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Checking in from the Florida east coast! After getting the weakened eye of Hurricane Milton – still at Category 1 when it passed over my location on Florida’s Space Coast – I’m counting us very lucky indeed.

My heart goes out to everyone with damage, from the west coast, where big Category 3 winds and storm surge hit many Florida communities we love, to the east coast, menaced by monster tornadoes of the kind that are rare even in the Plains. One hit Cocoa Beach, not that far from us, and we had a few exciting moments in our semi-basement as I watched the radar. Part of me wishes I’d been chasing the tornadoes farther south, even though tropical tornadoes are difficult to chase given how dang fast they are, but I wanted to be home with hubby and the dogs. I hate to see the devastation and loss of life. It’s hard enough prepping for a hurricane, but even good hurricane prep doesn’t fully protect you against a violent tornado.

We had some minor tree damage at our house and a leak that isn’t going to be fun to find, though there was worse in our immediate neighborhood, as you can see from the photos here. And now I’m on a bit of a fact-checking rampage. Here’s a graphic I made showing the number of early tornado reports as recorded by the Storm Prediction Center for Hurricane Milton. There were 126 warnings issued on Oct. 9, according to reliable news outlets, and there were 47 initial tornado reports, contrary to even wilder numbers people are sharing on social media.

There’s confusion, I think, about what warnings mean. A warning doesn’t always translate to a tornado, as warnings are sometimes based on radar, and multiple warnings may be issued for the same tornado as it moves from one county to the next. A report doesn’t necessarily mean there was a tornado, but sometimes multiple reports can be made about the same tornado. Damage studies by the National Weather Service and photographic evidence help refine the numbers. We should be getting more accurate numbers soon, but as of today, Oct. 11, 2024, this is what we know. (Click on the graphic to see a larger version.)

 
There’s a lot of crap floating around social media, including a nice photo of a shelf cloud taken in Cocoa, Florida, that’s being labeled as Milton coming ashore. I thought it might be my photo at first, but it’s by photographer Jennifer Cenker, who shot it on Oct. 1 from Merritt Island, looking west toward Cocoa. Someone stole it from her, labeled it as Milton, and it spread like wildfire. It’s very similar to one I took from almost the same location of a summer thunderstorm, with the Cocoa water tower visible at the end of the bridge. Please don’t share stuff unless you know where it comes from. This was my cranky Facebook post.

 
And lastly, a word about weather manipulation. Sure, humans have played with cloud seeding for a long time. It’s been tried in an attempt to increase rain or snow (which can work) or decrease hail (which probably doesn’t). And there have been other experiments in weather manipulation over the years. Did you know there was a phenomenon in Europe in the late 1800s that involved firing cannons at storms to prevent hail, on the theory that smoke might interfere with its formation? Hail cannons didn’t work, either, but the linked article shows how use of them snowballed — mostly thanks to people believing what they wanted to believe.

 
For your reading pleasure, check out the text from a 1902 American Meteorological Society report on the Third International Congress on Hail Shooting. It’s funny how often hail disasters are excused by imprecise shooting of the cannons. “The shooting stations generally report good results, but cases of failure are believed to be the consequence of poor organization, feeble cannon or delay in shooting; nevertheless the severe misfortune at Mantua occurred in spite of perfect shooting and can not be excused.” Gentlemen, I smell a rat.

Scientists make theories and experiment, and sometimes experiments prove them wrong. Then they come up with new theories. That’s how science works.

And despite other experimentation over the years, weather manipulation attempts on tornadoes or hurricanes do not work. Scientists can’t change the course of hurricanes, and politicians certainly can’t. Experiments in cloud-seeding hurricanes in the twentieth century did nothing. Hurricanes are monsters. Hurricane Katrina in a week released energy equivalent to 4 million Hiroshima atomic bombs. Humans have no technology that comes close to affecting the strength or path of these storms. So please take a deep breath before you share this stuff. If it sounds like a good story, it might be just that — a story. Maybe when you “do your own research,” you could consult actual scientists who have done actual research.

