Award-winning meteorologist Rob Perillo draws from his 33 years of experience forecasting weather to share how meteorologists can better communicate extreme weather risks and how people can better prepare for these events.

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Transcript:

00;00;01;03 - 00;00;25;13
Hal Needham
Hey GeoTrekkers and welcome to Acadiana, that Cajun core of South Louisiana, where we'll be hanging out for the next two Geo Trek podcast episodes with award winning meteorologist Rob Perillo, who's based in Lafayette, Louisiana. We're going to have a lot of fun in these podcasts as we learn from Rob's 33 years of the weather broadcasting experience.

00;00;25;23 - 00;00;46;27
Hal Needham
Not only will we hear season perspectives on how to forecast and communicate extreme weather better, but Rob shares a lot of practical insights on disaster prep for people everywhere, whether they're vulnerable to hurricanes or some other natural hazard. If you're new to the show, Go Trek investigates the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities.

00;00;47;11 - 00;01;16;11
Hal Needham
Our goal is to help you improve your decision making, risk assessment and communication related to extreme events so you can take action to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient. Hey, if you can really help us out and keep us on the air by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform to the G Attract podcast, your subscription helps us mark progress, which enables us to make more professional partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the Geo Trek podcast in the future.

00;01;16;29 - 00;01;43;14
Hal Needham
Okay, well, pull up a big bowl of gumbo as we start this interview with Rob Perillo. Gumbo is a cold weather tradition in Louisiana. I know we're getting in the late fall and winter, right winter right now. So it'll help warm you up as you listen to Rob's insights about weather and disaster preparation. A more formal introduction of this week's guest, Rob Perillo is the chief meteorologist for Katie TV's Three's a Katie Anna's news channel.

00;01;43;24 - 00;02;15;28
Hal Needham
Rob has 33 years of experience in forecasting Acadian as weather and has tracked hundreds of tropical storms and hurricanes during his career, including major Louisiana and Acadiana. Storms such as Andrew Lillie Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Laura, Delta and Ida. That's a lot of storms that have impacted the region in recent decades. Rob is the most honored meteorologist in Louisiana and the recipient of more than 25 Associated Press awards, including the best weather cast.

00;02;16;07 - 00;02;41;28
Hal Needham
Breaking weather and best meteorologist categories in Louisiana and Mississippi. Most recently, Rob was nominated for an Emmy Award for hurricane coverage in the year 2020. Rob was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2020 by the National Tropical Weather Conference, was a finalist and the only broadcast meteorologist in the country for Weather Person of the Year in 2021 by the Federal Alliance of Safe Homes.

00;02;41;28 - 00;02;44;25
Hal Needham
Rob. So great to have you on the Geo Track podcast.

00;02;45;07 - 00;02;56;01
Rob Perillo
Oh, wow. Thanks so much. It's such an honor to be here with such esteemed guest as you had in the past. I feel blessed that you've lower your standards, at least for this podcast.

00;02;56;20 - 00;03;16;22
Hal Needham
Well, I can't wait to talk to you, Rob. You. I I've had many people say you need to bring Rob Perillo on your podcast just because you have so much background, experience. I know you've won a lot of awards. We'll get all into that in this episode. But I wanted to start in your earlier years, so can you explain where you grew up and where your interest in weather and climate began?

00;03;17;08 - 00;03;39;12
Rob Perillo
Well, you know, it's always a little bit of a weather event. Originally, I'm from the Bronx, but we moved to the suburbs in Rockland County, Nanuet, New York, go Nanuet nights back in the mid-sixties. And the first couple of days that we were there, there was a severe thunderstorm. We were in this new house that didn't have storm windows.

00;03;39;12 - 00;04;00;16
Rob Perillo
So rain was coming inside the windows and it was a severe thunderstorm and it scared the heck out of me. And I was probably five or six. And thereafter, I was always on alert for thunderstorm activity because it scared me. But it also interested me big time. And from there on, I was always interested in whether I was interested in oceanography.

00;04;00;16 - 00;04;27;01
Rob Perillo
Of course, a child of the mid-to-late sixties, you want to be a baseball player or an astronaut. But you had Jacques Cousteau on TV and and he opened up the whole world of oceanography and earth science. And then it's like, I think I might be an oceanographer. And then it just progressed up into meteorology. By the time I was in middle school, I was calling snowstorms in Rockland County before the TV guys were doing it in New York City.

00;04;27;01 - 00;04;35;10
Rob Perillo
And and then I got hooked on forecasting and just being able to try to game the system of atmospheric chaos.

00;04;36;06 - 00;04;44;02
Hal Needham
So it sounds like you were really plugged in, you were engaged, this is what you wanted to do. And then you studied that as an undergrad up in up at SUNY Oswego. Right.

00;04;44;15 - 00;05;06;12
Rob Perillo
Yeah. I want to ask where you go. And I chose Oswego, mainly one. It was a state school, so it was relatively cheap. And I had a region scholarship and a few other small scholarships for state school. And Oswego had the highest annual average snow of 144 inches per year, which beat out Albany and Buffalo and Brockport, all all of the schools that offered meteorology.

00;05;06;12 - 00;05;10;09
Rob Perillo
So that's the main reason why I went to Oswego. I wanted to see some snow.

00;05;11;00 - 00;05;20;24
Hal Needham
So yeah, Oswego is right up there, right off of Lake Ontario, north and west of Syracuse. And you get tremendous lake snows up there. I mean, what's the biggest snowstorm you can recall up there during your time?

