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- [00:01]
A
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is here. Forecasting technology has never been more precise.
- [00:09]
B
The forecasters now are making forecasts that, you know, us old timers are like, wow. You know, that's impressive that not only you can do it and get it right, but you have the confidence.
- [00:21]
A
But even the most accurate forecast means nothing if communities aren't hearing the message forecasters are desperately trying to deliver.
- [00:29]
B
Even if the science and technology is impro at a breakneck pace, if we are unable to communicate or communicate it clearly, that investment never manifests itself into a societal improvement, meaning people never see it.
- [00:44]
A
Today I'm going Off the Radar with Jamie Rome, Deputy Director of the National Hurricane Center. We'll uncover the latest research that's revealing a disturbing truth about post storm mortality.
- [00:56]
B
Hurricanes are killing more people than we ever knew. It's just sort of a slow trickle on the back end of the storm.
- [01:06]
A
You'll hear about the lesser known fieldwork the agency conducts in storm ravaged communities.
- [01:11]
B
To really understand a disaster, you have to be boots on the ground. Damage assessment, damage surveys, and understanding what it did to the community.
- [01:25]
A
Jamie will share what's brewing for the 2025 season and some surprising new stats.
- [01:31]
B
I bet you didn't know this. This is going to be the shock of the of the podcast and most.
- [01:37]
A
Importantly, how you can keep yourself, your family and your home safe when the next storm strikes. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [02:03]
B
When an online shopper places an order, how that package arrives matters. I'm Al Ko, the CEO of ShipStation. Our promise is to make that process as easy as possible for you. ShipStation provides a robust platform to manage everything you sell, automate manual shipping tasks and get the lowest possible carrier rates. Keep your team and your customers happy. Go to shipstation.com to sign up for your free trial. That's shipstation.com.
- [02:34]
A
Welcome to off the Radar everyone. I'm your host, Emily Gracey. As we kick off the Atlantic hurricane season this week, I'm sitting down with someone who's been the steady voice of science and hazard communication through some of our nation's most devastating storms. Deputy Director Jamie rome has served 26 hurricane seasons at the National Hurricane center in Miami, Florida. I'm always appreciative of Jamie's candid discussions on how we can improve hurricane communication and ultimately save lives. If you enjoyed the episode I did with Jamie last November at the end of the 2024 season, you're going to love this one as well. We'll explore how day to day operations at the Hurricane center have transformed over nearly three decades from technology revolutions to communication breakthroughs. But the most compelling part to me is the little known work that the Hurricane center staff does after the storms make landfall, deploying to devastated communities, study damage patterns and speaking directly with survivors to better understand the human element of hurricane impact. We'll also discuss how the Hurricane center is revolutionizing its approach to tracking both direct and indirect storm mortality. Plus, Jamie will share how he's personally preparing his own home for the season. As the season goes on, be on the lookout for more great hurricane content here on the podcast, like an interview with the notorious Hurricane Hal, a chaser and researcher and forensic meteorologist who will talk about storm surge with me. I also have a great Father's Day episode coming out, a little bit of a history lesson. And then next week we're diving into the discussion of climate change communication with the member of a very popular band you'll just have to hit subscribe or follow right now wherever you're listening so that you're alerted when that comes out next week. Also check out the National Weather Desk's Hurricane Special. You'll hear about Flood Vision, a new approach to flood risk communication. Also, one of our Sinclair meteorologists will share his Hurricane Katrina story both professionally and personally. You can find the full special on our YouTube channel. Just search the National Weather Desk. So whether you're a meteorologist, a weather enthusiast, or you live in a hurricane prone region, or simply you're fascinated by the intersection of science and public safety, I hope you enjoy this enlightening conversation with one of our nation's most foremost hurricane experts, Jamie Rome, Deputy Director of the National Hurricane Center. It's an honor to have you back on the podcast again today. The last episode I did with you was a hit. It was award winning in fact. So I, I love the way that you talk about just the human impact of hurricanes. And we're just getting into the season so let's dig into what to expect this year, what we can learn, how we can stay alive, all of the good stuff. You know, the last episode I didn't get much background information on you and I want people to get to know you as well. So you know your role is deputy Director. Can you tell everybody what that means?