Thanks to the meteorologists who’ve been working tirelessly to make the forecasts and to get out warnings, from the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service to the TV meteorologists who’ve been working crazy hours and newspapers publishing essential information. And let’s not forget the NOAA and U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters, whose continual flights into Milton brought real-time reports and data that were fed into the computer models. I can’t imagine how exhausting this past week has been. That said, let me know the next time you have an empty seat on the P-3, OK?

Keep your eyes to the skies, folks. The season isn’t over.

It may alarm you to know that I write poetry. I don’t do it as often as I used to. I’m more prosaic now, I guess. I write a lot of fiction. But once in a while, a moment strikes me. More on that in a minute.

I wandered over to the central Brevard County, Florida, beaches today to take photos. It wasn’t easy finding a crossover that was open. Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach were especially hard-hit by Hurricane Nicole. There’s a condo building in Satellite Beach where waves scoured away some of the sand UNDER it, but it still stands.

 
I didn’t go there, but I walked a short stretch in Indian Harbour Beach and was stunned by how much sand had been eaten away. It’s not just that so many of the dune crossovers are trashed; it’s that several feet of sand that used to support them is just gone. You can see on their damaged legs how high the sand used to go. In some cases, concrete footings hang in midair.

Sadly, there are homes on the precipice too. We might not have quite as much damage as Volusia County, but these residents face a very real danger from extreme erosion. I can’t help but think we’re building sand castles in the face of climate change, and the tide is turning.

As I walked, my eyes were drawn from the damage to the piles of seashells. There weren’t a lot of fancy ones – I can’t remember the last time I found a whelk here. I used to live close to the beach, a five-minute walk, back when I moved here more than twenty years ago. I walked the beaches all the time and found some beautiful shells. But today, even in the piles of seemingly unremarkable shells, color caught my eye.

And then a poem materialized. And it’s about a lot more than walking on the beach after a storm. You’ve survived the past few years. It’s been hard, right? I know it has been for me. But I needed to hear this from the universe. Maybe you need to hear it too.

STORM DAMAGE

You go looking for damage
in the wake of a storm,
one of so many, so often, so now.

Beach steps are twisted.
Homes hang off a cliff.
But you’re distracted by the shells,
bounty washed up,
coins of the deep

and somehow you find room in your pockets
you didn’t know you had
for patterns and pinks and beauty.