00;05;21;09 - 00;05;45;05
Rob Perillo
Well, it was probably the last winter. I was in upstate New York. And the main driving factor, while why I wound up sending resumes to the south after I graduated, I, I did actually a little research and I was working for the New York Power Authority, doing some emergency planning meteorology. And every winter I was up there doing while I was in school, there are two that stand out.

00;05;45;06 - 00;06;01;03
Rob Perillo
One, we had an ice storm where we had about four or five inches of ice. A foot of snow fell on top of that. And then another couple of inches of ice. On top of that, you couldn't go anywhere. And that was the one and only day. Oswego canceled classes in my four and a half year trek there.

00;06;01;29 - 00;06;32;20
Rob Perillo
It was a debilitating winter event and all that ice got so hard, it was so hard to remove. But I have to say, it was probably the winter of 84, 85, where we had a three day, 50, 55 inch snow fall. And and this is the main reason why I kind of left out. We go every day from the last week of December through the first week of February, it snowed sometimes it was a flurry.

00;06;32;20 - 00;06;50;24
Rob Perillo
The lake effect band was ever present. Some days you get a dusting, other days you get two or three inches. And then during that period you had a couple of foot, foot and a half snow storms. And and we accrued during that period a little over maybe two weeks, over a full two months, over 100 inches that winter.

00;06;51;04 - 00;07;07;14
Rob Perillo
And all I remember is getting up and I'm working my research job. I would get out, try to I can get that car out, couldn't get it out, would have to shovel for 2 hours and go back and take another shower or go to work late and then have to work late into the evening to make up for the time that I missed.

00;07;07;14 - 00;07;27;12
Rob Perillo
So definitely the winter of 84, 85. I just had it by the time March rolled around and it's like, well, let me let me see if I want to do something else in a warmer climate. But there were a number of mitigating factors going on at the time. I was working at the New York Tower Authority in case they released radiation.

00;07;27;12 - 00;08;01;13
Rob Perillo
It was my job to write the procedures based on their data. And that time the dispersion models didn't have any local meteorology built in the the dispersion models were flat land. No water nearby and release something, you know, the lake of the lake influenced the area of 30, 40% of the time. So we had to develop some coastal mental scale regimes that we could put into these class AA models to help kind of determine where the radiation might go in case there would be an accident.

00;08;01;13 - 00;08;26;20
Rob Perillo
So it was and at that time there wasn't an offsite meteorology department. It was in the control room. And about six months into the job, I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, if we have a nuclear accident, it's my job to drive right to the dang station and and start procedures on monitoring and start putting this into the dispersion models.

00;08;26;20 - 00;08;54;27
Rob Perillo
And let's say the culture at that time was not quite there. It was a lot of practicing for NRC monitored practices. And we practiced for practices, for practices that would eventually be monitored by the NRC. And it was not quite organized as it is today. And this is coming off on Three Mile Island back in the late seventies, where they were starting to say, hey, man, if we release radiation, we got we need to know where it's going to go.

00;08;55;11 - 00;09;09;08
Hal Needham
Yeah. Rob, that's really interesting. A lot of people don't even think about dispersion models and maybe we just assume there'd be meteorology built into that. But, you know, like a strong west wind, you're going to have a different dispersion than a strong east wind, right? So right. And that part of that.

00;09;09;15 - 00;09;40;03
Rob Perillo
Exactly. And these are the well, Niagara mohawk was up there, too, but New York Power Authority, it's in Lycoming, which is just northeast of Oswego, right on the lake. So you had to factor in Lake Breeze, Land Breeze, all these different mesoscale processes that were going on, including, you know, lake effect snow bands, that sort of thing. So that's why I was tasked with doing after I graduated, I worked in concert with the SUNY Research Foundation and did work for the New York Power Authority.

00;09;40;03 - 00;09;58;20
Rob Perillo
And then I worked part time for them. And then there was a job that came up with Niagara mohawk for a full time meteorologist that paid much more than $13,000 a year that I was making at that time. And and I didn't get the job. And I was told, hey, you know, we got a guy that's married guys, his kids and and lives close by.

00;09;58;20 - 00;10;23;27
Rob Perillo
So but, you know, if you took this job, would you'd never move up or whatever. And and that was coincidentally at the same time where we were having all this snow was like, well, maybe I need to start looking to see what else is out there. So I just pulled out the old AMS bulletin and went in the back of the bulletin and you know, they have all the companies that are listed as AMS members and one of them sending resumes out to about 100 folks.

00;10;24;09 - 00;10;26;13
Rob Perillo
And I got about two or three answers out of that.

00;10;26;13 - 00;10;36;06
Hal Needham
So. So you were pretty open to moving anywhere, right? It sounds like you were hoping for something maybe a little warmer and less snow than the lake effect snow belt up there in upstate New York.

00;10;36;06 - 00;11;00;14
Rob Perillo
Yeah, you know, it's everything's born out of failure. I also interviewed for a job at the time the the big sailing deal, the Americas Cup was lost that year to the Australians and the following year was going to be in Australia. And I actually interviewed for a job to develop coastal mesoscale regimes off the coast of Australia so they could build a faster boat.

00;11;00;27 - 00;11;12;14
Rob Perillo
So I was already thinking about moving and going to a warm weather time. It at that time did not get that job either, but it led me to the path that I've had and I have no regrets otherwise.

00;11;12;27 - 00;11;20;19
Hal Needham
Rob, you've been in south Louisiana for a long time. Did you was that your first position after living in upstate New York or did you did you zigzag a bit?