- [05:28]
B
Well, I mean A good deputy should be largely invisible. Meaning, you know, they're sort of running the day to day operations, but seamlessly you're, you're, you're putting out a lot of fires. Figurative, not literal. There's budget, budget execution, making sure the bills are paid. I'm in charge of what we in government call continuity of operations, which is the backup plan for the National Hurricane center should anything happen down, down here. And that's both the technology and, and the, in the people. It's kind of fun in a sense that I never quite know what I'm going to walk in and see on any given day. So you know, you don't start off the day with hey, you know, at 10:00am I'm going to do this. And you kind of walk in and you're, you're presented with a set of issues and so it's, it's different every day. It's totally, totally different. And so it makes it fun and exciting.
- [06:26]
A
And you're not really invisible either because we do see you, we see you, you know, doing TV interviews, we see you at conferences, we see you on YouTube doing the live streams for the hurricane updates. So you are a busy guy.
- [06:37]
B
Yeah, so the YouTube, the, the live stream things, the, the reason I got sort of in that was media consumption were, were shifting in a, in a different way from the traditional media television to, to more, you know, Internet based and different platforms and we didn't have the setup here to allow us to migrate. So I had to start doing research and just sort of figuring it out. There's nobody in government you can call and say, hey, give me a blueprint for live streaming. You know, there's all these IT protocols in government that people may or may not know and these fancy fisma bound, you know, there's all this stuff that you gotta deal with in government. So I basically had to find my own way, you know, and I felt bad because sometimes I didn't know and I didn't want to stick the director out there and have like a, you know, some sort of failed botched, you know, thing. It was funny. I called some of our first examples of this the Blair Witch Project because you know, the cameras shook, the camera shook, the audio was not great. We went through the whole, the whole thing of trying to figure this out. So that's how I ended up kind of, I had to do it to fix it or to know how to fix it. And so I just sort of fell into that. Just trying to be a good deputy and make things happen didn't you use.
- [07:56]
A
Craig Setzer for some of that, too?
- [07:58]
B
Yeah. So, you know, you said you wanted to get. Get to, to know me. So by my accident, I'm, I'm Southern, and Southerners are really good at, like, you know, community neighbor asking for help. So, you know, I knew quickly that we needed help, and so, you know, we hired him and he was able to help. You know, if you ever want to tease him, he. To this day, he used to tell me I needed to smile more often.
- [08:23]
A
On television, we don't all have Craig sets or teeth.
- [08:25]
B
Right. You know, I was talking to him, I was like, well, it's, it's. It's a disaster. How do you smile when you're. When it's a disaster?
- [08:34]
A
Craig's a good guy. Chief meteorologist at Royal Caribbean. Now, for anybody who doesn't know, he was a podcast guest as well. Okay, so you said Southern, are you. I know you're an NC State guy. Undergrad and grad. Did you grow up in North Carolina?
- [08:48]
B
Yeah, I was born in Virginia and 99.9% raised in North Carolina. Went to school at North Carolina State University. Grew up on winter weather. That's kind of what I thought I was going to do is, you know, Raleigh, Durham, where I grew up, is kind of right where the rain, snow, ice line sets up. So that was kind of my thing. You know, a couple of hurricanes in North Carolina while I was in school put me on a different vector, and I was very lucky. When I applied for the hurricane center, they called in and said, when can you be here? And I had to stop everything, pack up and move to Florida. And then I finished my master's degree from, you know, remote from afar. But I mean, that was never the plan. It was never the plan to end up in hurricanes or the hurricane center. But boy, has it been one, one heck of a ride. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.
- [09:41]
A
And how many years have you been there now?
- [09:43]
B
That was 1999. So this will be, what, my 26th hurricane season?
- [09:47]
A
Wow. Okay, so you've seen some stuff in 26 years. I want to kind of talk about the evolution of forecasting in that time since you've been there, and how it's improved, and then if that's translated to success. And then, you know, we'll dig into measure of success and all that. But what have you seen really change in, like, the past 20, 25 years?