The sun is out today.

~~~

Roll over any photo to see a caption, or click on an image to start a slide show.

The first Cape Canaveral Lighthouse began operation in 1849. The cast-iron version that replaced it began working in 1868. It was moved over a mile inland in the 1890s to keep it safe from erosion. The original Fresnel lens has been removed because launches were literally shaking the glass pieces out of their framework, and the light no longer rotates — or it didn’t when we were there. It just blinks.

Still, the lighthouse makes a dramatic foreground for a launch photo. I can’t help but contrast ships from centuries past with today’s spacecraft, like the SpaceX Falcon 9 that launched on Saturday, September 10. (You can read more about the lighthouse’s history and how to visit it here.)

 
I’d never had a chance to shoot a launch from here before, though I’d always wanted to. We sometimes get access to a car pass, and we had the rare opportunity to get a ticket for this site. The weather was iffy for a while after tremendous rainstorms in the afternoon. Clouds and showers lingered and showed a reluctance to clear out.

Pad 39A is north of the lighthouse, and I could only hope I’d lined up my shot so the rocket wouldn’t lift off behind the tower — and that we’d see more than the first few seconds. A bit of glow in the clouds and some reckoning with a map app helped. I wanted the lighthouse to be framed by the arc of the streak.

As the rocket lifted off, it became clear that the northeastward trajectory meant the rocket wouldn’t lift high enough (visually, anyway) to rise above the lighthouse. For a second I hoped it might pass right behind the light at the top, but still, it made for a very pretty scene. I cropped the vertical shot into a square one.

I shot the launch with a second camera using my 10mm fisheye lens (below). I like this, too, because the lightkeeper’s cottage (a replica) is visible at left. And the GoPro timelapse video is a fun little glimpse of the lift-off after the moonrise, which was almost directly behind us. The clouds and rain thinned out just enough to make this photo opportunity work.

The rocket carried more Starlink internet satellites and the new (and alarmingly large) BlueWalker 3 communications array, which will soon show up in our photos, no doubt.

It’s Severe Weather Awareness Week in Florida, but regardless of where you live, weather awareness is best achieved through one little piece of hardware: a NOAA weather radio.  You can get them in all kinds of forms — portable, desktop, alarm clock. I have one in my car as part of the CB radio I use sometimes when chasing storms. I even have a weather radio app on my phone. The most important function of a weather radio is the ability to sound an alarm when the National Weather Service issues a warning, so you’ll always know if a tornado or severe storm is headed your way.

The radios broadcast local weather from the NWS all day long, not just warnings, but an alert tone is sounded when warnings are issued. Even when the radio is off, if set correctly, the alert will sound. Some radios can be programmed so they sound an alert only for your area and not other counties in the forecast area (look for S.A.M.E. or Specific Area Message Encoding in the product description). A small investment in a weather radio can keep you and your family safe.

Midland makes several models of weather radio and sent me its ER300 for review.  This portable radio’s multiple functionality appeals to my love of gadgets. First, it’s light (just a pound) and fairly small, with a handle, though it won’t fit in most pockets. It’s a natural companion for the beach or any outdoor activity as well as for emergencies.

The ER300 can be powered by AA batteries or its lithium ion battery, which can be charged via the included mini USB cable or — handy in a power outage — via its built-in solar panel or by turning the fold-out crank. Midland sells an AC adapter for the USB cable for $19.99, but these days, you can get a similar adapter just about anywhere if you don’t already have one. Once charged, the radio offers up to 25 hours of use. (By the way, the quick-start instructions say to plug in the battery, and that’s meant literally — the battery’s attached wire must be plugged into the receptacle in the battery compartment. I realized this after a fair amount of pointless cranking, but hey, it was good exercise.)

There are more goodies: a built-in LED flashlight with a dim, bright or flashing SOS setting, AM/FM radio in addition to weather radio, a clock display, and an ultrasonic dog whistle. The latter didn’t get a blink from my lazy Cavaliers, but it could theoretically help alert search and rescue dogs in the worst kind of emergency. There’s a headphone jack, too. (Addendum 2/27: I got to hear the weather alert during our state tornado drill, and there’s no way you can miss it! It sounds like a series of incoming torpedoes.)

Once the radio is charged, the USB ports can be used to power your tablet or cell phone — again, a handy feature if your power is out for a while. We could’ve used something like this in the onslaught of 2004 hurricanes, when our electricity was out for days.

I found the push-button controls fairly easy to use, though you’ll want to read at least the quick-start guide. The retractable antenna should be extended for best reception. The radio retails for $79.99. If cost is a concern, you can get a weather radio for a lot less (e.g. Midland’s HH50 Pocket Weather Alert Radio for $24.99). It’s worth it. It can save your life.