00;11;21;01 - 00;11;50;18
Rob Perillo
Well, I did. It was a circuitous route. I wound up getting a call back from Wilkins Weather Technologies out of Houston back in 85. And I didn't know anything about tropical weather. And they served Marine and offshore technology. I don't know Wilkins if they're still around or not, but kind of like impact weather come a couple of those private consulting firms that forecast for sites specific forecasts for rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico all around the world did some shipping stuff.

00;11;50;18 - 00;12;20;07
Rob Perillo
So that's how I got down to the south. I moved to Houston in 85 and of course, I was the same time when the oil prices dropped. So I came in to this job not knowing much tropical meteorology, getting my feet wet, just sending out faxes for other meteorologists who were making the forecasts to making the forecasts. So going back to sending faxes out because our clientele shrunk so the parent company, Air Routing International had a position opening up for an aviation meteorologist.

00;12;20;07 - 00;12;46;17
Rob Perillo
So I switched over there before I became any kind of job, cut casualty. So and that's what I did for two years. And while doing business aviation, it was really cool, that job. I can't wait to put that in a book because I got the brief astronaut. Every astronaut that was a pilot in the in the program, the shuttle program, we brief them on on just practicing with their TI 38 week forecasts for the Obama comet.

00;12;46;23 - 00;13;06;00
Rob Perillo
And we did some shuttle support before the Challenger accident, but we had everything from military to Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson's plane and the Sheik of Brunei and Adnan Khashoggi. So it was cool job, but you always have to worry about diplomatic clearances, flight path and and there was always stuff going on. So it was a very stressful job.

00;13;06;00 - 00;13;38;06
Rob Perillo
But at the same time, a buddy of mine, Mark Skirt, who was our chief meteorologist up in cable TV, up in Tyler, Texas, he was going to a local TV station and he was trying to break into television. So I went down with him one day and I saw one. Everybody was driving a nicer car than me that worked at the station, and there were a lot more attractive women that work at the TV station as compared to me working with a bunch of ex Navy Air Force guys and air traffic controllers, all leading high stress jobs.

00;13;38;16 - 00;13;53;14
Rob Perillo
So that's kind of why I decided, well, let me try a TV and I thought sound cool. If I was out in the bars and, you know, somebody would come up, hey, what do you do? Well, I'm a TV weatherman. And so that was that was the main impetus at age 26. And I put myself on a reel.

00;13;53;14 - 00;14;13;20
Rob Perillo
And about a year later, I got a call from the CBS affiliate in Lafayette that was a cheap ride out from Houston for an interview. And they offered me a position for a weekend job. And I worked at that CBS station for six years and then was lured over to the ABC affiliate. And I've been with them. I'm going to be entering my 20th year coming up.

00;14;14;09 - 00;14;34;27
Hal Needham
Right. What was it like, you know, working for the first time in south Louisiana? It's just a very you you had some introduction, obviously, to the Gulf Coast with Houston. I'm guessing that helped learn that warm subtropical climate learning about the Gulf of Mexico and tropical weather, things like that. I'm guessing that kind of primed you for some work there in south Louisiana.

00;14;35;00 - 00;14;58;03
Rob Perillo
That's right. Now you're from Galveston. And during my time in Houston went one day down to Galveston. It was it had been somewhere in August. And I couldn't believe how raunchy 80 degree dew points fell. And moving to Louisiana, there's a difference in climate, illogically, from Houston to Louisiana, the humidity is up a notch. The temperatures are down a little bit.

00;14;58;03 - 00;15;34;14
Rob Perillo
So you get used to that basic air. But moving to Lafayette was also a cultural experience because of the Acadian and the Creole culture here. It's like nowhere else on in the United States. There's a there's a French speaking culture, there's a mix. And, you know, it starts at New Orleans and spreads all through southern Louisiana. So it's a big gumbo pot of a whole different folks that it's kind of our own little sphere because, you know, it's not unusual for me to go out to see a band and half of the half of the bands are still playing and singing in French.

00;15;34;14 - 00;15;53;15
Rob Perillo
So and that was the first show I got on when I got into television the first half hour was the show is called Pass By to me. The first half hour was in French and I was worried that I couldn't even broadcast in English and the first half hour would have been French. And then the next the next 90 minutes was in English.

00;15;53;15 - 00;16;19;22
Rob Perillo
But I kind of threw myself into the mix, into the TV world, but so glad I did it. It was for better hours and as an applied forecaster, you get to see the manifestation of your work. I would forecast and those previous jobs all around the world never get to see any kind of verification other than if the pilot liked the forecast or the or the ship captain liked the forecast or if he didn't like the forecast, he got that feedback as well.

00;16;20;12 - 00;16;30;28
Hal Needham
I see. So you're saying with the previous forecasting work you did, you put in numbers, you put in a forecast and you hope it was right. You weren't really getting feedback with broadcast meteorology. You get feedback right away, right?

00;16;31;05 - 00;16;54;15
Rob Perillo
Oh, it's instantaneous. It used to be just via the phone, now it's via social media. You get instantaneous feedback all the time and but that's that's great, too. You know, everybody kind of bashes social media, but I think it's a great crowdsourcing tool, even Twitter still. I like to leverage. And Facebook gets the word out to a wider audience as well.

