This interactive episode answers listeners questions about Hurricane Season 2022. This content provides insights on risk assessment and communication, which relates to other hazards as well.

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Transcript:

00;00;03;04 - 00;00;25;22
Hal Needham
Hey GeoTrekkers this is Dr. Hal. Welcome to podcast number 55. We like to make the double digit podcast episodes interactive. So here we are at 55. We're going to answer your questions about the 2022 hurricane season. So getting into this, though, if you're new to the show, go track investigates the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities.

00;00;26;05 - 00;00;52;16
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. How you can help us stay on the air by subscribing to our podcast. On your favorite podcast platform, your subscription help IS helps us mark progress, which enables us to make more professional partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the Joe Track podcast in the future.

00;00;52;25 - 00;01;09;28
Hal Needham
So we are going to answer questions this week from hurricane season. I know a lot of you live in hurricane prone places, but some of you, Joe, some of you are up in South Dakota, in Wisconsin. I know you've all been very patient with us listening to a lot of hurricane focused messages in recent months. Hang in there.

00;01;09;28 - 00;01;38;23
Hal Needham
There's a couple of perspectives on that. Four one, hurricanes are huge impact events that affects so many people. So we really like to cover them. Well, number two, taking a page out of the script from the podcast with John Stewart. Remember the emergency management expert from the DC area? He said they were using and applying knowledge in northern Virginia and the D.C. area about how to prepare for winter weather, advising people to take food, water and a blanket and emergency supplies in your car with you.

00;01;39;00 - 00;01;55;23
Hal Needham
That was a page out of the script from earthquake country in California. That's right. Out in earthquake country, you don't have warning that an earthquake is coming. So you could be driving down the highway. An earthquake could hit it could knock out the bridge ahead of you and crack the road behind you. You could be stuck on the highway for 18 hours.

00;01;55;23 - 00;02;23;25
Hal Needham
So in California, they advise people have water, food, a blanket, a flashlight, emergency supplies with you at all times. They're applying that knowledge in Virginia, even though they don't really get earthquakes that much in Northern Virginia and D.C.. So really interesting how we can apply what we're learning from one hazard to another area. So I know we've been covering a lot of hurricanes in recent months, but even if you live in Wisconsin or Wyoming, there are things you can learn about these hazards and apply to your life where you live.

00;02;24;02 - 00;02;40;08
Hal Needham
And that said, at the end of the podcast, we're going to give a little tip about ways that we're going to be pivoting over the next several weeks and some different hazards that we're going to be covering. It's going to be really exciting stuff. Well, here we are, episode 55. We're going to get into ten questions that I received about hurricane season.

00;02;40;14 - 00;03;06;25
Hal Needham
The first one I've been getting everywhere I go to church, I go to play sports, I go to the grocery store. Everyone's asking me the same question. They're saying this was a really slow hurricane season, wasn't it? So let's talk a little bit about that. This is from Noah from the NHC, National Hurricane Center, the climate site. So if you go to NHC, don't know about gov slash climate, so they talk a little bit about the climatology and this is a quote from them.

00;03;06;25 - 00;03;28;22
Hal Needham
They say based on a 30 year climate period from 1991 to 2020, an average Atlantic hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. Now, a major hurricane has had their Category three, four or five. So those are the strongest wind intensities on the safer Simpson hurricane. Wind scale. So this year, how did it stack up?

00;03;28;22 - 00;03;54;09
Hal Needham
Again, normal is 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, three major hurricanes. This year we had 14 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. So we were actually right on normal for the number of named storms and just one shy as as far as the number of hurricanes and one shy as far as the number of major hurricanes. So this year finished pretty average by the numbers, even though it may not feel that way.

00;03;54;09 - 00;04;17;05
Hal Needham
And so there's a couple of reasons why this year may have felt a little bit slow compared to other years. For one, 2020 and 2021, they were number one and number three years collectively since 1851, as far as the number of named storms, 2020, we had 30 named storms, 2021 we had 21 named storms, so over 50 named storms in two consecutive years.

00;04;17;14 - 00;04;38;14
Hal Needham
And then this year we dropped down to 14. So it might have felt like it really wasn't that busy compared to the hyperactive years of 2020 and 2021. Also this year we only had two landfalling hurricanes, both in the state of Florida. We had Ian Category four in in late September. We had Hurricane Nicole in early November. And those were both in Florida.

00;04;38;14 - 00;04;56;09
Hal Needham
And so there wasn't a really wide geographic distribution and really not that many landfalls this year either. A lot of the storms that were named were out over the open Atlantic. And so it just seemed like there weren't a lot of impacts and not a lot happening. Also, this year was very strange as far as the distribution of when these hurricanes happen.

00;04;56;18 - 00;05;19;18
Hal Needham
So we had a few named storms, really minor tropical storms early in the season. And then after July 2nd we had nothing from July 2nd to September 1st, almost two months, including the entire calendar month of August. No named storms at all. This was very weird for a la Nina year. So La Nina, that's when the equatorial Pacific water temperatures are cooler than normal.

00;05;19;27 - 00;05;47;15
Hal Needham
Usually when that happens, we see hyperactive act or at least inactive season in the Atlantic. And the Atlantic water temperatures were generally running warm in the main development region in the Caribbean, the Gulf. So we had warm water temperatures in the Atlantic, cool in the Pacific. That combination, pretty much the scientific consensus was that we're looking at an active hurricane season this year and what we ended up with was a very average season and a very unusual season as far as these long gaps.

00;05;47;15 - 00;06;09;07
Hal Needham
Like, you know, one would have thought we're going to go the entire calendar month of August without any name storms. But that's what happened. Our friend Phil Klotzbach, who does a lot of the seasonal forecasting with Colorado State University, very well-known meteorologist and climatologist. He we were I was talking to him and he had this quote. He said, it's one of the most abnormal, normal hurricane seasons ever.

