Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:00]
Emily Gracie
September 8, 1900, Galveston, Texas. The deadliest natural disaster in American history wasn't an earthquake. It wasn't a tornado or a wildfire. It was water. A 16 foot wall of water from a category four hurricane that engulfed the city, killing 8,000 people. This is storm surge. It happens when winds push ocean water much higher than normal, creating dangerous flooding along the coastline. Think of it like this. Normally the oce level goes up and down in a predictable pattern with the tides. But when a big storm hits, the powerful winds act like a giant bulldozer, shoving massive amounts of seawater toward the shore. This creates a wall of water that can be several feet or higher above where the water level should normally be. As we enter another hurricane season, there are lessons etched in high water marks and written in the scars of shattered foundations across our coastlines. Stories of survival, devastation, and the RA of nature that most people have never seen. Today we're going off the radar with Dr. Hal Needham, also known as Hurricane Hal. He's crunched the numbers and is counting down the 10 highest storm surges in modern American history. And the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 didn't even make the list. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey, and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk A. 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. June 1 marked the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season. And while everyone focuses on wind speeds and storm categories, the real killer lurking in these systems is the water. Whether it's inland flooding or storm surge, water claims more lives in hurricanes than any other hazard. Today we're focusing on storm surge with someone who has spent his career studying it. Not just numbers on a page, but in communities that are impacted. His name is Dr. Hal Needham. Many know him as Hurricane Hal. Dr. Hal is the lead scientist for Flood Information Systems and Geotech, a science communication platform. If you met Hal, you instantly like him. He's inquisitive, energetic, and passionate about what he does. And he loves to collaborate with other meteorologists. He's hard to miss in a crowd.
- [02:31]
Dr. Hal Needham
At well over 6ft tall, he's usually.
- [02:34]
Emily Gracie
Wearing a cowboy hat. I met Hal at a hurricane conference in South Padre Island, Texas, where he gave a presentation about storm surge. It was a hit with a crowd. Everyone loves a countdown, right? So that's what we're doing here today. Looking back at time, learning from the past in order to prepare for the future. Every one of these events is a glimpse into what could happen again, especially as sea levels rise and coastal populations increase. So let's get this countdown going with the incomparable Hurricane Hal.
- [03:05]
Dr. Hal Needham
Dr. Hal Needham. It's so nice to have you on Hurricane Hal, as you're known by so many. Thank you for coming on the podcast today. I have so many questions to ask you about yourself. And then we're going to dig into this storm surge topic because you did a really, really great presentation at a recent conference where a bunch of weather nerds all gathered and talked about tropical weather. So we're going to dig into that. But I want to hear about you first and your background, because it seems to me just by, you know, talking to you and Google searches, that you do a little of everything. But you work for Geotrek, right?
- [03:38]
That's right, yeah. Geotrek is really a science education platform. We host a podcast, we travel around and talk about extreme weather that's powered by an entity in the private sector called CNC Catastrophe and National Claims. They're a family owned business that's been helping people get on their feet after disasters for more than 30 years. But it's been a great partnership and I love working with them. I get to explore and like you said, I get to be involved in all these interesting projects from hurricanes and storm surge. I just did 2800 miles of driving into hail cores for severe weather. I mean, it's. I'm doing all kinds of stuff and I love it.
- [04:11]
Wow. Okay. You're going to need some more new nicknames. It's not going to be just Hurricane Hal, any of our Hail Hal. Okay, so podcasting forensics research. What does your normal day look like?
- [04:23]
Oh, it just depends, you know, recently I've been doing a lot of miles on the road, either going to conferences or storm chasing. I've gone into 23 hurricanes and tropical storms to document them. And then in recent years, I've been doing a lot of severe weather work. I'll say this though, and I guess to answer your question, so sometimes I'm out on the field, other times I'm at home doing analysis. I do a lot of forensic meteorology. Typically we think of meteorology. You're predicting the weather for this week. With forensic meteorology, we're looking backwards to reconstruct historic events. That's very important for the insurance sector. And then I just do a lot of projects. I work with communities to help them build their flood history, understand, understand their risk of Flooding and wind and things like that as well. Those are some of the main things that I. I do. And any given day could have any combination of those.