00;16;55;09 - 00;17;13;07
Hal Needham
Rob, you've been in south Louisiana for a long time. Does that help you? Like once you've been in a place, say, five, ten years plus, I'm guessing you get a lot of credibility with the audience. But also, once you've seen a lot of summers and a lot of seasonal cycles. Right. You're probably started feeling more comfortable with forecasting the weather coming up as well.

00;17;13;21 - 00;17;43;09
Rob Perillo
Yeah, you do. But you still wind up asking yourself, why the heck am I doing this when I know the forecast potential on this particular forecast for that particular forecast has a high bust potential. But is it to me it's a challenge. You know, moving to the Gulf Coast is kind of like the major leagues of weather dynamics because you run the severe weather threats to hurricane threats and it is very satisfying, at least from a career standpoint, to be here.

00;17;43;26 - 00;18;03;27
Rob Perillo
Yeah, you get to know the places, you get to know the trouble spots, you know which areas are going to tend to flood first, who is most vulnerable to storm surge? How is this going to work? And the longer that you're here, the the the better you can serve your community for sure. And that's kind of one of the reasons why I never really want to leave once I got there.

00;18;04;12 - 00;18;18;19
Hal Needham
Yeah, for sure. I remember moving from the northern states to South Louisiana. I was amazed how warm and welcoming the people were. And, you know, Cajun people have this warm, big heart, but then they're also really tough and resilient. You know, it's a really cool culture there, you know.

00;18;18;19 - 00;18;47;01
Rob Perillo
And it's well, you know, and that's what's made my job easier because there's like this climatological database of history where people can tell you what they were doing and Hurricane Lilian 202 what was happening. And Andrew, I still talk to people that we're in Hurricane Audrey or Hurricane Betsy and and you make these connections and and people really get what's going on when we do have something threatening.

00;18;47;01 - 00;19;17;13
Rob Perillo
So I haven't had to spoon feed weather information to our crowd because, one, we don't have a whole lot of people that are coming in here, but we do have everybody that lives here stays here. So the population is growing, but everybody's got this climatological database where they know if it's a cat one or two. Oh yeah, we'll probably try to ride it out if we're inland now, the storm surge zone and and unfortunately, with the recent 15, 20 years, everybody knows if it's a cat four, three or four or five.

00;19;17;13 - 00;19;36;11
Rob Perillo
You know what? I think we're going to be evacuating. That's one thing I've noticed over the last several years is that we always used to say flee from the water and the storm surge. Now, if it's a cat four, three or four, it's like you better flee four from that 100 mile an hour zone where you're going to have the donut of the first order or second order.

00;19;36;11 - 00;19;47;13
Rob Perillo
Rain bands impacting your area because you can easily generate those major hurricane winds and they are damaging and they last a long time. They last hours instead of a ten minute tornado.

00;19;47;13 - 00;20;11;23
Hal Needham
Rob, I wanted to ask you about that. You know, I knew I knew things were getting bad in Louisiana when I travel to places like Florida, you know, and people would say, oh, those poor people in Louisiana, anywhere I went that has a hurricane threat for years was like talking about Louisiana. I mean, you had such such a hyperactive hurricane history there with Lili, you know, to getting into oh five with Rita and then Ike and Gustav.

00;20;11;23 - 00;20;37;22
Hal Needham
And right through all these storms, even the unnamed hybrid storm from Lafayette over right Rouge, you got 30 plus inches of rain in 2016. Then obviously these last few years with Laura and Delta and an IDA, and it just keeps going on. I mean, what what's your take on that? I mean, you've you've you've navigated and the culture around you one of the most hyperactive periods that people anywhere in the history of American history have ever endured.

00;20;37;22 - 00;20;42;23
Hal Needham
I mean, what's your thought as you think through that, the perspective, the big picture of what that means?

00;20;42;29 - 00;21;03;19
Rob Perillo
Well, I would tell you that actually 15 years is as bad as the last 15 years. I'll be retiring sooner or later. But, you know, you learn that each storm is different. One thing I've learned is that if you're at least 100 miles away from the eye of the storm, you can have a pretty nice day and not much weather going on.

00;21;03;19 - 00;21;22;19
Rob Perillo
But then you know how storms are asymmetric and you can get a lot of weather, you know, say a storm that's hit in the upper Texas coast. We can have a pretty huge surge and we could have some big wind and nasty rain bands. But it's being in the core of that hurricane and the decaying. I got to ride out the decaying iron.

00;21;22;19 - 00;21;43;07
Rob Perillo
And in Lili in oh two went right overhead and we had gusts naito's. We had a gust naito that hit the station and the tower fell on the station. While I was in the back of the weather department, I thought it was the radar that fell on the station and it was 150, 220 mile an hour gusts. Naito came on through and and you remember stuff like that.

00;21;43;07 - 00;22;07;22
Rob Perillo
But everybody else does as well. You know, I'm always talking about taking a survey of trees around your home because those are the number one killers generally outside of tropical, outside of the storm surge, maybe electrocutions. And certainly now we're concentrating more on the fatalities and injuries storm that we can't talk about enough before the storm comes in.

00;22;07;22 - 00;22;25;26
Rob Perillo
But there's so many things going on before the storm comes and it kind of goes to the back burner. But we we really start and and when you're doing continuous coverage, you start talking about that in every hour of every hour of coverage that you do. And I learned that, you know, it doesn't take a name storm to have a major event.

00;22;25;26 - 00;22;46;29
Rob Perillo
That unnamed storm that produced that rainfall. My house flooded in that in fact I let the Friday that we had the first ten or 11 inches had and it all came in about 6 hours. I had two cars flooded in my front yard and the water was coming in the garage. And it's like I have to go to shift, I have to go to work.