00;06;09;07 - 00;06;36;20
Hal Needham
And what he meant was the numbers are lined up almost exactly normal. But it was just really weird how we got there. August and really July and August were so quiet. And then September really ramped up out of nowhere. And then we had a Category four hurricane landfall as well. So, you know, people are asking why, why, why did we have these long periods, seven, seven weeks during the height of hurricane season with nothing happening all at the experts explain that the people that do seasonal weather forecasting.

00;06;36;20 - 00;06;57;27
Hal Needham
But I think their answer will include an unusual amount of wind shear in the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic during these long times of inactivity. And we'll just have to see. It's always interesting to hear what they have to say, not only on social media, but also in our conferences coming up in the next calendar year. I always love hearing from Phil Klotzbach and other experts about what they really what happened.

00;06;57;27 - 00;07;15;03
Hal Needham
Why did we get the pattern we saw this year and and how did that really play out? So that's the first question. Isn't this a slow hurricane season? Really, the answer is that it was pretty much normal as far as the number of named storms, not that many landfalls and some really weird long stretches without any hurricane activity.

00;07;15;11 - 00;07;34;13
Hal Needham
Question number two, is hurricane season finished? People ask me this all the time when we get into October and early November is there a hurricane season finished? What they're getting at is, you know, should I do that landscaping work? Should I hire that roofer to come and do that roofing project or might we still get a hurricane? And do we need to be worried about this?

00;07;34;24 - 00;07;57;01
Hal Needham
I get that question a lot, especially in October and early November. So according to Noah, the National I'm sorry, the National Hurricane Center, the Atlantic hurricane season runs officially from June 1st to November 30th. The Atlantic basin includes so this includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Noah also says the first named storm typically forms in mid to late June.

00;07;57;09 - 00;08;23;04
Hal Needham
The first hurricane tends to form in early to mid August, and the first major hurricane, category three or above typically forms in late August or early September. So what's really driving this pattern I want to do to make the point that the seasonal time frame has everything to do with sea surface temperatures. Tropical cyclones require water temperatures of at least approximately 80 degrees Fahrenheit to get enough fuel to strengthen.

00;08;23;14 - 00;08;47;25
Hal Needham
This normally happens in water near the Gulf and southeast Atlantic around early June or so, and it lasts until typically about mid-October in the northern and western Gulf and a little longer in the central and south Florida area, as well as the Caribbean. This year, the sea surface temperature was warm enough to support an early November hurricane named Nicole, making landfall along Florida's east coast by mid-November.

00;08;47;25 - 00;09;10;23
Hal Needham
However, if any last storms were likely were to occur, they'd likely happen in the Caribbean. So keep in mind that we kind of ease in and out of hurricane season. It's not like switching on a light. It's not as if on May, you know, getting into say like May 30th, May 31st, there's there's no activity. And then suddenly on June 1st, all this activity can ramp up.

00;09;10;29 - 00;09;36;28
Hal Needham
It's more gradual than that. We kind of ease into it and ease out of it. So, for example, in June, it would be really rare to see a major hurricane, category three or above at that time, because the water doesn't really have enough here content at depth to support a major hurricane. Now, there have been exceptions like Hurricane Audrey in 1957, but typically speaking, those first weeks in June, we may see a tropical storm or possibly a category one hurricane.

00;09;37;06 - 00;09;58;25
Hal Needham
But, you know, we kind of ease into the season and we kind of ease out of it as well. So by the time we hit November, more or less things are winding down. But this year, really, we had warmer than normal sea surface temperatures east of Florida. That was enough just to support a minor, a really low end category one hurricane making landfall there in central Florida.

00;09;58;25 - 00;10;23;10
Hal Needham
So really good questions there about the activity of the season and also the seasonality of when we're finished with hurricane season. I received three questions from our friend Caspar Gregory. Caspar is with the Tropical Weather Threat Society. He James and Kylie do an amazing job with their team. The goal of their team is to actually create this environment where there are no fatalities in landfalling hurricanes.

00;10;23;10 - 00;10;55;00
Hal Needham
So that's a great goal to have. They're very prolific online before, during and after tropical cyclones and cost percent. Three Question So the first question how many 2022 severe weather events in the US exceeded the one in every 100 year average. So we sometimes talk about the 100 year storm, how many events this year exceeded that. So this is a great question and this refers when we talk about the 100 year storm, that's something called a return period or how often a storm of certain characteristics repeats.

00;10;55;12 - 00;11;17;20
Hal Needham
So this is very localized and it depends on very specific data parameters or types of data. So for example, when talking about if something was 100 year storm, are we talking about the wind speed or are we talking about the flood water? And then if we're talking about the floodwater, are we referring to the amount of rain, the amount of storm surge or perhaps the height of the water in a river or a channel of water?

00;11;18;16 - 00;11;42;18
Hal Needham
Even beyond that, let's say you're saying, okay, I'm just worried about rainfall. What about the rainfall? Was this a 100 year storm or more as far as the rainfall? Then it gets even more nuanced and detailed than that. For example, if we're talking about the return level or, you know, the frequency of this event, are we talking about a three or four day rainfall, like a really long duration rain like Hurricane Harvey?

00;11;42;28 - 00;12;07;05
Hal Needham
Or are we talking about how much rain fell in a 24 hour period or even a six or 12 hour period? Now, this might seem like I'm being really nit picky and really nuanced here, but for example, for designing transportation, drainage like culverts, they'll get really very detailed in the design criteria. They'll say, we're designing for this many inches of rain in a three hour period or a six hour period.

00;12;07;16 - 00;12;28;20
Hal Needham
And so it becomes very specific and very nuanced as far as what specifically we're talking about. So sometimes people will slap a number on a storm and say that was a 500 year storm. Again, that would relate to one parameter in one location and usually breaking that down very specifically so that that storm produced 500 year rainfall in 3 hours.