- [05:10]
Okay, so you came up with this list, this top 10 list of storm surges. Can you give me a little background on this? On, like, storm surges for what years?
- [05:19]
Emily Gracie
For what locations?
- [05:21]
Dr. Hal Needham
Well, it's interesting, the backstory on this. When I moved to the Gulf coast in 2008, there was no storm surge database. I could not believe this. This is the world's most deadly destructive natural hazard. How was there no database for this? It turns out there were data everywhere. So I started building Usurge, the comprehensive storm surge database, way back in 2008. Just in the first two years, I went through 62 different sources. So that's all the National Hurricane center reports since 1958. All those old Army Corps maps since the late 1800s. The monthly weather review that was really substantial in the early 1900s. FEMA, USGS. I read through 3,000 pages of historical newspaper. I mean, I really scoured to find everything I could on historical storm surge. The starting date for that first work was 1880. So I was looking at everything from 1880 to present, and then I just kept building it. I continued up the East Coast. I ended up. Originally, I found the peak storm surge level for each hurricane. And then I went back with a team and we actually found all the high water marks for all the hurricanes. So if you could imagine Hurricane Ike near where I live in the coastal Texas, the peak surge was 17 and a half feet on Bolivar Peninsula. But there were hundreds of high water marks from Texas all the way to Florida. So identifying all those high water marks, and once we identified all the high water marks for all the storms, we could put it in something called the gis, or geographic information systems, basically digital map layers that are overlaid. And we could drill down on any given community and say, what's the storm surge history for Pensacola or Mobile or New Orleans? We could go along the coast and really understand those comprehensive histories since. Since 1880. You mentioned the top 10 list. I did. That was from 1900 to present. And that was just simply looking at the peak water levels since 1900 for storm surge, really, you'll get a high water mark and then you have to remove the tides. So it's basically how much saltwater did this hurricane push above where the water would have been if there wasn't a storm? So once you remove the tides, you see how much water the storm pushed. We just compilated those into a top 10, which was really interesting to see the patterns that we found with that.
- [07:32]
Okay, so this is purely about numbers. It's not about like casualties or destruction or costs or anything. It's just about how high the water was.
- [07:41]
Yeah, Emily, and I'm really glad you brought that up because we have really high impact hurricanes like the 1900 storm in Galveston, Hurricane Andrew, Cat 5 hurricane in 1992 hit southern metro Miami. These are high profile hurricanes everyone talks about today. They're not on the top 10 list. But then we see one of the top tens with number four, Hurricane Laura. That peak surge hit in the coastal prairies of south Louisiana. People say, oh, the surge never happened. It was actually a top four storm surge in U.S. history. 19ft of saltwater. But it missed any big metro areas. So a lot of times people think it didn't happen.
- [08:17]
Okay, so there's going to be some surprises on the list is what you're saying you gave one of them away. But let's start at number 10. What's number 10?
- [08:24]
Yeah. So number 10 is Hurricane Rita. In 2005, a category three hurricane struck near the Texas, Louisiana border. Push a 17.25 foot storm surge there into southwest Louisiana. So makes top 10 on the list back there in 2005, just a few weeks after devastating Hurricane Katrina.
- [08:42]
Yeah. 0405 big years. Okay, what's next? Number nine.
- [08:46]
Number nine was Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, 1989. It's interesting when you actually look at the high water mark for Hugo. It comes in at 20.2ft, but it hit near high tide. So about 2 1/2ft of that or so is from tide. So once you remove the tides, comes in at number nine at 17.55ft.
- [09:06]
Yes. And I live in Charleston. So that is the hurricane that everybody talks about. But like every other hurricane, it all depends on the tides here. When we, when we get anything at low tide, it just doesn't have the impact.
- [09:16]
Yeah. And Emily, a really interesting story there with Charleston. A lot of people misinterpret. They think worst case scenario, the eye comes over my location. The eye came very close to Charleston, but that surge is going to be offset to the right. So it would have been worse for Charleston if the eye hit 30, 40 miles south. You could have had that big surge there in historic Charleston. Unfortunately, yep.