- [10:10]
B
You know, we used to do a lot of things by hand, like old maps. You know, we used to plot the Fixes. The, the, the fixes are what we call like, you know, the center, the center location. You know, when recon goes in and in, or a satellite in the best track, you would draw that, that was all paper and pencil and you know, these huge big maps and drawing boards. And then we, we used a lot of rule of thumbs back then, you know, like if, if the environment was conducive for intensification, the rule was you would basically increase it by what we call a T number, which is in reference to the Dufour act technique. One T number, you know, corresponds to your X amount of wind speed. That was it. You, you know, one T number a day, you know, maybe 15 knots per day. Right. And you know, kind of move it right on along. The, the notion of rapid intensification or the ability to explicitly forecast rapid intensification was so, so, so far. And while track has had this really steady improvement, I would say the intensification part, you know, feels the most dramatic from a science and technology perspective because it really has been the last five or six years that it's kind of come on strong and, and now we're making the forecasters now I don't, I don't forecast anymore, but the forecasters now are making forecasts that, you know, us old timers are like, wow, you know, that that's impressive that not only you can do it and, and get it right, but you have the confidence to, to just say it with like, you know, you've seen some of the recent storms. It's been, you know, the confidence factor and the messaging has been very, very high. Some of that is just so rewarding to watch. You know, the tools on the floor, but the operations floor now are so sophisticated. You know, high resolution wind analyses, you know, these mesoscale type models that they use now. It's really fun to sort of see, see it evolve.
- [12:08]
A
What's the reason for that? Is it all the stuff that we have now that we can measure hurricanes in real time with all of the stuff flying in or going under or above the storms?
- [12:17]
B
It's all the above. I mean, you'll see people sort of latch onto one aspect. Four or five years ago, it was the increases in computing power that everybody latched onto. More recently, it's in vogue to talk about observational systems and the rapidly expanding operational networks that we have this season. A little bit last year too, everybody wanted to talk about AI. It's all of the above. These technologies are kind of trendy in, in the sense that when, when People want to talk about them doesn't always coincide with when the trends start or when the technology starts, if that makes sense. You know, for example, everybody wants to talk about AI, but for us it's kind of, it's kind of fun because we, we've been using AI for as long as I can remember. Back when I was forecasting, we were using early, early forms of it. It really is all of the above. And then I think too, the part that gets left out is the communication aspect. Even if the science and technology is improving at a, at a breakneck pace, if we are unable to communicate or communicate it clearly, that investment never manifests itself into a societal improvement, meaning people never see it. We've got better and better communication and dissemination systems that are allowing us to bring that investment all the way home in terms of research to operations. So it's kind of all of the above.
- [13:43]
A
Okay, so going back to like the 20 years ago, how has the public's perception of hazards changed in that time period? Do you think there's a better understanding by the public now of the dangers?
- [13:53]
B
It is, but it's not moving quite fast enough. And it's a conundrum for us because generally speaking, there is a window that people are interested in hurricanes or interested enough to take action to protect themselves. It's usually like, you know, middle aged, you know, you know, people are our age, right? And so we've made a lot of progress, but some of those people are aging out and they're being replaced by a new generation that isn't as interested or you know, to their credit, they, they came of age during COVID is a different world. They have a different expectation of how information is presented to them and how they interact with, with media content. It's a new challenge. I really thought we were making progress for a while there. But you know, as this, this newer technology in this, this next generation age into the demographics that would typically take action, it's getting to be difficult and we might be taking somewhat of a step back. You know, it's. And to make that less abstract, let's give an example, and I'm guilty of this too. How many of us rely on either an Internet search or a chat GPT whenever we have a question, right? And so we don't write anything down, right. We don't write recipes down, you don't write formulas down, you don't write anything down, right. And then you need that information during a disaster and none of that stuff works. Internet's down, your phone runs out of Charge you. That's kind of what we're working against is the society has become very much reliant on accessibility of data and information via digital services. What happens when those digital services go down?
- [15:46]
A
I have an 11 year old child who is really into VR and I'm looking behind you here and I can spot it from a mile away. So, okay, you guys are staying with the times here. You're, you're staying pretty, pretty cool with these VR goggles. What are you doing with them?
- [16:06]
B
So we had an experiment. We were partnering with the University of Georgia and Clemson University to try to develop VR content that would help younger people not only learn about the weather, but learn about the weather in ways that would motivate, you know, motivate them to, to do something. So we, we play, we've been for a couple years playing around with simulations and simulation length, you know, lengths or the length of a video is very important. How real to make it. So you want to make it real enough that people feel, you know, the personalization component, they feel like this could happen. But you don't want to make it so real that you traumatize, you know, people. And so this is a delicate balance to, to have. We just launched, launched our first VR probably I think last week, last Wednesday during National Hurricane Preparedness Week. Anybody can download and put it on, on your, your, your headset, but it shows what it would be like if you stayed in a home that was in an evacuation area and the storm surge flooding comes in the home. We field tested this several times at public events and we, we tried not to go to the traditional circuit that you and I all go to, you know, the same conferences, the same. Yeah. So we, we went to events where there weren't any meteorologists and the response was overwhelming, if not motivational.