00;12;28;20 - 00;12;50;11
Hal Needham
That means overall very long duration. We should expect that that amount of rainfall to be equal or exceeded only once every 500 years. That would be a very rare event. But these rare events happen. We have a huge country. We have over 3000 counties. So on average, if you think about it, three counties per year, you get a thousand year storms statistically, even if there were no climate change.

00;12;50;11 - 00;13;07;15
Hal Needham
So along the coast, storm surge is usually the thing that people are thinking about when they say was that 100 year storm or how many hundred year storms do we have because storm surge does the most damage often. So people are really asking about these water levels that we see. And this was a big focus of my dissertation.

00;13;07;15 - 00;13;31;19
Hal Needham
I built data sets for 26 Gulf Coast cities and calculated the first data driven flood statistics using data since 1900. So these data can tell us how high the 100 year or 200 year flood is from a data driven as opposed to a modeling perspective, they can also tie the water level from a specific storm to a recurrence interval, like how often we should expect the water level to be equaled or exceeded.

00;13;31;19 - 00;13;55;12
Hal Needham
So for example, I just recently last year finished a project in Biloxi, Mississippi, where I built their first comprehensive flood data set. And according to this study, Hurricane Katrina's storm surge, there was a 330 year storm. That means that was so rare, we should only expect that water level to be equaled or exceeded once every 330 years. So, again, that's according to the data we built.

00;13;55;22 - 00;14;18;11
Hal Needham
And you always have to reference according to whatever model you're running or whatever data you built. In that case, those were data since 1900. To calculate how many times the 100 year storm was exceeded, you need to go through data of dozens of cities and look through. So to really answer Casper's question, we would need to really look over maybe hundreds of different cities, look at their extreme weather.

00;14;18;11 - 00;14;37;24
Hal Needham
If it's wind, rain, flood levels and rivers, all this stuff, this would be a huge project to do. But it's a great question. And so because he's tying in this idea of extreme weather with with a frequency, right. Like. So how rare is this? That's a great question to ask. And it's something that we should be trying to answer.

00;14;38;29 - 00;15;05;27
Hal Needham
So another issue with this is that many times the base flood elevation, so this term base for elevation, it's what FEMA estimates to be the 100 year storm. Again, this water level that's so rare that we only see it equaled or exceeded on average every one in 100 years. So that's 100 year storm. But what we found when we've gone to many cities a lot of times what's called the 100 year storm, at least according to their historical data, might be more like a 30 or 40 year storm.

00;15;06;04 - 00;15;31;27
Hal Needham
Like we see locations where the 100 year storm historically has been topped multiple times. So sometimes people say, wow, it must be climate change. We're getting 100 year storm every five years. There could be a climate change element in that for sure, but also what we've been calling the 100 year storms many times, I'm afraid, is underestimated. So maybe the 100 year storm at a location is like 11 feet, but we've been calling it seven feet, if that makes sense.

00;15;32;03 - 00;15;49;16
Hal Needham
So we've been building to what we think is 100 year storm, but it's really not. So let's get into this, you know, for this past hurricane season and it's not really possible to answer this question for all locations, for all types of data. But for this past hurricane season, the big hit was Hurricane Ian out there in southwest Florida near Fort Myers.

00;15;49;28 - 00;16;17;19
Hal Needham
And Fort Myers. Cape Coral was actually one of the 26 cities where I calculated storm surge statistics during my Ph.D. research. So using data from 1900 to 2013, so that's 114 years of data. I calculated a 100 year storm surge level. So this is based on 114 years of data, the 100 year storm surge in the Fort Myers area was 10.14 feet, the 200 year level, 12.34 feet, and the 500 year storm, 15.22 feet.

00;16;18;00 - 00;16;39;28
Hal Needham
So have Ian's flood levels in this area reached around 12 to 13 feet. This wouldn't make this generally around a 250 year flood event in this area. This means that we should expect this water level to be equal to or exceed it on average only once every 250 years. That said, when we usually do these type of extreme flood statistics, we usually put that.

00;16;40;07 - 00;17;00;23
Hal Needham
So if a big storm, a big catastrophic storm like Ian happens, we may recalculate the statistics. And then we put that new storm in the statistics. And so not only to get the return period for something like Ian, but then also Ian starts to influences larger statistics. I have not had time to go back to those raw data set, put Ian in and recalculate things.

00;17;00;23 - 00;17;23;01
Hal Needham
So again, in my dissertation I found the 200 year storm is 12.34 feet. That would probably change a little bit once you put Ian in the mix and maybe the 200 year storm jumps up to, I don't know, 13 or 13 and a half feet so well. Keeping Ian outside that analysis and looking inside, looking in the building through the window, we'd say Ian was maybe a 250 year storm.

00;17;23;01 - 00;17;44;00
Hal Needham
But once you put Ian in the mix and include Ian's data, maybe Ian as, I don't know, 150 year storm or a 200 year storm, whatever it was, it was exceptionally catastrophic and large storm surge. That's a rare event. You very well could go your entire lifetime or multiple lifetimes and not see anything like Ian. But in the region we have seen what events like that.

00;17;44;00 - 00;18;07;27
Hal Needham
I spent some time in the Tampa library when I was in Florida for Ian and I found evidence of a 15 foot storm tide in 1848, when Tampa was just a small community. They had an army fort there. Again, 15 feet came up as far as the water level above me in low tide. So we do know that these say 12 to 15 foot surges have happened and are possible there along the west coast of Florida.

00;18;07;27 - 00;18;22;18
Hal Needham
Many people on the ground, I'll say I've lived here my whole life. We've never seen anything like that. And that may be true. But when you go back before your life, it exists in the history and also the models suggest that we could see that. So you can't let your guard down just because you haven't seen something in your life.