- [09:38]
If we had a Kiawah landfall, that would be bad for Charleston. All right, what's number eight?
- [09:42]
Number eight, Hurricane Ike on the southeast Texas coast. 17.79ft. This is 2008. And this is really a surprising storm to a lot of people because we classify hurricanes on a scale called the Saffir Simpson hurricane wind scale. On a scale of one to five, hurricanes are given a category. On a scale of one to five, Ike was a two. So to a lot of people, okay, this is a two out of five. That doesn't sound that bad, Emily. It completely scoured the landscape. Bolivar Peninsula was a moonscape after Ike. Again, a massive storm surge from a hurricane that was a cat 2. So again, you can get these massive surges. You don't need Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes to get a huge storm surge.
- [10:21]
So what causes the storm surge if it's not the winds, what is creating that surge?
- [10:24]
I'm really glad you asked. There's a whole bunch of things. The wind is important. The geographic size of the hurricane, tremendously important. Ike, when you look at the satellite presentation, it took up most of the western Gulf of Mexico. Geographically, it was a huge storm. That doesn't show up on this Afro Simpson scale. And then also the water depth that how deep or shallow your water is is counterintuitive. But where you have really shallow water offshore, what we call bathymetry, you actually get much higher storm surges. So a coastal Texas area, you have very shallow water, you're going to get big surges.
- [10:55]
Okay, so that explains, I guess, why Andrew isn't on the list, right? Very small storm, Andrew.
- [11:02]
Very small, very compact. And when you go. If you're ever at Miami beach and you go out 50 yards in the water, you're over your head. I mean, the water gets very deep very quickly. You go to the west coast of Florida, you go to Mississippi, Louisiana, you can go out 100 yards and the water's only waist deep. You can sense that just by swimming at these coastal locations, Southeast Florida, you have deep water offshore, you're going to tend to get lower storm surges.
- [11:27]
All right, the next one on the list I had never heard of before.
- [11:31]
Yeah, Hurricane Beulah. So 1967, South Texas, typically an area where we have not seen a lot of impacts in recent decades. So it surprised us to see an 18 foot storm surge. This was a massive surge and a massive rain event as well for South Texas. South Texas, the 1930s and the 1960s-70s, very active times. But over the past 40, 45 years, been pretty quiet.
- [11:55]
Hmm, interesting. Okay, number six, I had definitely heard on heard of because I've done an entire podcast episode on it. The labor day storm of 1935. So this is before we were even naming hurricanes.
- [12:09]
Oh yeah, that's right. Back then, pre1950, we didn't name them. So usually they'd go by the place they hit or the time that they hit. In this case, this was a storm that hit in Labor Day of 1935. Very small, tiny compact Cat 5 hurricane. So we've only had four Cat Fives make landfall in the U.S. this is one of them. Tremendous wind speeds. And right there on lower Mattacombe Key, they had over 18ft of storm surge. So this was a very deadly surge there in the Florida keys back in 1935.
- [12:40]
And the impact was huge too. Right, because there were a lot of people not really living in, in safe places at the time.
- [12:46]
Yeah, there were and there were, there were some veterans camps that, that veterans were there working, doing work camps, building infrastructure and they tried to evacuate them. I believe there was a train that tried to pull them out. The train came too late and there's actually photos of this train just knocked over on its side. And there were fatalities in this train. So that's the thing. Storm surge, it's, it's fast moving water. If you think of how heavy water is, if you try to carry a gallon of water up a flight of stairs gets pretty heavy. These surges are pushing trillions of gallons of water and we can see them knock over trains, scour the landscape. That's why it's so deadly and destructive.
- [13:22]
All right, what was number five?
- [13:23]
So number, so this is interesting, number five here, the Long Island Express, 1938. So almost all of these are really more southern states, Gulf coast over through South Carolina. The only outlier that's actually north of There is number five, the Long Island Express. In 1938, this hurricane impacted Long Island, New York and much of New England as well, pushing a 19 foot storm surge in Rhode Island. This is a massive surge in New England. And it just shows us all the way up the east coast we are susceptible to coastal flooding, even though more of the events tend to be in the southern states.