The details

What: ER300 Emergency Crank Weather Alert Radio
Features: Weather radio with alert; AM/FM radio; multiple ways to power it, including crank, solar, USB and AA batteries; LED light/beacon; supersonic dog whistle; clock; headphone jack
In the box: radio with rechargeable battery; USB charging cable; owner’s manual
Retail cost: $79.99

This post is an update and remix of posts and images from my old SkyDiary website as I move chase accounts to ChrisKridler.com.

 

I should say up front that I’m not a hurricane chaser. I find them fascinating, but I enjoy the visuals of supercells, tornadoes and lightning and loathe the misery hurricanes cause, given I live in the hurricane zone in Florida. And 2004 had plenty of misery to go around. While I didn’t experience Ivan, the third of four hurricanes that hit the state that year, I had more than enough fun with Charley, Frances and Jeanne.

Charley, which hit Punta Gorda on Florida’s west coast on Aug. 13, was a Category 4 at landfall. I almost chased it for the newspaper I worked for but changed my mind when I saw its rapid intensification – we literally turned around. I just wasn’t up for facing a Cat 4, especially for my first hurricane chase. But the next day, I was dispatched with a photographer to the area to document the damage. The eye was quite small, but its path was devastating.

Flying out to meet Frances

A couple of weeks later, as Hurricane Frances approached the Florida coast, the National Hurricane Center’s track at times brought it right into Brevard County, my home.

And I got the call that my name had come up on the waiting list to fly on NOAA’s GIV hurricane hunter plane, which flies around the periphery of the storm. So I drove over to Tampa to board the all-night flight and cover this unique perspective on hurricane research for my newspaper.

The GIV crew plots a course that allows it to gather data that feed into computer models, aiding forecasting of a hurricane’s track and intensity. Dropsondes carry sensors that send data back to the plane before they fall into the ocean.

It’s tradition to sign a dropsonde – it looks kind of like a mailing tube – before it’s dropped from about 40,000 feet, so I was excited to sign one. I addressed the F storm, “F” you, Frances! <3, Chris.

The data are gathered and analyzed on the plane, then sent via satellite to the National Hurricane Center.

As we flew in the darkness, a report came through from the Air Force plane crisscrossing the eye: There, the moon shone.

“When you think of the houses it’s knocking down in the Bahamas right now, it’s not a pretty thing,” said Jack Parrish, flight director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Gulfstream IV jet.

Remarkably, this flight was one of the calmest I’ve ever been on. This plane actually tries to avoid the roughest weather. (I still want to fly into the eye of a hurricane!) See more photos in the gallery below.

As you can see in the photos below, S.F. Travis Co. in Cocoa, Florida, saw a big business selling generators and other supplies. Meanwhile, people lined up at Home Depot in Merritt Island to buy plywood so they could board up their windows. The 7-11 nearby was ready with its “Bring it on!” sign.

Surfers took advantage of crazy-high waves in Cocoa Beach on Sept. 3, before Frances made landfall late on Sept. 4.

The center of Frances ended up making landfall farther south from where I lived, and fortunately it weakened from a Cat 4 to a 2 at landfall, but the storm’s huge size and slow movement brought hours of strong, sometimes hurricane-force winds to Brevard.

The wind whipped as the hurricane slowly churned inland. Hurricane-force winds rocked the Rockledge waterfront, kicking up surf on the normally calm Indian River Lagoon.

In the fierce winds and uncharacteristic waves on the lagoon, boats were bashed about and docks and dockhouses destroyed. Cocoa’s City Hall lost roof panels from its outdoor overhang. Many ended up across the street at Murdock’s restaurant and bar.

Hurricane Frances also knocked over lots of large trees, causing power outages. That was fun – about five days of no air-conditioning. As you can see in one photo below shot in Rockledge, the tree pulled up the sidewalk with it.

Kennedy Space Center was blasted by the hurricane. The Vehicle Assembly Building, where space shuttle orbiters were stacked with their solid rocket boosters and external tank, lost 1.3 acres of wall panels. The shuttle tile and thermal blanket facility lost part of its roof.

Locally, the most stunning damage was to a Baptist church in Cocoa Beach. The steeple plunged through the roof and into the pews inside, like a missile. At least the congregation had a sense of humor about it; its sign afterward read “3 2 1 BLAST OFF.”

 

 
The show wasn’t over with Frances. We still had Ivan and Jeanne waiting in the wings.

 

 

Mean Jeanne

Ivan actually preceded Jeanne, coming ashore Sept. 16, officially making landfall as a Category 3 at Gulf Shores, Alabama, with the Florida Panhandle helping take the brunt of the storm.

Jeanne made landfall in the same area as Frances, on Hutchinson Island on the eastern Florida coast, late on Sept. 25. We were without power for about 9 days for that one and it ruined my birthday, not that it’s all about me.

Unfortunately, it caused a lot of damage in Florida and, sadly, was responsible for deaths and billions in damage in the United States, though we’d been pre-disastered by Frances.

I think it’s safe to say that’s a season I never want to repeat.

Click on any image to start a slide show.