00;18;22;18 - 00;18;43;27
Hal Needham
Mother Nature can always throw surprises at us. Great question there from Casper. I wish I could just go through all these different cities and or all these different storm events and break it down, that that could be like something that maybe for a master's thesis or even a Ph.D. to kind of assess that at a wide scale, say, okay, for all the storms in this calendar year, how many were more than 100 year events?

00;18;44;06 - 00;19;06;04
Hal Needham
That would take quite a bit of analysis, but it'd be worth doing. That's a great research topic for a prospective grad student. Another question from Casper during the second landfall of Ian in South Carolina, how much did the prolonged northeast fetch of winds along the southeastern U.S. coast prior to Ian's arrival contribute to storm surge values? We saw in South Carolina?

00;19;06;04 - 00;19;29;03
Hal Needham
So he asked about the fetch over the water and how much did that contribute to the storm surge there in South Carolina when Ian made a second landfall? So Ian made landfall as a category four hurricane. Southwest Florida crosses the state of Florida, got back into the Atlantic and then made a second landfall, not as a major hurricane, but still as a hurricane in South Carolina producing more flooding and wind damage as well.

00;19;30;03 - 00;19;55;16
Hal Needham
He asked about the fetch. So fetch refers to the distance over which winds are blowing in a straight line over open water. When hurricanes approach South Carolina from the southwest like Ian did, the counterclockwise circulation around the storm often produces this prolonged time of winds that are blowing from southeast to northwest. So that's an onshore wind over a relatively long distance and it can be over a long duration of time.

00;19;55;16 - 00;20;18;26
Hal Needham
And this just has to do with really geometry. As that storm continues to approach South Carolina from the southwest, the winds just continue blowing in the same direction. You can draw that on a map, show the counterclockwise spin of the storm and the winds just keep building from the southeast. That can really enhance storm surge for sure. It also had a very large Winfield which can increase the fetch distance as well.

00;20;18;26 - 00;20;41;13
Hal Needham
So these bands are traveling in a I guess the radius of max winds and the radii of these is wind bands are longer, so you're going to have longer fetches. And that's one reason that larger storm surges also or larger hurricanes produce bigger storm surges. That said, we see something a bit odd in the NHC or the National Hurricane Center graphic archives from Ian.

00;20;41;26 - 00;21;06;10
Hal Needham
So if you look at advisory 31, a issued on Friday, September 30th at 8 a.m. Eastern Time, we see this map with the extent of tropical storm force and hurricane force winds. Note that as Ian is centered off the South Carolina coast, the hurricane winds were mostly located to the west of the eye instead of the east. So we often talk about how the strongest winds are typically on the right side of the storm track.

00;21;06;10 - 00;21;23;13
Hal Needham
That's not always true, though, when you look at advisory 30 1 a.m. at 8 a.m. on September 30th, we actually see a plot and I don't know, we'd have to really dig into the data, but it appears that the strongest winds were actually on the left side of the storm. And that can happen. That's that's not unheard of.

00;21;23;25 - 00;21;44;07
Hal Needham
It's just a little less usual. So this may have been a continuation of Ian's left side being stronger than the right, which seemed to be the case at some of the intervals in Florida, for example, where I was positioned in Punta Gorda, Florida, the second half of Ian's eyewall, winds were noticeably more intense than the first half. And this is maybe getting a little bit nitpicky.

00;21;44;07 - 00;22;06;20
Hal Needham
We do know from the National Hurricane Center Advisory that the wind field for tropical storm force winds is very large. And even even as it approached not only Florida, but South Carolina. So really, I think there would have been a large fetch or long distance of tropical storm force winds approaching the coast. Hurricane winds, that's something that we'd really have to dig into a little deeper.

00;22;06;27 - 00;22;28;07
Hal Needham
But it looks like from the advisory that perhaps the hurricane force winds were actually to the west of the eye track. So they may not have had a really big fetch there on the South Carolina coast. These types of questions usually become clearer after the official NHC hurricane report is issued over the winter or the following spring. So some of these things are a little bit speculative.

00;22;28;12 - 00;22;49;09
Hal Needham
That's why it takes usually at least several months for the National Hurricane Center to release the official report after a hurricane makes landfall. And this will break down a little more information about the track, the winds, all that stuff. A storm like Ian is probably going to be a pretty substantial hurricane center report that's issued, I would think, later in the winter or early spring.

00;22;50;01 - 00;23;12;08
Hal Needham
And that should answer some of our questions about the analysis and really what happened during it. Okay. Question number five, another one from Caspir. Are there any ongoing discussions about mitigating the undercutting of infrastructure foundations from the current created by storm surge? Can anything really be done about it? So this is getting into where sometimes we see that foundations on houses are undercut and start collapsing.

00;23;12;08 - 00;23;41;05
Hal Needham
My response to that water is so destructive when when it's moving quickly in a storm surge. I still remember seeing the roads in Mexico Beach, Florida completely washed away and entire homes gone after Hurricane Michael and in 2018. So there are a lot of things we can do to mitigate against water damage. This can include building larger and higher foundations, building walls to block the water and installing things like flood vents, which can actually enable the water to flow through a foundation or a wall.

00;23;41;20 - 00;24;07;19
Hal Needham
So our Superstorm Sandy podcast from Long Island, New York, discusses some of these adaptations. We also have some social media reels that kind of show video of all these different adaptation ideas that they've done there in Long Island, New York. Following Sandy, installing foundations deeper in the ground can also help reduce, undercutting. But this can also increase the cost of construction as more material or, say, more concrete is needed to build the foundation.

00;24;07;19 - 00;24;30;02
Hal Needham
So sometimes this is an offsetting thing. Obviously, sometimes building more resilient cost, more money. Is it worth the investment? Sometimes it really is. It just depends on your flood risk where you're at. Some builders will say the best option is to focus on elevating buildings higher so the water can just flow under the structure. You just have to make sure if you do that, that the pilings go deep into the ground and that they're built very strong.

