The top 10 memories on the GeoTrek podcast in 2022 include stories about hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, southwestern monsoons, outdoor explorations and sinkholes. They contain much geographic diversity, as they were recorded in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, South Dakota and West Virginia. Happy New Year everyone and we’ll see you in 2023!

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Transcript:

00;00;00;23 - 00;00;27;24
Hal Needham
Hey Geo Trekkers, welcome to episode 60 of the Geo Trek podcast. The Top ten Memories from the Geo Trek Podcast in 2022. I'm your host, doctor. How we're going to look back at this past calendar year and all the adventures we took together on this episode. We'll look back at tornado chasers documenting monsoon rains in New Mexico. Field reports from Category four Hurricane Ian in Florida take some excursions in the Florida Everglades and along the Galveston Beach in Texas.

00;00;28;06 - 00;00;55;13
Hal Needham
Remember, sinkholes in West Virginia chase wildfires in central Texas. And remember a record breaking drought just north of there near the Texas Oklahoma border. If you're new to the podcast, audio track investigates the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities. 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.

00;00;56;06 - 00;01;15;10
Hal Needham
Hey, before we get into this episode, a quick favor to ask of our listeners. We'd really appreciate if you take just a minute to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform. 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;01 - 00;01;37;28
Hal Needham
Well, hey, there's really no fancy introduction needed this week. We're just going to look at the top ten list from the past year, and let's dove right into it with memory number ten from the GIO Drug podcast in 2022. So the number ten podcast memory from 2022 was from episode number 26 titled How one Texas City Produced Drinking Water during Unprecedented Drought.

00;01;37;28 - 00;02;06;18
Hal Needham
On this podcast, Daniel Nicks from the city of Wichita Falls, Texas, shared how their city innovated direct reuse of wastewater into drinking water to save their city from a collapse during a catastrophic drought. This is back, I think around 2015. This type of innovation had only been successfully done once in the world in a city in Africa. This endeavor brought together scientific experts, engineers, planners, public health specialists and PR slash communication professionals.

00;02;06;22 - 00;02;23;05
Hal Needham
In the end, they were able to pull it off and actually save their city from collapse from the drought. So imagine, like if you turned your taps in your city, you flushed your toilets and there was no water. It would be really hard to sell real estate. It would be really hard to attract business or to sustain the people that already live there.

00;02;23;12 - 00;02;46;06
Hal Needham
This is what they faced in Wichita Falls, and they were able to pull this off through direct reuse of water during a catastrophic drought within the last ten years. I love this podcast because they did something really hard and innovative and actually pulled it off. Imagine doing direct reuse of wastewater to save your city. And not only do you get the science right, but you're able to reassure your population that the plan is safe.

00;02;46;19 - 00;03;04;20
Hal Needham
This episode was all about the importance of clear, direct and transparent communication with the public during a time of crisis. I found Daniel to be a really cool guy as well. He drove me around portions of Wichita Falls that were devastated by the 1979 tornado and kind of gave me that background of what happened when the tornado hit.

00;03;04;29 - 00;03;31;09
Hal Needham
He had a strong memory of it and was able to really paint that end for me and help me understand the context of that event as well. So really enjoyed spending time with Daniel and hearing the amazing work they did there in Wichita Falls to save their city from drought. Number nine on the list, my number nine podcast memory from 2022 was the episode I did with Chief Peter Davis, award winning life saving expert who heads up Galveston Beach Patrol in my hometown of Galveston, Texas.

00;03;31;23 - 00;03;56;14
Hal Needham
This is episode 38 titled Beach Safety and Complex Coastal Environments with Peter Davis. Chief Davis is a local legend in Galveston and along the Upper Texas coast, and he took time to do a deep dove in the beach and coastal hazards with me. I love this episode because it was so personally applicable to me. So in recent years I've tried to supplement my exercise with more saltwater swimming in the warm Galveston waters during the summer months.

00;03;56;25 - 00;04;14;09
Hal Needham
But in the back of my mind, I always had a small fear that I'd have a run in with a fierce predator, like a tiger shark or something like that. When the water got mercury murky and the visibility dropped. So Chief Davis helped us learn that what people often think is their biggest hazard is not the main thing they should be worried about.