00;22;46;29 - 00;23;05;21
Rob Perillo
So I had to wade through about a quarter mile through water to get a ride because the water in my street was three and a half, four feet deep. There was no driving through it and knowing that the next day, well, there's a chance it's going to flood. And I got my family out of that Saturday and we had another ten or 11 inch rain.

00;23;05;29 - 00;23;26;19
Rob Perillo
And my neighbor across the street took a picture and showed me water was about one inch from coming in my house. And then of course, there was this last vestige of a slow moving storm wrapping around this low pressure circulation that was not quite a depression, although I think it was a depression at some point it sat on my house for one hour, dumped four inches of rain.

00;23;26;19 - 00;23;45;25
Rob Perillo
I had exactly three inches of water in my house, and then the water went back down pretty quickly. But once you get water in your house in that much, it becomes a major event and you're moving everything out of your house inside of three days so you can do all the sheetrock work and start rebuilding from scratch. So it was a it was a lesson.

00;23;45;25 - 00;24;02;24
Rob Perillo
It was a good lesson on what it's like to be a victim of a storm and know all the factors that follow. And being out of your home for eight months and all the consternation that comes with trying to find somebody to help rebuild your home and get back into it as soon as possible.

00;24;03;14 - 00;24;18;00
Hal Needham
Rob, I'm really sorry to hear that you put it in that 2016 storm. It sounds like it was exceptional flooding that your home flooded and it did not flood from any of those other events. It sounds like. Was that the case of a lot of people in your area like this was the one storm that they flooded from in recent memory?

00;24;18;23 - 00;24;36;05
Rob Perillo
Correct. We've had some big rain events. You know, these 50, 60, 70 year rainfall events. And of course, you know, Lafayette is not what it is. And like you said, in some degrees where we continue to build, but we have a lot of green space as well. So you really have to have a big flood to flood a lot of homes.

00;24;36;05 - 00;24;56;17
Rob Perillo
And that's certainly the case now. Over the years, I've lost shingles off the house and literally a few. And Rita none and lower, but a few in Delta. And you know that that comes with the territory. Everybody kind of used to that. But when you do have water in your home, that that becomes when you're flushed out of your home.

00;24;56;17 - 00;25;04;23
Rob Perillo
It's it's a different level of of of trying to recuperate and then try to mitigate what's going to happen in the future.

00;25;05;08 - 00;25;27;22
Hal Needham
Sure. And just the long term impact of it, right. You're talking many months, you know, to get your feedback on the ground. Rob, I wanted to ask you, I'm really interested when you when you reminded people that trees can be a big killer or a big damage producer, you know, in doing a survey of your property and the trees, do you do that when there's a storm in the Gulf, or is that something you remind people of, like preseason?

00;25;27;22 - 00;25;35;19
Hal Needham
Do you encourage maybe trimming or cutting down trees or damaged trees? I mean, walk us through this messaging that you do with your ground. Yeah.

00;25;35;29 - 00;26;06;01
Rob Perillo
Yeah. We've done that in the past on some hurricane specials. You know, leading up, it's about taking, you know, stock in and how your house is prepared. And I talk about that especially when I go out and talk to the civic groups and everything, you know, just, you know, very simple things. And one of the things I noticed, like with Hurricane Laura is that there were many uncovered windows that survived the storm that had roofs that were completely ripped off.

00;26;06;02 - 00;26;25;27
Rob Perillo
You know, it's not you don't be bothered taping your windows. I stopped even boarding my windows because usually when you get the dynamics in place, you have to worry about your roof coming off and and some simple things such as hurricane clips and straps. When you're building your home, you can retrofit it for a few thousand dollars, that sort of thing.

00;26;27;15 - 00;26;45;26
Rob Perillo
And then and then taking stock of the trees around your home, are they live oaks survey water oaks. Water oaks shoot up fast, but they come down fast as well. And that's what you see 80% of the trees that come down around here during these hurricanes are usually 20, 30 year old water oaks that are 40, 50 feet high.

00;26;45;26 - 00;26;52;17
Rob Perillo
And they grew, you know, five, eight feet a year type of thing. They just grow so fast and the root system is awfully shallow.

00;26;53;21 - 00;27;01;26
Hal Needham
Yeah, that's right. We had a lot of those down in Baton Rouge during Hurricane Gustav. They just don't have a deep rooting system. And they often come down in these big wind events.

00;27;03;01 - 00;27;27;11
Rob Perillo
Right. And most of the fatalities that we've seen in Acadian Acadiana, just to give you a visual we cover from Morgan City all the way over to Cameron and northward to Alexandria. So we're covering roughly a third of the state, the southwestern and south central quadrant of the state. But I always reiterate about trees that take stock of the trees that are around your home.

00;27;27;11 - 00;28;02;20
Rob Perillo
What's going to be the worst wind direction? You know, are we having the storm is just missing us to the east. So if you've got any trees on the north side of your home, they could be coming down in the direction of your home. And all the years, I would say we've had more tree fatalities and all the storms that you listed earlier than any other fatality now getting into, especially Ida, Laura, there are a lot of post-storm fatalities from heart attacks, overexertion and high heat.

00;28;02;27 - 00;28;35;28
Rob Perillo
Those are the it was a such killers after the storm where it's just so stinking hot and nobody has power. And you have middle aged people out there trying to, you know, remediate their home and move trees. And it's just a sad situation to see because there's no there's no real medical support. The first few days after a storm, you're out there and, you know, you've been just not back to the Stone Age and you're just trying to get a tarp over your roof and trying to protect your home the best you can before you can get some help.