00;24;30;11 - 00;24;56;21
Hal Needham
If just one piling fails, the entire building will come down. So really interesting questions there. Getting into some things about the meteorology, but also the impacts as well. So appreciate those questions from Caspar Sharlene Jackson asked I would like to understand more about tornadoes and how the clouds develop into a tornado. A great question. Tornadoes are fascinating. Sometimes people confuse tornadoes and hurricanes.

00;24;56;21 - 00;25;18;17
Hal Needham
So tornadoes are much geographically smaller. We can basically think of them as funnel clouds. Mostly when we think of tornadoes, we're often thinking of long track powerful tornadoes that often form in the Plains states in the spring and the early summer. Several of these factors align for these tornadoes to take place. One thing needed is instability, which we often find in warm, moist air near the ground.

00;25;18;27 - 00;25;40;11
Hal Needham
When there's cooler, drier air aloft. We also need lift, which we often get near dry winds, cold fronts, warm fronts or even sea breezes. Another ingredient we need for these long track tornadoes is wind shear, which is a change of wind speed or wind direction with height. When these ingredients are present, we often get tornadoes. However, hurricanes can also produce tornadoes.

00;25;40;11 - 00;26;03;09
Hal Needham
These normally formed to the right of the eye, often in elongated squall lines that are coming onshore to the right of where the eyewall position is. And so as these squall lines are coming ashore, the friction they encounter when they when they hit land often spins up tornadoes. Geographically, tornadoes and hurricanes cover much less terrain than hurricane winds, hurricane rain or storm surge.

00;26;03;15 - 00;26;24;10
Hal Needham
But if you get hit by a hurricane's tornado, the damage can be devastating. So there's a story from my town. I live in Galveston, Texas. We have the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Happened right in my neighborhood on September 8th, 1900, when the 19th storm struck. And there is a Catholic school called Holy Family Catholic School. I walked by it or bike by it almost every day.

00;26;25;03 - 00;26;47;10
Hal Needham
And there was a bell in front of this school. And the bell commemorates that. This bell was rung during the night of the 1900 storm when the Ursuline nuns rang the bell to bring people into safety. And the nuns saved 1500 lives that night by ringing this bell and bringing people into the Ursuline Academy. This is a massive cathedral that was built like a fortress.

00;26;47;10 - 00;27;15;22
Hal Needham
It was designed by Nicholas Clayton, our most famous architect here in Galveston's history. And it brought people in. And the debris line came right up to the edge of the Ursuline Academy, but it survived the 1900 storm. Not only did the building survive, but 1500 lives were saved that night in the Ursuline Academy. What a beautiful structure to see and unfortunately I and many of my friends have never seen it because it was destroyed 61 years later by a freak hurricane tornado from Hurricane Carla.

00;27;15;22 - 00;27;38;07
Hal Needham
So Carla hit more than 100 miles down the coast from where I am, more like probably 140 miles from where I'm from, Galveston. But on this far right edge of the storm, one of these elongated squall bands came into Galveston, and there was a very powerful tornado that cut across the city, destroyed a lot of historic structures, including Ursuline Academy, was destroyed by one of these hurricane tornadoes.

00;27;38;07 - 00;28;00;15
Hal Needham
So again, tornadoes in general tend to be very geographically small, almost surgical. They do a lot of damage where they hit. But if you go a few blocks from where they hit, there may be no damage at all. Compare. Compare that. If you've ever spent time in hurricane country, you could drive after a hurricane for hours and you're seeing blue tarps on roofs for sometimes hundreds of miles.

00;28;00;25 - 00;28;25;13
Hal Needham
Hurricanes have these huge wind fields. Tornadoes have much smaller wind fields. And then sometimes you get these tornadoes embedded in in hurricanes, which is what can happen. And I wanted to address that because we are talking here about looking back at this hurricane season and there was a tornado question and it's interesting how the two can overlap. Here's a question from Jeremiah Long How did Hurricane Ian compare to Superstore and Sandy in 2012?

00;28;25;13 - 00;28;43;15
Hal Needham
So that's interesting because in the last two months we've done podcasts on both of those storms we covered in live on the ground in southwest Florida. And then we aired the episode from Long Island, New York, that I recorded last year for the ten year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. Really interesting question. How these two compare? There are similarities for sure.

00;28;43;15 - 00;29;09;26
Hal Needham
They both had very big Winfield's, so really large Winfield's, and that enabled them both to push really big storm surges. This wall of saltwater that comes onshore, Sandy storm surge in a lot of places was as high as, say, 14 to 15 feet and maybe 12 to 14 feet. Those are massive walls of saltwater that are coming, moving across the landscape, flooding thousands and thousands of buildings, if not tens of thousands, creating tremendous amounts of destruction.

00;29;10;03 - 00;29;33;27
Hal Needham
So they both have that in common. And another thing they both had in common was they found populations that in some cases were honestly quite complacent. So we talked about this in our podcast in Long Island that the year before they were struck by Hurricane Irene in 2011, it did not do much damage in that area. And so when Sandy came, people thought, okay, we've been through this before, it'll be just like it was last year and it wasn't.

00;29;33;28 - 00;29;52;14
Hal Needham
All of a sudden Sandy killed a lot of people and inflicted a lot of damage. And so there was a complacency in Long Island, New York, with Sandy, in part because Irene the year before wasn't that bad. We saw a very similar story in southwest Florida. Right. We know that people were quite complacent in some areas before Hurricane Ian.

00;29;52;19 - 00;30;13;14
Hal Needham
And this in part was because they experienced near, quote unquote, misses in the past. Hurricane Irma in 2017, people in the Fort Myers area perceive that the forecasted storm surge never happened. It did down by the Everglades, but it did not happen in their zip code. So a lot of people think I evacuated for no reason. I'm not going to evacuate anymore.