00;04;14;18 - 00;04;32;28
Hal Needham
So when people obsess about shark danger at the beach, for example, he taught us that riptides, these thin channels of water pulling swimmers offshore are actually the main hazard that people should be concerned about. This perspective gave me peace of mind every time I swam because I felt more confident that I know what to do if I had a rip current.

00;04;33;02 - 00;04;50;13
Hal Needham
And it's going to be extremely unlikely that I'd have something like a shark encounter when I'm off there swimming on the in the warm saltwater in the summertime. So think of how this lesson applies to hazards in your community. What natural disasters are, the main threats where you live, and does this match the perception of the local population?

00;04;50;26 - 00;05;10;19
Hal Needham
Or are people worried about low risk hazards that are highly unlikely? So, you know, this is a something to bring about. We're right now looking at some very cold, freezing weather all the way down to the Gulf Coast and in normally warm areas. A lot of times when people think of the Gulf Coast, they're thinking hurricanes. They're thinking heat waves would be a problem.

00;05;10;25 - 00;05;36;18
Hal Needham
If you look at it statistically and economically, extreme cold in the Deep South has more of an impact than extreme heat. As far as like losses. I know the 2021 freeze here in Texas, tremendous losses. I think over $100 billion from the electricity grid going down, tons of burst pipes, creating flood damage and people's homes. So again, that blindsides a lot of people.

00;05;36;18 - 00;06;04;13
Hal Needham
They think, what, Gulf Coast, Texas? I shouldn't be thinking about cold weather, but actually they should. And so that I thought was interesting there from episode, you know, that episode with Chief Peter Davis getting into all that stuff about coastal hazards. That was in episode 38 and that was my number nine memory for the 2022 season. On the number eight, my number eight moment from 2022 was this podcast in Fort Myers, Florida, about five days after the landfall of Hurricane Ian.

00;06;04;18 - 00;06;28;18
Hal Needham
This is from podcast number 49, titled Voices from the Hurricane and Disaster Zone. I was with videographer and friend Jeremiah Long near the causeway Bridge that goes out to Fort Myers Beach. The bridge was blocked. We couldn't get out there, but basically it created a staging area where we were where emergency responders, personnel were congregated. The news we're doing reports and donations like food and water and clothing.

00;06;28;18 - 00;06;47;09
Hal Needham
We're getting stockpiled near where we were at the staging area at this location, a few young men set up a food truck to cook free food for the community. Food would be donated and they'd cook it up and serve it to people. They were working around the clock, giving free hugs, praying for people, and trying their best to meet the needs of those around them.

00;06;47;22 - 00;07;07;13
Hal Needham
We wanted to get their story, so we interviewed them. One of the men endured substantial personal losses during the storm, but still chose to come out and serve others every day. As they told us their story, something stood out to me. They said that big media had bypassed them for the entire time they were there and no one was interested to get their story until we came along.

00;07;07;21 - 00;07;26;19
Hal Needham
This confirmed to me the importance of geo tracked getting on the ground and covering stories that are not reported by the mainstream media. While we thoroughly covered Ian's death and destruction and all the negative impacts of the storm, we also wanted to share the stories of heroes who are serving others in the disaster zone. That was my memory number eight for the 2022 season.

00;07;26;19 - 00;07;47;05
Hal Needham
Let's go on to number seven. My number seven memory of the Go Truck podcast this year was recorded in the entry way of a gas station in Clark, South Dakota, during a tornado warning. I was there with Jeremiah Long once again. We were tornado chasing as a severe weather outbreak was unfolding during the month of May. Tornado sirens were blaring and the winds were picking up.

00;07;47;12 - 00;08;12;00
Hal Needham
And there was this really interesting round cloud that was probably a supercell that passed just West of us. It all happened so quickly and we were crammed into the entryway of this gas station with seven other people taking refuge. Everyone was really friendly and interested to hear our story. We didn't see a tornado that day, but we were really in the midst of all the excitement and saw a lot of tractor trailers that were blown over on the interstate from what was probably a derecho.

00;08;12;00 - 00;08;28;22
Hal Needham
Oh, those are really fast, strong, straight line winds instead of rotating winds around a tornado. But again, it was really interesting. We did a good job of storm chasing. We got right to where a cell was. We were a tornado warning just like 4 minutes before the cell arrived. And it I was amazed by how quick it all happened.