- [17:37]
A
What kind of feedback did you hear from people that surprised them about storm surge? Was there anything where they were like, I didn't know that that's how that happened.
- [17:45]
B
There's something about the VR that, that makes the, the experience very visceral. People try to stand up. We make them sit down so they don't like get dizzy and fall. They try to stand up. Some people try to swim, some people hold their breath, some people, you know, try to rise up above. So there's something deeply emotional about the experience and they all comment something to that effect in their own words, in their own way. They basically say that. But the money quote that I heard one day is a gentleman says this makes me sort of look back and question the decisions I've made in past hurricanes.
- [18:24]
A
Wow.
- [18:24]
B
So it, it is changing the hearts and minds of people in ways that previous outreach, you know, previous outreach, you give people a pamphlet or, you know, sticker or whatever, a booklet, and people are sort of like, thank you. But it doesn't change their mind, their perception. This, for whatever reason is now that the question is, how do you scale it? Okay, so NHC staff at a booth, you know, you're only going to see 100, 200, 300 people. So how do you scale it up? And that's why we've sort of released it out there to see if other people in the hurricane preparedness community can, can make a go of it and give us feedback. Now, theoretically, what you would like is a library of these VR simulations, you know, for different aspects of natural disasters. And you know, right now we only have one, but you know, it's a start and we'll, we'll see where it goes.
- [19:20]
A
Okay, so VR to communicate storm surge. Any other like fun ideas in the works that are going to help people better understand hazards?
- [19:28]
B
With the VR stuff, you know, we're early stages, but one could theoretically envision, not this season, talking about off in the future, how the forecast itself might be delivered via that medium and how the forecast might be tailored to the individual's location. You know, right now, you know, most of our products and most of our communication is, is sort of at the community level. You know, what sort of conditions might the community, you know, experience? Like, you know, I'm in Miami, so if a hurricane was coming, what sort of winds might we experience in Miami? Right. And obviously the conditions are going to vary wildly over a city as large as, you know, Miami. Look at Andrew. When it went through here, northern portions of the county, you know, probably had tropical storm force winds, whereas southern portions of the county got utterly devastated. And that really changes the hearts and minds of people too. You know, people. I still, I know people in Broward county, which is the next county to the north, that tell me they went through a Category 5 hurricane. I was like, no you didn't. You had gust of tropical storm for it. But you see how that messes with people's perception, right? And then the next time a category five is threatening, oh, it wasn't that bad. Right. But if we can get to this personalization and this better sort of ability to like drill down and give people sort of user specific information, I think that's the next frontier. And whether communication. It remains to be seen if the VR is the medium to do that. But you, you kind of sets where we're, we're trying to go in the.
- [21:09]
A
Long term Now I want to dig into like communities and when I mentioned the measure of success before, like my first thought is survival. People who survive how many deaths there are with a hurricane. I'm curious if you can tell me with the research that NHC has done about the deaths. I want to know who's dying and then I want to know when they're dying, what they're dying from.