00;30;14;07 - 00;30;38;10
Hal Needham
And then all of a sudden we're fighting for their lives. And Ian so I think those storms found a to some degree complacent population that was shocked by the devastation. In some ways, Ian and Sandy were different. The track of Sandy was really well predicted by the models even days before and it was a very strange track. A lot of times these storms that track up the east, up the East Coast, stay offshore, they kind of curve and they just stay offshore.

00;30;38;10 - 00;30;56;11
Hal Needham
A lot of times Sandy actually started tracking up the East Coast and then took this sharp left hook, this turn into the Jersey coast, which put metro New York area. Right, kind of in this worst case scenario area where they were on the strong side of the storm. It was a very unusual track, but it was well predicted by the models.

00;30;57;15 - 00;31;12;09
Hal Needham
By contrast, I think with Ian, the models were moving a lot in the days up to it and a lot of people on the ground blame that on some of the problems with with people being caught off guard. A lot of people said, wait, this storm was supposed to go north of Tampa and now it's well south of Tampa.

00;31;12;19 - 00;31;36;04
Hal Needham
It seemed like the models days before were more aligned with a hurricane with Superstorm Sandy than they were with in another different Sandy was extratropical, whereas Ian was tropical. So tropical cyclones. There's a closed circulation around a well-defined center there feeding off warm water. They're not associated with fronts or a mix of air masses or a boundary line of air masses.

00;31;36;11 - 00;32;02;20
Hal Needham
Sandy was extra tropical, so it had some tropical characteristics until right before it hit New Jersey, but then it started to get extra tropical. There was a mix of air masses there. It was no longer tropical. That didn't matter if you had four feet of water in your house, but it did affect how insurance played out. And we covered that in our podcast with Andrea Pelletier and in, you know, talking about Sandy and how the hurricane deductible was not in play because it was extra tropical.

00;32;02;20 - 00;32;24;01
Hal Needham
So that did make a difference for insurance claims. Sandy probably impacted more people. I mean, Fort Myers area is densely populated. So is Cape Coral. But really it was like Sanibel Island, Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, and a lot of people were affected. But with Sandy, I mean, when you got close to New York City, you got stretches where tens of thousands of people were affected.

00;32;24;10 - 00;32;47;05
Hal Needham
It was just unbelievably dense population over a huge area. So I would say Sandy probably impacted more people and had much stronger winds at landfall. That's another difference. Ian came in as a Cat four hurricane with sustained winds, at least in the one thirties in some areas, maybe closer to the one forties. With Sandy, really it was a broad Winfield, but maximum sustained winds were barely over hurricane force on land.

00;32;47;05 - 00;33;04;00
Hal Needham
And so with Sandy was really more of a straight up surge event. Let's talk about this, too. In the days after Ed, I was there, I was on the ground. I actually was car camping because all the hotels were gutted. And I remember it was really comfortable car camping at night. It was in the sixties in the day.

00;33;04;00 - 00;33;23;11
Hal Needham
It was in the I guess mid eighties. Weather was pretty comfortable in the days after in the days after Sandy. We covered this in our podcast, this hit around Halloween and then all of a sudden you had weeks, two months where people didn't have utilities, didn't have electricity, didn't have heat. People were standing around burned barrels just to stay warm and not freeze.

00;33;23;20 - 00;33;42;08
Hal Needham
So you had some really cold conditions. This was in Northeastern states in the autumn, cold conditions after Sandy. And people just said, I can't live in my house. It's it's unlivable. That was a difference as well. So, yeah, some really interesting differences and similarities between Ian and Sandy. Both were massive storms that we'll be talking about for decades.

00;33;42;14 - 00;34;06;24
Hal Needham
They both blindsided populations and they both were large. A geographic, only large storms that produced big storm surges and affected a lot of people moving right along. Question number eight, this comes from Amy Wilkins. Do you think we'll have similar occurrence like Ian and Nicole, two hurricanes from this year in 2022, where the paths were very similar to another hurricane or hurricanes from the past.

00;34;06;24 - 00;34;29;21
Hal Needham
So this is like Hurricane Charley and Jeanne, in 2004, they both hit in the same year they both had Florida. And they you know, Charley's path was similar to Ian and Nicole's was similar to Jeanne. It was a pattern that I've seen shared online. And I believe from what I saw, the number of days between Charley and Jean was the same as the number of days between in and the call.

00;34;29;21 - 00;34;56;23
Hal Needham
So really interesting. And it's a it's a good question. I think a lot of this is really from, well, probably a random pattern. But when a region or a state gets primed for active hurricane development, sometimes we see multiple storms in a season like. So sometimes we'll see multiple storms not quite back to back, but we'll see a little bit of activity, not just from one storm, but from a secondary storm within weeks or months.

00;34;57;01 - 00;35;20;08
Hal Needham
This happened in other times, like with Katrina and Rita, about three weeks apart in 2005, Gustav and Ike in 2008, about 10 to 12 days apart in a nickel were separated by more than five weeks. However, and, you know, it's really interesting to see, is there a pattern set up? Is there a reason why that, you know, we saw a similar pattern from two storms taking similar tracks in 2000.

00;35;20;08 - 00;35;44;22
Hal Needham
Four were repeating it in 2022. I don't think that there's really anything to say, like why we should see those exact tracks. I think the southeastern U.S. in that part of the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean was kind of primed for a lot of activity. I think, though, as far as seeing those those track patterns almost repeat in 2022, what we saw in 2024, I think probably is just randomness.

00;35;44;22 - 00;36;03;19
Hal Needham
But when we get enough storms out there, sometimes we can see patterns repeat. It's a really good and interesting question as well. A very observant question from Courtney Booker. I'm curious, as to how hurricane predictions were made in the past without the use of satellite imagery. So nowadays we can see thunderstorms pull off the coast of Africa. We start talking about tropical waves.