- [13:58]
Okay, all right, what is number four?
- [14:02]
Yeah. So number four, Hurricane Laura. I talked about it before. What's surprising about it, we looked at potentially a catastrophic storm surge near Lake Charles, Louisiana. But the eye was far enough east that the big surge went in the coastal prairie. So this was Lara Back in 2020 and again it was a 19 foot over a 19 foot storm surge. But most of that was in the coastal prairie of Louisiana. No one really talks about the storm surge from Laura. And it shows you where they hit more remote areas. People aren't aware of them or they completely forget them, but they still happened.
- [14:34]
I'm seeing so much diversity in location with this top 10 list too. Which just goes to show, you know, everywhere is susceptible to this.
- [14:41]
Sure.
- [14:42]
All right, we are now in the top three. Well, we recognize number three.
- [14:47]
Number three, Hurricane Carla in 1961. So Carla was a Cat 4 hurricane that hit the central Texas coast, but geographically, this was a really large hurricane. So often when you get these geographically large storms like Ike, their category tends to be lower. With Carla, you have a high category, but it's geographically huge. It allowed it to push over 22ft of storm surge there along the Central Texas coast. I should mention as well in the Houston chip channel, more than 150 miles north, 16ft of storm surge in one of the most industrial developed areas on Earth. So this is a mass. And this shows us too. If you're in metro Houston, if you're in some of these developed areas, industrial areas of southeast Texas, you don't need a direct strike from an eye wall. A hurricane hitting 100 miles south of you, if it's geographically large and intense, you could push a tremendous amount of water all the way there, far from the center of the storm. So this was a very high impact storm in 1980. 1961.
- [15:47]
Wow. All right, we are down to the top two. What is number two?
- [15:52]
Top two. Number two, Hurricane Camille, another Cat 5 landfall in 1969, brushed southeast Louisiana. But the real impact there was in coastal Mississippi. This pushed 24.6ft of storm surge into past Christian, Mississippi, which is the second highest storm surge on record in the Western Hemisphere.
- [16:10]
Okay.
- [16:11]
Only to be topped by the number one, which hit the same location. Should we do a drum roll here?
- [16:16]
All right.
- [16:17]
The number one storm surge and the highest on record in the Western Hemisphere hit that same community of past Christian, Mississippi in 2005, Hurricane Katrina. A lot of folks that remember Katrina or follow this were not surprised by this devastation of Hurricane Katrina surge, which reached around 27.8ft above mean sea level there in coastal Mississippi.
- [16:40]
Wow. Okay. No surprise there. But there's gotta be some. That may be some honorable mentions because there are some names that we always think about when we think about storm surge and then some really recent storms in the past few years that I feel like had some significant surge. So what do you have? Do you have any honorable mentions that didn't make the top 10, but are close?
- [16:56]
Yeah, there's a whole bunch that are close. I mean, we think about the 1900 storm in Galveston, Hurricane Andrew, Cat 5. 1992 was close. We also look at Hurricane Michael. I mean, that also a Cat 5 there in 2018. All these storms are pushing between 14 and 16ft of surge. Also Hurricane Ian, southwest Florida, you're getting surges around 14, 15ft. I mean, I should mention you don't have to be in the top five to produce a high impact. And also some of these storms, like Hurricane Ian in 2022, I mean, this is a very deadly storm surge. That surge killed way more people than Hurricane Laura in 2020, which, which is number four on the list. So again, this list is not necessarily correlating with impacts or fatalities on the ground. We've seen a lot of big impact surges in the past decades. And I want to mention as well, when people think of 14ft of floodwater, they say, wow. And they're picturing water rise like ponding and rising vertically. Keep in mind, these surges look like a raging river. I mean, there's white cap. They're massive waves going through them. So you get these coastal communities where the elevation is what, 5ft? If you get a 14 foot surge, everything is under at least 9ft of salt water with huge waves on top of that. So this is why a lot of these surges are really not survivable if you get caught in them.