- [21:32]
B
Yeah. So if you started this 10,000 foot perspective, we track two forms of mortality, direct and indirect. So direct is what happens when the storm comes ashore. Wind, storm surge, rain, flooding. So that's drowning, tree falling on your home, you know, that sort of thing. Those are direct fatalities. Indirect is what's happening after the storm has passed from, you know, things like heat exhaustion, carbon monoxide poisoning, lack of access to healthcare, stress and strain on the body, these sorts of things. So direct fatalities thankfully are generally going down owing to some of the, you know, many advances that we just spent the last 20 minutes or so talking about. Indirect mortality is going up. You know, we're still trying to figure out why there's no great data set and it's a heavy topic. So you know, you don't go to conferences where everybody's anxious to talk about, you know, death. But we think what's happening is a society that is increasingly reliant on power. Now we've always been reliant on power, but it used to be when you lost power it was, you know, an inconvenience or an annoyance. But it's increasingly becoming life threatening for some communities and some people. So, and then, or the loss of power sort of is the first of a cascading impacts. So for example, you lose power, your yard is all messed up, you got trees down, you got no Internet, you got no tv, you got nothing to do. So you go out and start cleaning up your yard where it's 95 degrees with a heat index of 110 after a hurricane. And you do all this yard work, you get really, really hot, you try to go to sleep. Your home is 80 degrees at night because there's no air conditioning, right. And then you do it again the next day. So heat exhaustion sometimes isn't so much about the heat during the day, it's the inability of the body to recover at night. Let's say you do that for a couple of days and the next day you're helping your neighbor. Right, clean up their yard. Or whatever, you're trying to be a, you know, a good person. Then there's a second night where you can't cool down and then all of a sudden you got a problem. So you can see how the lack of power, it isn't the lack of power itself that is the cause of mortality, but it kicks off this, this sort of cascading type of impact. Or let's say you have health conditions and you're not feeling well. I mean, you can't pinpoint it. You just, you don't feel great, you know, but you don't go to the ER because you heard that there was a 12 hour wait. You can't call up your general practitioner and say, hey, you know, can I just drop by, can you squeeze me in? They're not open. You, you naturally don't seek medical assistance, whereas in, in a normal day to day world you probably would, you probably would call your doctor and say, I don't feel well, can I come by, see what's going on? Or maybe you go to a critical care just to have somebody check you out, but in a disaster you don't. So you can see how these sort of back end components are racking up and it's worse than anyone imagine. There was a recent study because we tend to track mortality for a few weeks, a few months after the storm, right? Where there was a recent study, published study, where the authors went back and sort of tracked mortality for years, like seven years after the event. They, the, the phrase they used was excess mortality. And they went back and all these big hurricanes over the last sort of 20 years track excess mortality. And what they found is hurricanes are killing more people than we ever knew. It's just sort of a slow trickle on the back end of the storm over the course of months and years. So it really is sort of this silent killer on the back end of the storm.
- [25:40]
A
Can you give me an example of what a death seven years after a hurricane might look like?
- [25:44]
B
It could be the stress and strain. So, so let's just take a community that's like utterly devastated, like western North Carolina. The emotional and psychological strain of losing your home and your sense of purpose and your sense of belonging and who you are and your sense of community coupled with the financial strain and anxiety of rebuilding and fighting it out with your insurance company. And that emotional worry can have devastating impacts on people both psychologically and physically. And they could succumb to a whole myriad of issues. Suicide is a big problem after hurricanes, your heart attacks and other forms of stress Induced mortality. Sometimes people are so focused on rebuilding and getting their lives back together that they're. They don't seek out routine medical care, like routine maintenance, if you will, or they don't have access to it. You. You look at western North Carolina, I mean, you're, you know, for a long time there, and there's still some communities rebuilding. We're just going and getting a checkup. You know, you and I are relatively easy to schedule and get one done. But after disaster, you know, people might not go for a checkup for two, three years. You can imagine all sorts of things might have cropped up during that time.
- [27:09]
A
It seems like this is not only not an exact science of pinpointing how someone died, but also, like, really hard to track. So is like, is it. I'm guessing part of the uptick is the fact that it is being tracked now, whereas maybe 30 years ago that wasn't even a thought in anyone's mind.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, so it used to be we only really track direct, direct deaths. Right. And then Ed Rapaport, who was my predecessor of deputy hurricane center, he kind of came along and wanted to do a better job of. Of tracking, you know, mortality and, and really is credited with a lot of what we know about transient mortality. And then that sort of pointed out that this indirect mortality was. Was a larger cause of. Of death than. Than anyone sort of assumed or realized, which then helped us to focus on better tracking, you know, tracking mechanisms. So some of the uptick is a deliberate attempt to better understand and track. It is better information to track it. And some of it is to your original question, like, you know, what do we do about it? What's the cause? Well, that's the problem is, you know, to make good policy to hopefully, you know, bring this, these deaths down. You. One has to. To know the story, the journey. And we're still in the early stages of figuring that out, especially if you look at excess mortality now, if two. Two days after an event, someone succumbs to a heart attack working in their yard, it's. It's pretty easy to deduce the vector. But what about somebody who dies two months after a hurricane or, you know, 12 months after a hurricane, Then it becomes a little bit harder to sort of really unpack the full story.