00;36;03;19 - 00;36;19;21
Hal Needham
We follow them all across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean. We're sometimes talking about these storms for more than ten days or almost two weeks before they would even impact the U.S. back in the day, that wasn't the case. And so I wanted to get back into a weather history and look at how observations were made and shared.

00;36;19;24 - 00;36;45;05
Hal Needham
Some of our founding fathers, like Thomas Jefferson, took very good archive of weather weather observations. But these weren't really shared or communicated yet. The communication really started with the telegraph, and this comes from climate talks of this history I'm going to read. It says The ability to share observations was greatly aided by the advent of the telegraph, which enabled weather observations from distant points to be rapidly collected, plotted and analyzed at one location.

00;36;45;15 - 00;37;13;19
Hal Needham
When the Telegraph became operational in 1845, then it visionary saw the possibility of forecasting storms simply by telegraphing ahead what weather was coming. Volunteer observers were recruited across the country via a circular distributed by the press by the end of 1849, more than 100 volunteers throughout the United States were regularly reporting weather observations at that time to the recently established Smithsonian Smithsonian Institution.

00;37;13;19 - 00;37;35;20
Hal Needham
By 1860, several hundred weather stations were furnishing daily telegraphic weather reports to Washington Evening Star. In the years following the Civil War, the need to warn mariners of impending storms led Congress in 1870 to authorize the Secretary of war to take observations at military stations and to warn of storms on the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast.

00;37;35;27 - 00;37;58;17
Hal Needham
The service was extended in 1872 through the entire United States for the benefit of commerce and agriculture the agency born under the Army's Signal Service would in later years be known as the weather bureau and then known today as NOAA's National Weather Service. So really interesting how weather data and information were shared by telegraph in those early years.

00;37;58;26 - 00;38;20;17
Hal Needham
We know that that was happening even like when the 1900 storm hit Galveston. They were trying to telegraph up to Washington, D.C. and communicate with them the best they could around. And but we still see that people were a lot of times blindsided by what was coming up until like the early 1900s. And then around 1910, there's a shift and we start seeing ships at sea with two way radio.

00;38;20;17 - 00;38;41;25
Hal Needham
And so all of a sudden, ships at sea would say, wow, I'm out here 300 miles south of New Orleans with a 65 mile an hour wind. We know that there's something tropical in the Gulf. So that started around 1910. This was actually silenced in 1943. So we had this two way ship communication. And in the forties we had World War Two.

00;38;41;25 - 00;39;11;29
Hal Needham
And so in 1943 that this was silent because of German U-boats. And in the Upper Texas coast, we talk about the surprise hurricane of 1943, which hit the Upper Texas Coast as a Cat two hurricane. And the local population was taken off guard. The ship communication was silenced. And also I think the government did not really want to broadcast to the opposition that our petrochemical base, you know, oil refineries, things like that were going to be hit a hurricane.

00;39;11;29 - 00;39;41;00
Hal Needham
And so they really kept it silent and the local population was taken off guard. After that, the US government determined never to withhold information about an approaching hurricane again after the surprise hurricane of 1943, right after World War Two in the mid forties, we started with hurricane hunter aircraft that would start flying into hurricanes and taking observations. 1957 ish, around the late fifties, we started getting coastal weather radars that would actually send a radar signal and record what weather was coming in.

00;39;41;12 - 00;40;05;28
Hal Needham
And then in the early sixties, we started getting polar orbiting satellites. These are satellites that really orbit the poles and then the earth spins underneath them. And so they're they're doing strips of land. They're basically going over a elongated north to south strips of land and downloading the data. And then in the early seventies, finally, geostationary satellites that are really positioned over a fixed location above the Earth's surface.

00;40;06;07 - 00;40;25;21
Hal Needham
And they could really just keep a watchful eye over areas like the main development region in the Atlantic where we see so many hurricanes form. So really interesting stuff. Obviously nowadays we have radar, we have all this satellite technology, we have the Internet and apps and all this stuff. So I thought that we were beyond the age of being blindsided.

00;40;26;13 - 00;40;50;15
Hal Needham
We'll never be blindsided again by a storm like the 1900 hurricane. But with these rapidly intensifying hurricanes in recent years, it's made me question, you know, is it possible that we still can be blindsided? And I saw this in Hurricane Ida in 2021, driving through metro New Orleans the day before this massive hurricane comes in. And there was no mandatory evacuation because this storm intensified so quickly.

00;40;50;15 - 00;41;07;21
Hal Needham
There wasn't and there was not enough time to get everyone out. And so this idea, I've often thought, oh, we can see these storms coming from Africa. We have plenty of time. In recent years, I've begun to question that perspective and begun realizing we really need to be vigilant. We really need to be ready to go at a moment's notice.

00;41;07;21 - 00;41;31;17
Hal Needham
And, you know, the time to start preparing for a hurricane is not when it's one day out, rapidly intensifying off the coast. Really. We need to stay vigilant and prepare really before season so that we're ready to go at a moment's notice if we need to. And last but not least, the final question comes from Ashley Anderson. What improvements or changes would you suggest in weather reporting to really wake people up to hurricane and storm warnings?

00;41;31;17 - 00;42;00;02
Hal Needham
I love this question because it's open ended and it's really getting out. What are we learning in our communication? It's not only just understanding and predicting the meteorology, but communicating with people so that they're more vigilant and more prepared for what's coming. Two things really come to mind. First of all, and I really saw this before, during and after Hurricane Ian this year, we really need to get away from eye centric hurricane forecasts that focus focus on where the eye is going.

00;42;00;13 - 00;42;26;22
Hal Needham
Our forecast for more than 70 years have focused on mapping the eye position. This implies that if the eye of the storm passes over you, that's the biggest danger in reality. Locations to the right of the eye position usually observe the most severe conditions and a location 30 miles to the right of the eye may observe catastrophic damage, while a location 30 miles to the left of the eye may observe very little damage at all.