00;28;37;01 - 00;28;58;15
Hal Needham
Yeah, you really, I think, depicted the situation clearly that people may not have emergency services and often it's those impacts in the days after the storm, right. Snake bites, carbon monoxide poisoning, no air conditioning at home. It's a lot of times if people can survive the day of the storm itself, they feel like they may be home free, but their problems may just be starting, right?

00;28;58;25 - 00;29;23;21
Rob Perillo
Yeah. And that's what we're that's what we've seen here in Louisiana over the last ten storms. There's no doubt about it. People are smart enough. You know, our coastal coastline is so shallow, it's such an easy slope that everybody knows. These big storm surges are issues. We had that first with Rita and then three years later with Ike, these massive inundations.

00;29;23;21 - 00;29;43;18
Rob Perillo
And I, I don't have a study in front of me, but I can tell you 1500, 1800 square miles are all Gulf of Mexico where people live and roadways, it all becomes the Gulf of Mexico. So even Laura, even though the surge was more point, it is tremendous to see these 20 foot surges. But people get out of the way generally.

00;29;43;18 - 00;29;48;15
Rob Perillo
Most people get out of the way of the surge. So that in itself is good news.

00;29;48;27 - 00;30;11;05
Hal Needham
Rob, I was talking with Jonathan Brazil with the National Weather Service. He was talking about advising someone down in Del Cam, Louisiana, in 2008. And this person said, you mean to tell me a category two hurricane hitting Galveston, Texas, is going to put saltwater? And he said, absolutely it will. And it did. I mean, right. For these for a storm like Ike, that geographically is enormous.

00;30;11;26 - 00;30;22;29
Hal Needham
Do you feel did that line side a lot of people you feel like in south Louisiana thinking maybe this would be more of a Texas storm, or do you think by that point, you know, people really had this recollection how dangerous the right side of the storm, you know?

00;30;22;29 - 00;30;48;24
Rob Perillo
Yeah, well, I was touting the storm beforehand that there's going to be a storm surge. It's going to be it could be very similar to Rita. It's not going to have it's not going to have battering waves and winds, although, you know, we had some wind and all with Ike. But it was a it was a slow it was a slow roll on that that storm surge where even 24 hours after the storm, people said they were okay.

00;30;49;03 - 00;31;26;15
Rob Perillo
And then 4 hours later, they're calling and the phones are lighting up. The water is rising. Water is rising. It's coming up again. And and it was it's it's a great exercise, at least a meteorological and studying meteorology to see how these storm surges they may be pointed when they go in, but it's a slower moving storm. That surge can spread out and cover and I surge cover the entire south Louisiana coastline as did Rita with and you're talking not just within a few blocks of the shoreline.

00;31;26;15 - 00;31;52;22
Rob Perillo
You're talking about water penetrating ten, 15, 20 miles. And over toward Lake Charles, 30 miles. So you're inundating huge, huge square mileage with this water. And once the water comes up, you can't do anything. Until the water goes down, you become stuck in your home. And a lot of people were were had a hard time believing that I was going to do similar to what Rita did three years earlier.

00;31;52;22 - 00;32;17;08
Rob Perillo
And and then it was even more depressing after Hurricane Laura going down the Highway 82 and going through coastal Cameron of Vermilion and Cameron Parish parishes, the same houses I saw wrecked Hurricane Rita, rebuilt wrath again, Hurricane Ike. And then that they built their house again. They built it up higher on stilts. And Laura and still the property completely destroyed.

00;32;17;14 - 00;32;23;28
Hal Needham
Well, so in some of these cases, people are having losses three times in basically 15 years.

00;32;24;18 - 00;32;45;08
Rob Perillo
Right. Right. And a lot of folks that they they know that going in, it might be a camp. There are still people that live down there. But when I first moved to Lafayette, you go down to say Pecan Island. There's a school. There was a school down there. There was a community, the grocery store. There were close to a thousand people that lived down there.

00;32;45;08 - 00;33;09;07
Rob Perillo
I think after Hurricane Ike, that was whittled down to 30. Now, I don't even know if they we have a handful of people that still live down there. So it's been interesting during my 33, 34 years in south Louisiana, seeing the geopolitical differences in how the populations are moving, how Cameron is is building everything 18 feet or higher because there's still 3000 people that work out of there and live down there.

00;33;09;07 - 00;33;37;15
Rob Perillo
So it's interesting to see how we are we are adapting to it and how we've seen these coastal population shift to the north. I did a talk at one of the AMS conferences about four or five years ago, just showing how the populations of our coastal parishes have been going down yet. Lafayette, Acadia Parish to the west, they Martin Parish to the east and the parishes to the north are seeing pretty good growth rates much, much higher than the state average.

00;33;37;15 - 00;33;41;14
Rob Perillo
So you can see people actually migrating further and further away from the coast.

00;33;42;03 - 00;33;51;15
Hal Needham
So, Rob, it sounds like you're saying in a lot of these coastal parishes, people are moving up maybe more towards the I-10 corridor, but where people have stayed, in a lot of cases, they're building higher and stronger.

00;33;52;08 - 00;34;10;28
Rob Perillo
That is correct. That's correct. And there are some good examples, even post Hurricane Laura, where the library down in Cameron Parish, I think was built at 18 or 19 feet and sustained very little damage. But anything that was below ten or 15 feet took it on and then and was either destroyed or heavily damaged.