- [28:52]
A
I interviewed a couple of anchors in Asheville not too long ago, and they said that they are still now, every once in a while they get in a new Helene death into the newsroom. Going back to the groups of people, I think, I mean, I would obviously Assume that somebody, a wealthier person, somebody with better means, somebody who speaks English, is much more likely to survive a hurricane. Do you have any data or any research on that, on that, the groups of people and who's most vulnerable?
- [29:20]
B
No, we're still just sort of digging into that and I think that is the next sort of level because then you can start to tailor your messaging. Right. You know, so right now our messaging is sort of very generic because it's meant to serve all populations, which, you know, sometimes it, that messaging comes out as so generic that it's not always actionable. What we're trying to do is increasingly get to the point where we understand who needs what and then deliver that to them via a specific channel. So, for example, people who follow us on Facebook want a bit more information. You know, their, their, their attention span is longer. They want to know why. They want to know the details how you got to this conclusion. And so you see the live streams are longer form, whereas you see some of the, the reels, for example, which are served up on, you know, other platforms, Instagram, what have you. You know, they might be 45 seconds because that's generally trying to serve a younger audience, that is. And they're not so much interested in, in the. Why. Just tell me what you need to tell me and let's move on. You are starting down that path, but there's clearly a lot more room to grow in that, that arena.
- [30:38]
A
Yeah. With all the research you guys do, do you ever get to go out post hurricane and talk to people in the community?
- [30:44]
B
All the time. It's one of the, I don't want to say favorite parts of my job because people are experiencing, you know, utter devastation, but it's the most enriching and, and educational portion of the job. And we, we do this. You. Everybody thinks government is secretive. You know, you're sneaking around. But we, we kind of do it out of respect for the people impacted. So when we go in, we don't make a lot of, we don't want the TV cameras, we don't people following us. We don't want these individuals privacy disrupted. You know, we want to be respectful of the individuals and what they've experienced. So when we do this, it's very quiet. And that has resulted in people not realizing that we do this.
- [31:30]
A
I had no idea. I, like you would think I would know that. I, I had no idea that you were doing that.
- [31:35]
B
And it's, it's on purpose to be mindful and respectful of the people who have experienced this we do it for twofold. One, to chronicle the storm. In situ observations have never and will never fully encapsulate or document a disaster. They just don't, they don't, they don't. The instrument fails, there's not enough of them. The peaks fall in between the instrument. Just looking at observations and making a hot take. 24 hours after the storm, you're going to whiff every time. And there's no shortage of people standing in line to do that. To really understand a disaster, you have to be boots on the ground. Damage assessment, damage surveys, and understanding what it does, did to the community. Look at what happened in Barrel in Houston. Tropical storm, forest winds, Hurricane Gus. You know, you would have never assumed that sort of impact to the community. Just looking at the minds of people. Yeah, we do it and we talk to people and it's usually it starts with, can you, can you, do you have any watermarks in your home? Can you help me find it? Can you help me, tell me what you saw, what you experienced. Did you stay? Why did you stay? Did you leave? Why did you leave? What specifically did you hear that made you leave? This is some of the most enriching parts of the job in terms of determining what we do next. It's also incredibly therapeutic to the individual, like they're under massive duress and strain. And for us to show up and say we're here to properly document, you know, what you experienced and to ensure we learn from it and that the nation is better off the next time, for whatever reason, provides them comfort. We never have any problems with people not wanting us around or sending us away. It's a deeply emotional experience which sort of speaks to why I try to do it sort of quietly. You see people's possessions scattered everywhere, you know, family photos, toys, you know, things like that, just really scattered everywhere. But we learned so much. So the most recent one we did was Milton on the Florida west coast. That one was necessary because if you remember, all the sand that got moved around that created a very, very, very unusual and difficult environment for determining how much water, because there were feet of sand, I mean like 5, 6, 8ft of sand deposited, you know, everywhere. So it was probably the most difficult high water marking storm I've ever done in my 26 years because there's just so much sand everywhere. Geez.
- [34:25]
A
That has to, has to be quite the weight to bear though, in understanding exactly the role that the forecasters are playing, the communicators are playing, when you see it on the ground like that post storm.
- [34:37]
B
And I mean, and you learn so many things. And people are so crystal clear when they communicate after disaster like that. I mean, they're able to communicate precisely what they heard and what they thought when they heard that and how that motivated action. It's never abstract. These people are like, well, the storm surge forecast was 4 to 7, and then it abruptly went up to 5 to 10, and that sounded like a lot of water. So I decided to go at that moment. I mean, so there's always like some little tipping point or piece of information that push people to move or to take action.