00;08;28;22 - 00;08;51;27
Hal Needham
It just was unbelievable that Supercell was moving through so quick and temperature change, wind increase, I mean, the whole thing all happened so quickly. Another big lesson I learned, both Jeremiah and I agreed if we could do it over again, we probably would have changed his flight the next day. So we were there chasing tornadoes in northeastern South Dakota, and he had a flight booked out of Dallas, Texas, midday the next day.

00;08;51;27 - 00;09;13;14
Hal Needham
So we drove through the night all the way south through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. And if you've ever done that route, there is not really one main interstate that takes you there in a direct route. It was a long night of driving. We drove through the night, but we had a great time. And you can hear about our adventure on podcast number 34 titled Chasing Severe Storms in the Great Plains.

00;09;13;14 - 00;09;33;19
Hal Needham
And that's memory number seven from 2022. Then let's go on to memory number six. Memory number six from the last year was sitting in Dan Flores's living room in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, while his dog, Punky, left my leg. Dan is the local historian for Santa Rosa and his knowledge and personal experience was vast in this old transportation corridor.

00;09;33;27 - 00;09;56;06
Hal Needham
You can listen to our conversation on episode 35 called local historian Dan Flores in eastern New Mexico. So this is a really interesting old, old town. We talked about how the railroad came through and then eventually Route 66. This is in the days before the interstate. And, you know, we talked as well about extreme disasters. I was out there to cover the the southern monsoon.

00;09;56;06 - 00;10;16;29
Hal Needham
There was a big monsoon that was coming out there in June. They were worried about flooding following the drought. And we talked about this pattern of massive floods suddenly ending long term droughts in the history of New Mexico. That pattern was set up this past summer, although it was not as severe as it was back in 1937. So Dan really knew all of that history and I thought it was really interesting.

00;10;17;07 - 00;10;34;13
Hal Needham
Well, I learned a lot from Dan's knowledge what stands out to me was his warmth and hospitality. A local librarian explain to me how I could find Dan's home and what a knocked on the screen door. He just yelled out, Come on in without even knowing who I was. I love that kind of warmth and openness. And I told him, I hope that I get like that as I get older.

00;10;34;13 - 00;10;52;04
Hal Needham
I want to be a warm, hospitable and open person, inviting everybody into my house. But it was really interesting. Another thing I learned out there, they have a lot of limestone that I didn't know. Limestone is basically porous rock that enables water to kind of flow through it. And even when I was over in the library, they had a stain on the library rug.

00;10;52;12 - 00;11;13;22
Hal Needham
And the librarian said, Yeah, when it rains, really hard, water will kind of flow under the library and it can flood our bottom floor here. And so I thought that was interesting. That reminded me of things I've seen in places like Miami, Florida, where they have a lot of limestone and they say even things like sea level rise is going to be hard to keep out because when you have limestone, the water can just travel through the pores in the rock.

00;11;14;03 - 00;11;31;25
Hal Needham
And so it's hard to really keep floodwaters out when you have limestone that's something that I saw as well there in eastern New Mexico. I, I didn't know that that was the geology of the place until I got on the ground. But it was a really cool little town, historic town. And I appreciate it, Dan, being so welcoming and inviting me right into his living room without even an appointment.

00;11;31;25 - 00;12;01;27
Hal Needham
He didn't know who I was. And then we were right in this place with his dog punk recording a really cool episode. You can hear that again. That's the episode with Dan Flores episode 35 called local historian Dan Flores in eastern New Mexico as memory number six from 2020 to memory number five in the top ten list of Geo Trek memories in 2022 was the podcast from it was episode 21, exploring the world at the interface of art, science and nature with John William Bay.

00;12;02;14 - 00;12;22;02
Hal Needham
This was an adventurous episode that was recorded in South Florida this past January. I was at Miami's Deering Estate hanging out with my close friend Jennifer Twist Hammer, star of podcast number six when John William Buy, artist in residence at Deering Estate, approached us and asked if we wanted to join his class on a sluice log in the Everglades the next day.

00;12;22;12 - 00;12;42;02
Hal Needham
This is basically a water hike through portions of the Everglades. Well, Jennifer and I are both super adventurous and love being outdoors. So we said yes. And the next thing you know, we were out there hiking through the Everglades in calf deep water. So this excursion blew me away because I never pictured the Everglades as an environment that was open and accessible to me.