00;34;11;04 - 00;34;28;16
Hal Needham
I remember I remember measuring high watermarks right under that library. You can see a lot of rafted debris, but it was amazing seeing how much stuff was up high. There. And and even campsite you built really strong and high. I mean you could you can tell there was a solid I don't know, maybe nine feet of saltwater flowing fast across the landscape.

00;34;28;16 - 00;34;35;20
Hal Needham
But it's amazing how many buildings survived in there. And I thought this is just things that were built higher and stronger even after Rita and Ike.

00;34;36;04 - 00;35;01;22
Rob Perillo
Yeah. And it can be done. It's expensive when you're building. It can be very expensive, especially when you're building up on pilings. And what do you do? You're doing telephone poles for pilings. Are you doing concrete pilings? And you how far are those going down into the ground? It can be done there. I did see one camper, very nice house that looked like it was built to good, stringent hurricane standards.

00;35;01;22 - 00;35;19;01
Rob Perillo
And there was very little damage to the roof. They they I don't know if they took on water down at lower levels, but they were up 15 or 18 feet. This is closer to Grand Cheniere, a little bit east of Grand Cheniere where lower surge was the highest. I figured at that location, it was about 12 or 14 feet of water.

00;35;19;19 - 00;35;33;14
Rob Perillo
But it is amazing when you go to a few spots and you see, my gosh, I'm seeing back 21, 22 feet up in in those old live oaks. So you really have a visual on on what that how high that water came up.

00;35;34;20 - 00;35;58;01
Hal Needham
Wow. Rob, we covered so much ground on this podcast episode. Really great stuff here. I wanted to comment on three discussion points we made in the podcast. Number one, we tried to provide practical career advice for students and young professionals with an interest in meteorology and disaster science. On the Go Track podcast. A lot of this advice is general perspective on tips for transitioning from school to the professional world.

00;35;58;16 - 00;36;21;15
Hal Needham
Did you catch what Rob said about his job applications after graduating from college? He said he applied to around 100 organizations that were affiliated with the American Meteorological Society, and about two or three of them replied to his inquiry. Let's unpack this for a bit. I often talk to college seniors or recent graduates who are discouraged because their job search is not going well.

00;36;22;04 - 00;36;53;12
Hal Needham
At some point they'll say something like, Wow, I've applied for like eight or nine positions and nothing's worked out yet. And they're feeling discouraged, possibly ready to give up hope because they expected to get a more positive response from prospective employers after years of hard work and good grades. I have two comments about this topic. Number one, note that Rob initiated with around 100 organizations and only heard back from two or three four young professionals who have reached out to, say, eight or ten prospective employers.

00;36;53;21 - 00;37;14;06
Hal Needham
You need to expand that list. Sometimes keep reaching out and possibly expand your geography as well to get a company to engage with you on this topic. Not only do you have to be a good fit for them, but the time has to be right as well. Perhaps through a former staff member retiring or moving away in a job opportunity opens up, so don't give up and keep at it.

00;37;14;13 - 00;37;36;08
Hal Needham
Persistence pays off as we hear with Rob story here. Number two, networking is a key practice that will help you improve that ratio of jobs applied to jobs attained a personal connection with a university, faculty or staff or other professionals, both in supervisor and peer roles will help you open doors. This is why participating in conferences and workshops is so important.

00;37;36;21 - 00;37;58;10
Hal Needham
But even right where you are, you can make a difference building relationships with a wide variety of people in your field. So if you're, say, a university student getting to know your professors, going to their office hours, that they know who you are, that can actually make a difference. That's how I got my first job. Actually. I had applied for probably 45 positions and did not hear back from any of them.

00;37;58;10 - 00;38;13;22
Hal Needham
So when I heard that Rob got two or three responses out of 100, I'm like, How did he pull that off? I got zero out of 45, and it was actually through a university professor that I took a class from a door opened up and I got my first job. So I keep that in mind. This has to do with professional development.

00;38;13;27 - 00;38;34;23
Hal Needham
Be persistent. Sometimes that ratio is a lot lower than we think. Meaning you may have to put 40 or 50 inquiries out there to get a couple. So don't give up. Don't be discouraged and keep persisting. That was my one comment about professional development. It was cool to kind of hear Rob Story going from New York to Louisiana through Houston and how all of that played out.

00;38;34;23 - 00;38;53;16
Hal Needham
Like a lot of professionals, he had a bit of a zig zag path and it was just really cool though, how he got to the Gulf Coast and how that started opening doors for him. Eventually in South Louisiana. Number two, I wanted to comment that South Louisiana has been hit by numerous catastrophic storms over the past 15 to 20 years.

00;38;53;16 - 00;39;18;03
Hal Needham
I thought it was insightful that Rob shared the one storm that flooded his home did not even have a name. This confirms the perspective that you don't need a name. Storm to get severe damage. So let's talk about this a little bit. The National Hurricane Center gives names to tropical cyclones. These are storms that have a closed circulation around a well-defined center and they're fueled by warm ocean or gulf water.

00;39;18;20 - 00;39;39;06
Hal Needham
These storms are their own entity. They have a warm core and they're not part of a larger frontal system. Once the winds around a tropical cyclone exceed 39 miles an hour, it's called a tropical storm and it gets a name. Winds exceeding 74 miles an hour make it to hurricane status and they keep that same name. And that's where we start the categories one through five.

