storms 27 official names and then the 28th was kind of added later so we had 28 tropical storms or highers what it comes down to and truly an historic season with severe impacts you know many many uh billions of dollars in damage um and More Than 3 900 people were killed and you know the damage was 170 billion plus back in two thousand five dollars uh most of the Gulf Coast was affected the Carolinas was affected Florida you know was affected by Katrina uh and it was one of those Seasons that we thought you know it just can't get any worse than this and of course now we know it it certainly can and we get to that in future episodes but it's interesting because as I looked at the 2005 season coming off of the very busy04 season I thought o5 can't be any worse than o4 I mean good grief we had six different landfalls in o4 that I was a part of if I recall uh could it could o5 top that and it most certainly did

well now that we have refilled familiarized ourselves with the ingredients that made up the historic 2005 season and a big thanks to Greg Nordstrom for contributing insight to that we're going to go back to the very beginning of 2005 in next week's episode of stories from the hurricane Highway and we're going to pick up quite literally where we left off at the end of 2004. we needed to make some changes I will talk about that we're going to introduce a new character if you will I mean it's a real person but these are stories stories from the hurricane Highway that's the name of the podcast right and in stories you have characters and so we're going to be introduced to a new character who began working with Jesse bass and myself in early 2005 we're going to say goodbye to somebody we'll talk about that and then we're going to really get into this major Watershed sort of serendipitous moment that led to the birth of our ability to stream live video and when you hear about that and by the way I am hoping to continue what we started by having Greg going forward and we'll have Greg again in the future but other guests as well instead of it just being me I think that'll make for a more interesting and a more multi-dimensional podcast series uh the overall format I think is is going to be better than what I did for the first season kind of learning and moving forward and and doing better with it so yes we're going to bring in other people that were part of all of this instead of me telling you the stories I will involve some of the people as many of them that I can get and we'll use the uh the audio uh Zoom feature now that everybody is familiar with zoom the audio capabilities of that remotely for us to get together I think is going to really help this podcast to be even more in-depth and more interesting really instead of just me let's bring in the other people you know quite literally and we'll be doing that in episodes going forward in terms of where this goes for this year this or at least this season season two of the podcast we start off here with 2005 and that was a huge year obviously we've got a lot of storms to get through a lot of stories a lot of technology and that could take a couple of months this podcast drops every week every Wednesday you'll be able to look forward to a new episode uh we talk about o5 probably get through 0607 maybe the goal will be to get all the way through the 2008 season and and kind of because that was a big season as well and kind of end there because there were some big Benchmark things that happened there's all these big Milestones right there always are in everybody's lives everybody's story has these interesting um milestones and in our case I guess they're more like mile markers going with the old hurricane Highway metaphor and we will talk about those as well so I think maybe a goal by the time we get to the last Wednesday in May that we will wrap up the 2008 season and where we go from there I think that's a good goal going forward so uh that's what's happening in the weeks and months to come

well as always it's great to have you tuning in I appreciate your support through patreon not only of the podcast but of course of the entire project the power of crowdfunding enables us to do so much uh and it's really been a remarkable year the Year 2020 we started the podcast series at the end of 2019 into 2020 and you know we're going to get to 2020 in the audio podcast someday um this is mainly for a retrospective of how we got here and in this era the era of crowdfunding your support means so much to me and I sincerely appreciate it and I just want to make sure that you always know that first and foremost this is for you it's made possible by you and I thank you for making this a reality so that'll wrap it up for this edition of stories from the hurricane Highway stay safe out there and I will talk to you again next week I am Mark seventh hurricane track.com we'll talk again as stories from the hurricane Highway season 2 resumes next Wednesday