00;12;42;13 - 00;13;04;28
Hal Needham
I actually lived in Miami for six months during the year 2018 and I was on the west side of town, not that far from the Everglades. I love nature and the outdoors, but can you imagine? In my six months there, I never explored this amazing national park just west of me. This is because my perception of the park was like a big swamp and marsh filled with alligators, spiders and massive snakes.

00;13;05;12 - 00;13;31;03
Hal Needham
So I was thinking that someone would really need an expensive motorboat to explore the area. I didn't imagine that someone could really successfully do it, maybe in a kayak or certainly not hiking. So in this interpretive exploration, John shared that many people live a lifetime within an hour of the park and never come out to it. It's closed off in their mind, so they're just not even thinking that this is a place they could explore or spend maybe a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

00;13;31;19 - 00;13;48;00
Hal Needham
Sure enough, after excursion I chatted with a local resident at a gas station about 20 minutes from the park. She lived there for more than 15 years and never had been to the park or really explored. And so it was really true. And a lot of the students had said, Wow, I grew up in Miami, I've never been out here.

00;13;48;00 - 00;14;04;05
Hal Needham
We've never done a a water hike through the Everglades. But I want to come back out and bring my cousin. I want to come back out and bring my friend in. So, you know, that was really interesting how people want to explore these places, but maybe we need some help with it. And so, you know, Go Trek loves to get out and explore landscapes.

00;14;04;05 - 00;14;21;06
Hal Needham
So this excursion taught me the value of humility. So the Everglades does have a lot of dangers, a lot of scary animals out there. And for me personally, I needed someone with local knowledge of the landscape to guide me and show me the way. So in the future, what I'm going to try to do is be more humble.

00;14;21;15 - 00;14;42;29
Hal Needham
If there is something like the Everglades and it doesn't have to be the Everglades, it could be another park in another place. But if there's something I'm uncomfortable with or it seems really unknown, I'm going to ask others for help exploring and interpreting the landscape with which I'm unfamiliar. So imagine this. Imagine if you went up to northern Canada or or Alaska in the wintertime, you might say, Hey, I'm a I'm a Southern California person.

00;14;42;29 - 00;15;01;25
Hal Needham
I have no idea how you dress for winter in Alaska. That's an opportunity to be humble and ask someone for guidance. Right. And this can be any time that we really change our geography and we're facing extremes. If we haven't faced, you know, the Sonora desert in the summertime, how do we know how to survive this? How do we know how to adapt to it?

00;15;01;25 - 00;15;19;06
Hal Needham
We need to talk to people that have experience, be humble and just ask for help. So what about you? Are there landscapes within, say, one or 2 hours of where you live that you've never explored? And why haven't you? Whether these are urban or rural, getting out and exploring the world world will help you align your perceptions with reality.

00;15;19;12 - 00;15;44;28
Hal Needham
And it's a great growth opportunity. And that was something I learned from here. This wasn't like people hadn't traveled cross-country to Yellowstone National Park. It's like people had not explored the park in their backyard. And I was one who was guilty because I had lived there for six months and never did it. It seemed very close off, closed off to me and John helped open that up in my mind and it helped me see, wow, the world is really an open place if we're willing to explore it.

00;15;45;05 - 00;16;05;13
Hal Needham
And, you know, with a national park, even you can go and you can talk to a ranger, you can ask for guidance, and they'll have interpretive material. They'll often have experts and even tours and guides that you can go along with. People can show you the ropes. Number four, we're getting up towards the top. By number four, ranked memory of this last year's podcast goes back to the land of enchantment, that beautiful state of New Mexico.

00;16;05;13 - 00;16;29;19
Hal Needham
So we had talked about Dan Flores and what he was teaching us about monsoons and drought, so on this monsoon trip out there in June, I visited the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where students are building flood sensors to deploy detection instruments. These data are used to detect and to predict floods. So check this out. This is really innovative, innovative work within the Department of Engineering and guided by Dr. Fernando Morrow.