- [35:14]
A
Any of those surprise you? Any of those moves make like we're just completely out of the blue that you didn't know about before?
- [35:22]
B
Well, generally speaking, there's a tipping point. So people are optimistic both that the storm's going to miss them or their ability to weather it. The typical person is, I've done this. I've been through this. I'm fine, I'm fine. My house is this many feet. Well, whatever. There's an optimism bias that it's not going to be bad. It's not going to be bad. And then there's. There's a trend, there's a. There's a shift. So the track shifts or the intensity goes up, or the intensity forecast goes up, the hazard goes up, surge goes up. And at some point that just pushes them over, and they. They say, that's enough. So it's a change in the forecast that is generally perceived as abrupt or sudden or large. It's not a time. It's never a. Well, the storm was headed at me all along, but we got within 24 hours. And it's always something. It is in their mind, real or real or perceived change, that that does. Does the trick. The most effective thing now, we can't do this for all communities. There was a storm where I was especially concerned about Cedar Key. And we called the fire chief up and basically said, we're really concerned. Well, he came away with, I'm a tiny community. The hurricane center just called. They'd never called before. I've never in my. They've never called before. It must be really bad. You know, he started going door to door and saying, hey, the hurricane center just called me directly. That moved a lot of people out of. Of Cedar Key. Sort of deploying the local, trusted individual in the community is really effective, but how to scale it for big cities is hard.
- [37:07]
A
That has to be so rewarding, though, to know that you have that kind of power that you can see something coming that you can call a community that, you know, that this guy went door to door and got people out of their homes and that you were able to save lives because of that. That's. That's a lot, Jamie.
- [37:21]
B
I mean, you know, everybody. I'm glad because, you know, I love the brag on the staff here so much. You know, especially now we're. Everybody thinks they can forecast hurricanes, and to some degree, that is the easier part of the job. The emotional weight that one carries around both knowing what's ahead of you in terms of, you know, there's going to be a storm and you're going to have to do your job. But then, you know, 26 years of weight, carry that around. Like, was that the right decision? Did I. Did we overdo it? And then that community is not going to react like next time. So, you know, you've got the whole. Irma, you know, people still on the west coast of Florida. I think, because Irma didn't, you know, materialize the way they thought it would, that they're not going to do anything. Right. So you carry all of that around and, and all of that, and, and you struggle with constant. Are you more restrained? Right, or are you more aggressive? You're trying to play with this sort of tug of war. Then you're crucified by the media afterwards. So you're already sort of in your own headspace wondering, was it the right balance? Should I have a message earlier? You know, you're already kind of in that sort of natural tug of war with yourself. And then, you know, for three or four days after the storm, you know, the media just absolutely bludgeons you. You know, that's. That's just what sells these days is. Is sort of this. This creating a sense of failure even when. When success is. Is there.
- [38:58]
A
Yeah. Meteorologists should have their own category of therapists. Okay, before I let you, I quick want to get into the 2025 season. What's new for this year? What when people are looking at products coming out from nhc, should they expect to look a little different or hear a little different?
- [39:14]
B
Well, we're continuing this very steady march towards de. Emphasizing the older pieces of communication technology, the cone, and to our perception scale. Each year there's a. There's a new piece of the chapter, a new piece of the puzzle that we're not just going to, like, decommission the cone and, you know, go cold turkey, something new to bring these newer things alongside of the cone. So this year we're emphasizing rip currents I bet you didn't know this. This is going to be the shock of the, of the podcast. Storm surge mortality has dropped so abruptly in the last 10 years that more people die from rip currents now than storm surge.
- [39:53]
A
And we're not talking like necessarily a storm that's on their doorstep either, right?
- [39:56]
B
Correct. And that's why it's so, so tricky. You know, if I were here telling you, hey, we're going to focus on storm surge, people would nod their heads. It makes sense. Makes sense, whatever. But when I say we're focusing on rip currents, everybody's like, that's an odd one. But when you look at it through the lens of mortality, it kills more people. Rip currents are the third leading cause of, of death. And in hurricanes over the last 10.
- [40:17]
A
Years or so, is it rip currents or is it like surf related deaths?