- [18:13]
Okay, so lessons learned from your opinion going forward. I mean, you've spent so much time in communities looking at storm surge damage. What, what is some, like, easy things that people can do to prepare for storm surge or maybe surprises that people may not understand about this.
- [18:29]
One of the big things I find, Emily, as I travel around to coastal communities, people put so much stock in what they've seen in their lives. Great example. I'm in, I'm in Tampa, St. Pete last year for Hurricane Helene. There's saltwater already pushing into people's yards. I'm going neighborhood to neighborhood, warning people. And all I heard was people saying, I've been here since 1978. Our house doesn't flood. I've been here since the early 80s. It always hits somewhere else. And so there's a great value in knowing your deeper history. Tampa had not had a really impactful surge in living memory. You had to go back to 1921 or 103 years before Helene to really get an impactful surge. But these houses that flooded last year in Hurricane Helene, it would have been the fourth time that they flooded since the mid-1800s. So this concept of people being blindsided because they haven't seen a flood in their community in their 20, 30, 40 years they've been there. What they may not realize is that deeper history says they're vulnerable, both the deeper history of their community, but they should look up and down the coast as well. They should look at neighboring communities because sometimes your community hasn't been hit, But a community 50 miles down the coast has. And so once you look at the deep history for your community and your region, you can really get a good idea of what the potential is. And usually that's a lot higher than people have seen in their lives.
- [19:48]
Are there any spots along the coast that maybe you see as unprepared because they don't typically see storm surge. Like I always think about Georgia and it's so rare to get like a landfall in hurricane there, but because of the shape, is that like a vulnerable spot?
- [20:03]
Any places that have a relatively concave shaped coast where like it curves in and where you have shallow water, you can get a massive storm surge. So coastal Georgia stands out to me. We don't see any here on the top 10 list. But the late 1800s they were getting 16 to 18 foot surges. They had some big surges there in the late late 1800s. Also that area north of Tampa in Appalachia Bay. We've seen some hurricane strikes in recent years. But just the shape of Appalachia Bay and the shallow water there, they have the potential for tremendous storm surges as well. So really being aware. And the National Hurricane center actually has maps of surge potential in your community. That's something you can take a look at. They, they've run thousands of models for your area and they're mapping out the worst case scenario for a Cat 2 or the worst case scenario for a Cat 3. People should glance at those and I think a lot of people would be shocked to see, wow, the water could reach, you know, 16ft above ground in this area in a given storm or something like that. These are all things you can do to prevent yourself from being blindsided.
- [21:09]
Yeah, there's so many good visuals out there now coming out, like AI generated stuff that gives us a good concept of what it would look like. What about the Northeast? You know, Sandy didn't make the list, but that to me stands out as like an impactful storm as well.
- [21:22]
Oh yeah, Sandy, I mean just it became so geographically large as it transitioned from tropical to extra tropical there. Coastal New Jersey through New England. And again these. Sandy was very devastating. I believe. 147 deaths, something like that. Around the mid-100s. I mean, that's a terrible storm back in 2012. But again, that was a huge surge. So sometimes people may say, well, if you weren't in the top 10 list, it doesn't seem as impressive. But a lot of these surges, the Sandy type surges, 12 to 14ft. If you think about it, that's how high the saltwater is coming up above normal. So these coastal communities are often at 5, 6ft. So anytime you're getting a surge above 10ft, it's a real problem. Can cause tremendous damage and fatalities.
- [22:06]
Okay, so we talked about, you know, how to prepare storm surge is coming, how to prepare your home. As, as you're doing these forensics, is there anything when you're kind of given these last few days to prepare your home for storm surge?