00;42;26;22 - 00;43;01;19
Hal Needham
So people just assume, oh, I'm going to see where that spaghetti line goes and it's closer to the line, more damage? Not really. A lot of times it's very what we call asymmetric or lopsided. And the damage oftentimes that I track is the father's left periphery of the really bad damage. So it's really offset to what most people expect, starting with Hurricane Ian, you know, after Hurricane Ian and when we when we got into Hurricane Nicole in November, I refused to circulate any eye centric maps when they're showing landfall.

00;43;01;29 - 00;43;27;19
Hal Needham
I was sharing maps that showed the probability of damaging winds and deep floodwaters. Wind and water are what kill people from direct hurricane impacts, not the eye passing overhead. So that's just a difference I'm going to make. I will show the cone maps and the eye maps when it's out over open water. But any time that it's going to be approaching land and we're talking about landfall, I'm going to be showing probability of flood water and destructive winds because that's what really people need to know about.

00;43;27;29 - 00;43;46;03
Hal Needham
And also, I started in my messaging to start immediately talking about the impacts I used to bury the impacts down like several minutes into a forecast after we've talked about where the eye is going to go and what category it'll be. Now I start with the impacts because people are busy. Sometimes they're only going to listen to the first 15 or 20 seconds of what you have to say.

00;43;46;12 - 00;44;09;12
Hal Needham
I'm going to start with a low hanging fruit right there. What I feel that people really need to hear that could be lifesaving right off the bat. Secondly, we really need to humanize the forecast by connecting forecasted wind speeds and water levels with impacts. I learned this the hard way during year. I was sharing a lot about wind and water level forecasts, but I'm afraid I didn't do a good enough job of really painting a picture of what this means.

00;44;09;12 - 00;44;32;13
Hal Needham
So if you're talking about eight feet of floodwater, that could be completely outside the frame of reference of what people can imagine. What's eight feet of water? Maybe they picture the deep end of a swimming pool while a storm surge pushing in incredibly fast from the ocean, full of debris, full of pollution, with huge destructive waves. That's nothing like the deep end of a clear swimming pool.

00;44;32;13 - 00;45;01;12
Hal Needham
Right. And so I think the more that we can humanize this and draw the impacts and like describe what does this mean? What does this wind speed mean for your community? What is this what this flood level mean for your community? I think that can help people say like, oh, wow, I've never seen anything like that before. Maybe I really do need to get myself out of harm's way in many of our podcast since Hurricane Ian, our guests keep coming back to this need to describe the impacts of certain weather and water conditions.

00;45;01;12 - 00;45;18;01
Hal Needham
So really painting a picture for people. There are a lot of new people that live on the coast that have never been through a hurricane before or in some cases like we saw in Florida, people say, Oh, I've lived here my whole life. I've been through many hurricanes. How do you make the case that this one's different than all the other ones you've seen before?

00;45;18;07 - 00;45;39;22
Hal Needham
It's a hard communication challenge, but it could really save people's lives. So any way. Everyone, thank you so much for sending your questions. Thank you so much for the interaction and the support. Now we have a lot of faithful listeners that listen to this podcast. Always love to hear from you, not just on the double digit episode. So if you just have any questions, comment, any topics that you want to hear us cover, we'd love to hear about it again.

00;45;39;22 - 00;45;55;08
Hal Needham
We've been covering a lot about hurricanes over the past few months, and we are going to in some ways continue with that. The next two weeks are a real treat. We have award winning meteorologist Rob Perillo coming on the podcast for the next two weeks. He's in south Louisiana. So of course, we are going to talk about hurricanes.

00;45;55;08 - 00;46;19;21
Hal Needham
That's their big threat down there. But again, you'll be able to apply Rob's perspectives from what he's learned in south Louisiana. He also has worked in the Houston area, and he's originally from New York State and did his meteorological training up in upstate New York in the snow. So we'll be talking about different kinds of weather. We'll be a little heavy on hurricanes, but you'll be able to apply his knowledge and his experience to wherever you're at.

00;46;20;01 - 00;46;41;02
Hal Needham
Beyond that, I'll give you a little. We're going to go underground, actually. So we're called Geo Track, the first episode ever. We call ourselves Weather Track, but we got into Geo Track instead because we thought, well, what about volcanoes? What about earthquakes? What about tsunamis and things like that? Well, we're very interested in any extreme weather or disasters that impact the built environment.

00;46;41;02 - 00;46;58;04
Hal Needham
So hurricanes fall into that, tornadoes fall into that. But another thing that a lot of people don't think about are sinkholes and caves and times when the ground starts moving, we know that happens in Florida, happens a lot in the Appalachian states. We're going to be going underground for two episodes in early December. It's going to be a lot of fun.

00;46;58;04 - 00;47;23;04
Hal Needham
I'm actually going to be recording some content underground, going to be in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, talking about the impact of sinkholes and moving ground on buildings, even getting into what that means for litigation, what that means for better construction. And a little hint there, we might even include a very fascinating story from the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, when some Corvettes swallowed up by a sinkhole back in the day.

00;47;23;13 - 00;47;39;21
Hal Needham
That's all the hints I'll give you on that. But just stay tuned and stay with the podcast. I know we've covered a lot on hurricanes and I'm always excited, honestly, to see hurricane season wind down. It's been a really interesting season and again, a huge impact there in southwest Florida. Thanks for your questions on this episode and always stay interactive with us.

00;47;39;21 - 00;47;59;23
Hal Needham
We love to hear from you. We'd love to know what you're thinking about as far as extreme weather and disasters. Everyone stay safe. Enjoy your Thanksgiving wherever you're going to. If you're staying at home, if you're going to grandma's house or if you're traveling to another state, stay safe. Enjoy your travels. And on behalf of the go track production and marketing team, this is Doctor Howe.

00;47;59;29 - 00;48;05;00
Hal Needham
I'll catch you on the next episode of the Geo Track podcast.

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