00;16;29;26 - 00;16;49;28
Hal Needham
This is podcast number 36, titled Students Designing and Deploying Sensors to Improve Flood Protection in New Mexico. So this is a live recording that we recorded on campus. The students actually had a meeting that day. They came and I was invited to join them. I was amazed to see the hands on focus of their research. They're actually building these things, innovating these things.

00;16;49;28 - 00;17;06;09
Hal Needham
Sometimes I'll even include like middle school and high school students, if you can believe it. And it was amazing talking to Dr. Fernando. He was saying when these students build these things and they start connecting wires, they really start believing what they're building, can go out there and collect data that can help us better predict floods. And that's exactly what's happening.

00;17;06;23 - 00;17;27;29
Hal Needham
So what I really saw in this department is that students are taking ownership and they're not only building their own products, but they're mentoring and guiding younger students. So this department has a great culture to it. They're doing really innovative and inspirational work that should be a model for academic departments everywhere. So great memory there. That's memory number four for my time in New Mexico.

00;17;28;20 - 00;17;49;26
Hal Needham
Let's go to memory number three while we're at the top three memories for the 2022 Geo Track podcast. Is it been a fun journey really going in the past with you, our faithful listeners? I know a lot of you were coming along, at least virtually for the ride. Number three on the list is the interview I recorded live with firefighter Matt Hartzell in the wildfires that swept through Texas in March of 2022.

00;17;50;06 - 00;18;14;18
Hal Needham
I met up with Matt at a staging area where emergency resources were positioned to fight the fire, air tankers or large firefighting planes were actually doing passes over us, though they were diving down into a nearby reservoir, scooping up water, and then they were flying over the fires and dropping them down. It was a very active zone of really concern with these major fires that were sweeping across central Texas at the staging area.

00;18;14;26 - 00;18;32;24
Hal Needham
Matt Hartzell was able to educate me and help me interpret the situation that I was observing because this was a totally foreign landscape and disaster to me. I had never seen wildfires before, but that was very familiar with them. He'd been fire fighting fires for a long time and actually traveled more than an hour to come to this area and kind of help support the situation.

00;18;33;05 - 00;18;55;16
Hal Needham
So this is interesting. I mean, I ended up in the Town of Carbon where I think most of the buildings were charred. I mean, and cars were charred. I mean, it was crazy just seeing the impacts of this fire on the landscape. And unfortunately, it was all actually fatal as well. But Matt was actually explaining that people can do some things to get out ahead and protect themselves, their community and their home.

00;18;55;26 - 00;19;15;03
Hal Needham
So one of the things he explained is that people needed to cut grass, brush shrubs and trees away from their homes if they live in fire country. So he calls this creating a defendable space. And he clarified that if firefighters don't have the space, they won't even attempt to save your home because their efforts will be completely useless.

00;19;15;03 - 00;19;40;04
Hal Needham
So you want to have a defendable space around your home, don't have brush right up against your home, don't have grasses or shrubs or tree branches. All that stuff needs to be trimmed back. And I love this direct education. It was so practical and simple, but really important and applicable out there in the field. And I felt like this type of information could really empower our listeners by giving them some steps they could take to get out ahead of a fire and prepare their property.

00;19;40;10 - 00;20;01;05
Hal Needham
So guidance like this helps people feel more control and ownership over their lives while helping protect their property as well as their neighbor. So this was really interesting to see this foreign landscape to me, a natural disaster, the likes of which I had never seen before, and then have Matt kind of help me interpret this and help our listeners know how they can better prepare if they live in wildfire country.

00;20;01;05 - 00;20;32;06
Hal Needham
You can listen to this action packed adventure on podcast number 23 titled Voices from the Texas Wildfires of March 2022. My number two podcast Memory from 2022 was recorded not that long ago in West Virginia on this sinkhole episode. This is episode number 58 titled Sinkholes in Caves in West Virginia. The moment that really stands out to me was in Robert's Antiques in Lewisburg, West Virginia, when the store owner, Bob, told me that the government installed a video surveillance system in his back room.

00;20;32;06 - 00;20;59;16
Hal Needham
When I questioned this, he said, Go look and see. So this was such a bizarre moment to me because it was completely unscripted, unexpected and sound and completely outrageous. But there was a big chandelier with four large yellow eyes looking in different directions. Our conversation about sinkholes, fissures and tunnels turned to secret underground bunkers and government surveillance, which led me to standing underneath this bizarre chandelier.