00;39;39;06 - 00;40;08;12
Hal Needham
Once they're a hurricane, people often assume that names storms will always create more damage than unnamed storms. This especially becomes true once the media assigns a category number to a hurricane with higher numbers related to more wind damage. We can get so fixated on the category number and forget that this only relates to one metric, and that's really the metric of maximum sustained wind at its highest point, which really that those maximum winds could be over quite a small area.

00;40;09;02 - 00;40;36;17
Hal Needham
Rob reminded us, however, that we don't need a name storm to experience a disaster and even lower category storms or tropical storms. Again, those are tropical cyclones with winds less than 74 miles an hour sustained. They can still do a lot of damage. The one storm that flooded his community in the past 20 years was an unnamed storm in August 2016, although it had some tropical characteristics, it was not a pure tropical cyclone, but rather more of a hybrid storm.

00;40;36;17 - 00;40;59;21
Hal Needham
According to Louisiana state climatologist Barry Kime, this storm dumped torrential rain from Acadiana parishes east to metro, Baton Rouge and south to the coastal parishes in Louisiana. Many people flooded in this storm that never flooded before, even though it was not a named storm. I lived in Baton Rouge for eight years. I rented a home that apparently had not flooded before and was not in FEMA's flood zone.

00;41;00;04 - 00;41;19;21
Hal Needham
I moved from Baton Rouge to Galveston in February 2016, just six months before this storm that Rob was talking about. When I returned to Baton Rouge for a visit, the homeowners where I lived said they took on about 16 inches of water. People in the community were still in shock. So Rob was talking about flooding over in Lafayette, over in Baton Rouge.

00;41;19;21 - 00;41;39;02
Hal Needham
They also got really terrible flooding from this event. That was not a named storm for those of us along the Gulf Coast and southeast Atlantic, you may expect a named storm would be your biggest threat, but it's possible that an unnamed storm, especially in this spring or summer, could flood your home if the rainfall bull's eye is in your community or region.

00;41;39;09 - 00;41;59;25
Hal Needham
So this reminds us to stay vigilant for flooding year round and all throughout the summer, not just when a named storm appears. Stay tuned to your local meteorologist and the local national weather Service for a flood forecast, especially if you're driving around at night. It only takes several inches of rain in a short amount of time and all of a sudden you can have some flowing water over the road.

00;41;59;25 - 00;42;22;27
Hal Needham
Number three, I wanted to comment that we often say on the podcast that we cannot stop big storms from coming, but there are things we can do to get out ahead of a storm and minimize its impact. Rob shared a perspective that a large number of storm related fatalities in south Louisiana come from tree Falls. He mentioned that he encourages his audience to take stock of their home before a storm hits.

00;42;23;06 - 00;42;45;25
Hal Needham
And this includes assessing what trees you have that could potentially damage your home. He mentioned that water, oak trees are particularly dangerous because they grow quickly up to 40 or 50 feet high, but do not develop a strong root system. They easily come down during hurricanes and tropical storms and can inflict serious injury or death as well as destroying your home if they fall during a storm.

00;42;46;16 - 00;43;12;11
Hal Needham
I remember during Hurricane, when I lived in Baton Rouge, our neighborhood endured sustained tropical storm force winds, probably sustained in the low sixties with gusts to the low nineties. So these were not officially sustained hurricane wind conditions. However, in our neighborhood, water oaks were down everywhere, across roads, lawns and in many times smashed through houses. This was from sustained tropical storm force winds.

00;43;12;24 - 00;43;38;07
Hal Needham
Consider this The roof of your house might be built to withstand category two or three hurricane winds, but that big tree next to your house may go down. And in weaker winds like even tropical storm force winds or category one winds, especially if the soil is waterlogged. So a tree like a wardrobe next to your house could undo the great work you've done to invest in a better designed home, a better roof, or even like hurricane straps.

00;43;38;07 - 00;43;54;29
Hal Needham
These are adaptations to build better and endure hurricane force winds. But if you have a huge tree or a big enough tree that could fall on your house, that could undo a lot of that good work that you've done. This is just a heads up for those of you making landscaping decisions, moving to a new home, or assessing risk to your current home.

00;43;55;20 - 00;44;13;10
Hal Needham
We touched on this topic of trees last year in Gottschalk podcast with Eleanor Kinsman. We encourage you to listen to those of you can. She mentioned that there is a big danger with trees, especially if you live in a high risk wind area like coastal counties or parishes along the Gulf Coast. We love trees. They provide us with shade.

00;44;13;18 - 00;44;32;04
Hal Needham
They cool us in the summer and birds are nesting. It's great to see trees, but if they're over your house it can greatly introduce more risk of damage and even some death or injury in some cases. So just something to keep a heads up for. And I appreciate that. Rob pointed that out and reminded us of that. Well, go Trek fans.

00;44;32;15 - 00;44;50;10
Hal Needham
That does it for this week's podcast. You don't want to miss next week's podcast. When we come back here to Acadiana to meet back with Rob Perillo and cover part two of our conversation and that episode, we're going to cover a lot of great insights. He has on how to communicate a message well with meteorological and disaster forecast.

00;44;50;10 - 00;45;10;29
Hal Needham
So we're going to talk a little bit about forecasting and how to message that and interact with your audience in this fast paced age of social media. Our marketing team is Smith Baker, Jeremiah Wong, Ashley Anderson, Christopher Cook, Amy Wilkins and Courtney Booker. I'm Dr. Howe, and I'll catch you on the next episode of the Geo Trek podcast.

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