- [40:22]
B
Because we break out, we break out the surf to, to. I mean that, that's also a cause of, of, of death. But we try to break them out so that we can. We used to conflate them, which is why it was hard to figure out what was happening, but now we're breaking them out that are in tracking rip currents more closely. The other thing is we're going to continue on year two of the cone with inland watches and warnings. It was wildly popular last year. Remember the experiment was sort of buried. You had to click on the old cone and then click on the link to keep going down. So I think we're going to try to pull the new cone forward on the website, make it a bit more prominent. We can do potential tropical cyclone advisories now up to three days, you know, prior to your arrival to give people more notice. You know, they don't, they don't sound like dramatic, but if you look at the last five or six years, you see the slow and steady march towards more emphasis on the hazards.
- [41:23]
A
Cool. Anything new as far as that we can expect as far as messaging, communication?
- [41:28]
B
Yeah. So fun fact, as soon as I stop here with you today, we have a session with NHC staff on preparing them for hurricane season. And the things that we will be focusing on are power loss in flooding. Do you need flood insurance? How do you figure out if you need flood insurance? We don't tend to talk about meteorologically. We want to talk about the weather. Right. We want to talk about the, these things that we trained on. But when it comes to the actual information that protects people, like you said at the beginning of the show, how are people dying and what can we do to stop it, You Know, the Europeans over here and the GFS is over there. That's not saving anybody. Teaching them how to deal with power loss is saving them. Teaching them how to deal with the oppressive heat that comes after a storm is saving them. You will hear on camera meteorologists talk about that after the storm makes landfall. But there's a problem with that. If everybody's lost power and communication, nobody hears you. Right. You only hear discussion of power loss, run up of a storm. And then after, you know, we need people talking about power loss as part of hurricane readiness number one. And then, you know, 4,872 hours before landfall, because that's when people, you know, have to get fuel. They're going to try to run a generator. You know, they have to make sure the generator is functioning properly. You know, all these steps that people need to take and we're just not talking about it.
- [43:02]
A
This has to be emotionally exhausting for you. How much longer are you going to do this for?
- [43:06]
B
I still love it. You know, I'm old enough where, you know, sometimes getting out of bed in the morning is tough, especially everything cracks that are active weekend. But there's still something about it that just, just drives you. Is it deep in your core that still drives you to, you know, keep trying? And I'm. But I'm also old enough that the, the criticism and the negativity and that, you know, when you're young, that sort of stuff bothers you. You lose a lot of emotional energy to it. But when you're older, you're sort of like, okay, you know, eye on the prize. Right, Right. And you know, I can't imagine the world without hurricane center or the country without the hurricane center. How strong hurricane center at that show, the, the idea of getting up and trying to make it robust and strong each day still is appealing.
- [43:57]
A
And when I last talked to you was last November. You're putting a new roof on your house. Is there anything else that you are doing personally to prepare for this hurricane season?
- [44:06]
B
Yeah. So the roof is installed. So I did metal roof, which if you're not familiar, metal is more wind resistant than, than other materials. I'm also having both doors, you know, front and back replaced. The old doors had full wind mitigation. But they were getting old, right? They were getting older and just, you know, I felt better having them, you know, replace, not to mention the, you know, they look better. I have already successfully tested both generators. I have two. And now I'm focused on helping the staff get ready their personal journeys and helping them makes me realize that some aspects of my kit have, you know, need to be replaced or I thought I had it and I didn't have it. So they're sort of indirectly helping me.
- [44:54]
A
Jamie Rome, thank you so much for your time today. This is super helpful. Let's hope for a quiet, successful hurricane season this year.
- [45:02]
B
Yeah, thanks again for yet another great opportunity to talk about not only something I'm very passionate about, but it's something that's really, really relevant and important this time of year.
- [45:12]
A
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. Thanks to today's guest, Jamie Rome, for getting us all ready for hurricane season. Make sure you follow the National Hurricane center on all social media platforms. They have some great videos about how you can prepare for the upcoming season. Also, remember to head over to YouTube to watch Superstorms 2025. Just search the National Weather Desk. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help with today's episode. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day Work takes up most of your time. That's why you should use stamps.com to save time with your mailing and shipping and have flexibility to focus on more important things. Stamps.com can handle all your mailing and shipping needs with rates up to 88% off. USPS and UPS add flexibility to your day with stamps.com go to stamps.com program to sign up for a special offer. No contract. Cancel Anytime. That's stamps.com program.