00;20;59;27 - 00;21;18;25
Hal Needham
Here's why I love this moment so much. I had a little time to float around West Virginia and Kentucky in between my interviews with engineer Greg Bozo and my visit to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I really wanted to visit Mammoth Cave National Park as it was near Bowling Green and boast the world's largest explored cave.

00;21;19;12 - 00;21;35;21
Hal Needham
But time was limited and I couldn't do everything I wanted to do. So I took a short tour of Lost Worlds Caverns in West Virginia, but I never made it to Mammoth Cave. I was a little disappointed. I thought about signing up for a special guided tour, but I didn't do it. And I remember this when I was a young professional.

00;21;35;21 - 00;22;01;15
Hal Needham
An older, wiser mentor came alongside me and advised me not to duplicate what others can or are doing. So let me repeat that. He advised me not to duplicate what others can do or what others are doing. And while I really wanted to go to Mammoth Cave National Park, you, our listeners could find hundreds of articles and videos about the cave on social media and YouTube, so you could get a pretty good idea of what's going on.

00;22;01;15 - 00;22;27;25
Hal Needham
A mammoth cave national park by spending a day online, watching videos of other people's visits of official national park videos, all that stuff. You could get a pretty good idea of that story and really what that's all about. But quirky centric stories like the government surveillance chandelier and Roberts Antiques are completely unique to geo track. They're unscripted. They were unexpected that it's something that I couldn't even even imagine planning out in this episode.

00;22;27;25 - 00;22;54;12
Hal Needham
So I rank this as memory number two because it depicts very well what geo track is all about. We're exploring the world and bringing your really bringing you thought provoking stories at the interface of extreme weather, natural disasters and culture. Our wanderings lead us to fresh adventures and to bring you insights that you won't find anywhere else. So I thought this was really descriptive and fit really well with what the Geo podcast is all about getting out, exploring, floating.

00;22;54;18 - 00;23;15;22
Hal Needham
We tend to interview experts and professionals, but we also kind of float around and find these quirky places and these interesting stories that you won't find in the mainstream media. So that's number two on my list of Top 1010 memories during 2022 on the Geo Track podcast. Well, hey, listeners, that brings us to the number one memory in the 2022 Geo Track podcast season.

00;23;15;28 - 00;23;38;21
Hal Needham
I think we need a drum roll or fireworks. Something spectacular to commemorate here. The first number one on a top ten annual podcast list. Well, you might be able to guess if you're a faithful listener of the podcast. Really. For me, there was only one choice. It was that moment in Punta Gorda, Florida, in the parking garage with storm chasers John and Jose Wall, Hurricane Ian's Cat four.

00;23;38;21 - 00;23;56;16
Hal Needham
Winds were just hammering us. We were there riding out this catastrophic storm in the safety or at least relative safety of an elevated parking deck. So we were there just getting pounded by the storm. These guys that I was hanging out with and that I just met in that storm, they were fun and knowledgeable and really helped me more learn more about meteorology.

00;23;57;00 - 00;24;20;13
Hal Needham
Jose Garcia, for example, he has really been doing hurricane chasing since 2004. He drove through the night from Maryland all the way through the night to join us in Punta Gorda and to meet up in the same parking deck. We didn't know about each other beforehand, but we struck it off, had a great friendship. And we're riding out this tremendous hurricane together and we're just watching the world blow by right there in Punta Gorda.

00;24;20;13 - 00;24;53;13
Hal Needham
So really interesting. You can hear the live interviews I did with these guys inside Hurricane Ian on episode 48 called Documenting Hurricane Ian in southwest Florida. So these were the strongest winds I've ever experienced. And I was learning a lot about extreme weather really before, during and after the storm. One of the biggest lessons I learned was a firsthand account about the importance of building better Hurricane Ian's Cat four winds, which Jose estimated to be in the low one thirties, sustained actually did not do as much structural roof damage around Punta Gorda as you might expect.