- [22:18]
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we can think of it as in terms of long term and short term. So long term, getting up, elevating that house, obviously, if there's a storm, an active storm out there, it's too late to do that. Some things that you can do, number one, photograph everything. Even if you bought some new technology, if you put an addition on your house, you should photograph everything from many angles or even video it before every hurricane season. Another thing that I've heard a lot of people say is they're shocked by the motion of water in their home. I hear this all the time. People say, well, we lifted up our family photos and put them on the dining room table in case we got a foot or two of water. Once you get a foot or two of water in your home, the furniture will float, the furniture will move, things will tip over. So you hear people saying all the time, oh, my gosh, I left my wedding photos at home on the dining room table. I figured they'd be fine. And all of a sudden that dining room table flipped over and you've lost those family pictures or those heirlooms. And that's another thing, too. When you evacuate, you can't take everything with you. But those things that can't be replaced, those heirlooms, those photos, those things you can't go to the store and buy. I would recommend people take that with them if at all possible. There's another thing people can do. They're waterproof bags called climaguard that they're designed to zip up a car to keep your car or your SUV flood proof. But you could also put those valuables in a climagard waterproof bag or something like that. That again, you're not losing those valuables that are irreplaceable.
- [23:53]
Emily Gracie
How do you zip up a car?
- [23:55]
Dr. Hal Needham
Yeah, it's interesting. We deployed a climate guard bag before a storm surge here in coastal Texas last year. You just lay the bag out on the street or your driveway, you drive your car over it and you just zip it up. But again, it's something that it costs $400. Right. It's cheaper than the deductible on your flooded out car. So there are things that you can do, I think. You know, you can't prevent your house from, from flooding per se if you get a deep storm surge. But there are things you can do. And the most important, obviously getting yourself out of the storm surge zone, the one thing you really can't replace is your life. And keep in mind, evacuations are generally based on coastal flooding guidance. So when they, when you're told you're in an evac zone, that's usually because they're expecting storm surge or coastal flooding can inundate your community and you really need to get out.
- [24:43]
Gotcha. Okay, Hal, thank you so much. This has been great information. I want to hear about you and what you're doing coming up. I've heard about this tour in Galveston that you put on.
- [24:53]
Yeah. Back in 2017, I started Galveston Hurricane Tour. We have so much hurricane history in a very small area. So we started with driving tours. This was a side thing I did because so many people said, where's the hurricane tour? And it didn't exist. So friends of mine at the library said, you need to create this. So I did it and it's been fantastic. What's most popular now is actually a Saturday evening walking tour. We walk two miles and we stop for dinner in the middle. It's fantastic. And we see about 8 to 10 hurricane related sites in historic Galveston. It's a lot of fun. You can just go to galveston hurricanetour.com and we're starting up walking tours again on May 24th. They'll run through the summer and the fall. So just a lot of hurricane history that happened here in coastal Texas. We still have the deadliest disaster in US history right here in Galveston from a 16 foot storm surge. And we tell those stories about destruction, but also about our resiliency and how we've overcome hurricanes through time.
- [25:45]
Interesting. Okay. And the podcast. Tell me about the podcast. What kind of topics are you covering?
- [25:50]
I'm also a host of Geo Track Podcast. We tell stories about extreme weather and natural disasters not covered by the mainstream media. So everything from industry professionals that are disaster and resilience experts to broadcast meteorologists to storm survivors. So we're really out there. I do a lot of traveling into storms and one of my favorite things is to take a mic with me and just talk to storm survivors. What's it like to live through this? How do you become resilient? What are lessons you've learned? You can catch all of that on the Geotrek podcast.
- [26:19]
All right, Dr. Howell, anything else you want to add to us about storm surge?
- [26:23]
We do a lot of collaborative projects. So if your community, if you want to know your storm surge history, we also map out building elevation. So we've worked with communities where we build out their comprehensive storm surge history and then we map the elevation of their buildings so we can also do impact mapping for coastal flooding. Any of those types of projects, you can find me on the web. I'm Hurricane Hal Needham. Dr. Hal Needham, reach out to me. We'd love to collaborate with flood prone communities.
- [26:50]
Hurricane Hal, thank you so much for your time today.
- [26:52]
Thanks, Emily. Really appreciate it.
- [26:56]
Emily Gracie
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. Also, you can follow off the Radar on Instagram. You'll see snippets from the show and promotions for upcoming episodes. Thank you to Hurricane Hal for joining me today. If you find yourself in Galveston, make sure you check out his hurricane tour. His website is Galveston Hurricane tour dot com. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associates, producer Brian Petras for his help on today's episode. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.