00;24;53;25 - 00;25;28;16
Hal Needham
Most people built back stronger and better after Category four Hurricane Charley inflicted catastrophic damage in the region back in 2004. So most of the buildings were built surprisingly well and that they really took on this ten or 11 hour beating from Hurricane Ian surprisingly well. And that was a lesson that we can all apply if you build better, if you get out ahead of the storm and construct better and plan better and build better, you can be more resilient and you can even take a hit from a big storm like Hurricane Ian and especially if you were out of the storm surge zone, if you build better, a lot of people did surprisingly well, which

00;25;28;16 - 00;25;46;20
Hal Needham
is shocking for a Cat four hurricane. So hey, everyone, that wraps up our top ten list for this past year of podcasting with Go Track. So check this out. I look back at this out of the top ten memories, three of those events occurred in Florida, three in Texas, two in New Mexico, one in South Dakota and one in West Virginia.

00;25;46;20 - 00;26;09;08
Hal Needham
So pretty good geographic diversity there by topic. Out of these ten memories, two were memories about hurricanes. Two were memories about monsoon flooding in the Southwest, two memories about explorations like the Galveston Beach and the Everglades. And then one memory about tornadoes, one on sinkholes, one on drought and one on wildfire. So that's a great diversity of topics as well that show up in our top ten memories.

00;26;09;08 - 00;26;27;14
Hal Needham
And it's really reflective of how broad we're trying to be with this podcast. We're trying to get out there on the landscape in extreme weather, in disasters and bring you intriguing story is related to the impacts of extremes, whether it's extreme weather or natural disasters. So really, as we look back on this year, we have a lot of people to thank.

00;26;27;14 - 00;26;43;29
Hal Needham
We felt like this was a great year. It was a lot of fun to get out there. And I know for me personally, I learned a ton on this podcast this year. One of the thank you, our faithful listeners, for your encouragement and support. I know a lot of people have subscribe to the podcast and listen and interact with us on social media about it.

00;26;44;10 - 00;27;02;29
Hal Needham
I also wanted to thank our parent company, CMC Catastrophe and National Claims for believing in God and supporting this podcast in so many different ways. Thank you to our friends who share this content with others. A lot of you will hear a certain podcast, you'll share it with your friends and family, and that's how our following grows to our guests from 2022.

00;27;02;29 - 00;27;24;25
Hal Needham
We had many of them. Thank you for your time and sharing your expertize. I feel like we really personally grew a lot on this podcast. Some of the guests were with us in disaster zones. A lot of the guests were recorded remotely, and I wanted to mention that as well. You know, my top ten memories were mostly times when I was out there in the field, but the majority of our podcast, we actually recorded remotely online.

00;27;24;25 - 00;27;43;17
Hal Needham
And so that's not to take away from our guest that joined us remotely. A lot of them had enormous contributions and taught us a lot, taught our listeners a lot. So if you didn't hear yourself in the top ten list, a lot of times it has to do with the fact that the top ten list, I think, were more events where we were actually on the ground, usually in a disaster.

00;27;44;20 - 00;28;06;20
Hal Needham
The podcast that we recorded remotely, I think they had a huge contribution. I'm thinking about the recent podcast, for example, with Rob Perillo, about all these insights on how to communicate weather forecasting better, amazing insights. I'm going to apply that information to my own science communication, but we didn't put it in the top ten list of memories because we weren't really out there with him in an extreme weather event, if that makes sense.

00;28;06;20 - 00;28;26;20
Hal Needham
But again, thank you so much to all of our guests that came and joined us this year and contributed and really made this podcast better every week. And it last lasted a lot, not least one of us to thank our geo marketing team, Jeremiah Long. It's been a joy to really work with you on these episodes. We got to take some amazing adventures this year, too.

00;28;26;20 - 00;28;52;18
Hal Needham
Wildfires in Texas, tornadoes in South Dakota and hurricanes in Florida. Here's to many more Geo Trek adventures and keep up the awesome work with making all the audio magic happen behind the scenes with the rest of our team Zenith Baker, Ashley Anderson, Amy Wilkins, Christopher Cook and Courtney Booker. You guys all play a very important role in doing so many things behind the scenes by creating art for each episode, promoting the podcast on social media and networking to find new guests.

00;28;52;26 - 00;29;09;24
Hal Needham
Well, friends, that's it for 2022. That's a wrap. This has been Dr. Howe. It's been a really fun year. We're looking forward to 2023. I hope everyone has a fantastic New Year's Day safe, be festive, have fun and I'll catch you next year on the Geo Track podcast.

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