Kickoff to Hurricane Season 2020: A discussion with Ken Graham, Director of the National Hurricane Center
What we’re talking about
Disaster Recovery Roundtable host Greg Padgett and Director of the National Hurricane Center Ken Graham discuss preparing for the start of hurricane season. The discussion centers around a recap of last season; how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the hurricane center’s engagement, operations, and planning for the season; and the new products available for the 2020 season including new forecast tools for emergency managers. Ken also shares his message for the public on preparing for the season.
Transcript
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It’s the beginning of hurricane season and experts are predicting another active year, but this year there’s another disaster called COVID-19. How is NOAA preparing to start the season with an ongoing pandemic? Our guest today is the director of the National Hurricane Center. Join us for our special coverage of hurricane season 2020.
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This is Disaster Recovery Roundtable, a platform to explore, engage, and educate the emergency management community. Our topics are timely and relevant, intended to promote the exchange of ideas and best practices. Now, here’s your host, Greg Badgett.
And thank you, Steve Henderson, and welcome to Disaster Recovery Roundtable. We kick off our first episode with the start of hurricane season, and of course, it’s only fitting our first guest is someone who lives and breathes hurricanes, Ken Graham, the director of the National Hurricane Center. Ken, thanks for joining us today as part of this special coverage of hurricane season 2020.
Wanted to jump right into it and talk about your career with the Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service. What brought you to Miami? First of all, interesting. You ready for this one, Greg? I’ve been wanting to do this since I was seven years old.
So, you know, it was one of these things being, you know, evacuated as a kid, even growing up in the desert southwest. I mean, it didn’t take a whole lot of moisture to get us in trouble out there. So, I was always curious about the earth and took observations even at a really young age.
So, yeah, I did television weather for a couple years a long time ago, been in the weather service for 25 years, and the last 10 years, I was in New Orleans in charge of that office. So, a lot of hurricanes, you know, even in addition to that, providing decision support for things like Deepwater Horizon, just all sorts of interesting events there. The last couple years, two-year anniversary was on April 1st in this job, and a busy couple seasons to start things off.
As you mentioned, you started right at the 2018 season as it was beginning, and it was, of course, a very eventful year with Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 on the northern Gulf Coast, and then Florence also that year, slamming the Carolinas with historical flooding. What was it like for you as your first year? Yeah, it was, you know, one of these things that I’m very thankful that I was in the weather service so long. I was very thankful that I came from a busy office, right, Greg? I mean, coming from New Orleans, we saw the hurricanes, we saw busyness.
So, I think, luckily, I came into the job used to at least how busy and how wild a hurricane can be, you know, to get the forecast out and such. But at the same time, it was just, it’s different because this job is a much larger area. So, that was different for me.
And I think the media portion, I mean, we’re doing the interview today, but I mean, I look at last year, and I didn’t even realize that we put the numbers together for the 2019 season. I did 1,200 interviews. And so, the numbers are just higher.
But I think it went fine. I think it was one of these things that the mission’s everything to us. I’ve said it before.
I always say it, you know, I said it when I got the job. I think it was the first thing I said. I was humbled.
And I remain that today, you know, just humbled to work with such an amazing group in the building, but not only that, the emergency managers, the media. I’ll tell you, when it comes to a hurricane, we all band together to get the message out. We’re all working together to save lives.
And seeing that come together is fascinating, but humbling at the same time. As we approach the 2020 season, it’s an unprecedented time for emergency managers preparing for the start of a hurricane season while yet still recovering from the pandemic. COVID-19 has impacted in how we traditionally engage the public, both from emergency managers to media and schools, etc.
But before each season, I understand you guys usually have the Hurricane Awareness Tour. That was canceled. You now are focusing on virtual promotion of risk during Hurricane Awareness Week, which that was back in May.
How has all this impacted you and your team and your ability to educate the public? Yeah, you hit on it. We had to cancel a lot of the preseason events that we love to go to from hurricane conferences, but also the Hurricane Awareness Tour, where we travel with the hurricane hunters and we do news conferences. We let schools and the public tour the plains.
I mean, that is just also near and dear to my heart. I love those events. It’s a chance to talk about hurricane safety and preparedness.
So because those were canceled, we had to do it virtually. It’s interesting. We have a couple folks at the office, Dan Brown and Robbie Berg and some others.
Hurricane at Home. I mean, you have all these school kids and all these schools at home. Even my wife is upstairs on calls right as we speak, talking to students involved with this.
So we wanted to help. Some of the preparedness we took to virtual. We’ve been doing the Hurricane at Home, reaching thousands of kids in the U.S. and beyond.
So that’s been a part of it. But think about Hurricane Awareness Week. What we’re doing now is virtual.
Maybe we would have done it in person somewhere. I don’t know. But any of these, it’s all going to be virtual.
But you know, it doesn’t change anything. To me, virtual or non-virtual, we have to talk about the hurricane season. For us in the office, things aren’t changing.
We’re going to be ready. We’re doing everything we can to keep everyone separated. We have a lot of telework going on.
If you don’t have watches or warnings to issue, we’re trying to keep people separated now. That way we’re ready for the hurricane season. So you know what? Preparedness is the same.
Hurricane season is coming. We can’t stop it. I think while we’re at home, in fact, I wanted to tell you, I did an interview yesterday and I thought of it on the fly.
You know, being at home is a good opportunity to sit the family around the table and let’s review the plan. Let’s think about the plan. Let’s put it in writing.
Are you going to make any changes for your own selves? Supplies? I mean, all those types of things. None of it really changes, right? We have to get ready for the season because here it is. It’s upon us.
Okay, when we come back, how will COVID-19 influence the public’s response to a hurricane threat? Stay with us. More to come. You’re listening to Disaster Recovery Roundtable, available on your favorite podcast provider and on our website at tidalbasingroup.com. And now back to your host, Greg Patchett.
And welcome back. Our guest today is Ken Graham, the director of the National Hurricane Center. Ken, next question.
I just was curious if you think the pandemic is going to impact the public’s ability this year to respond to a storm threat, whether it’s by fear of being exposed to COVID-19 in the sheltering situation or by just not having the financial means to evacuate because they either lost their job or because the economy is so poor? I think the messaging will have to be, it’s always a partnership between us and the emergency managers, FEMA and everything. So I think what we’re going to have to do together is if there are those fears, I think we have to work together to come up with those talking points, not just before, but even during the event. I mean, if you think about how we evacuate, I compare, this is a good example to think about it.
It’s, you think about Floyd going back, you know, 1999, where a very similar forecast, by the way, to Dorian, you know, one of these that was along the coast, you know, getting up into the Carolinas. But in 1999, it was the largest evacuation in the country at that time. And interesting enough, so we fast forward to Dorian and right around three million people, preliminary number, around three million people did not have to evacuate because how far we’ve come with the forecast.
So the reason I bring that up now related to your question is the fact that, you know, we can target those evacuations better than we ever have been able to do in the past. So if you think about right along the coast or inland, in the case of Florence, where storm surge could reach 100 miles inland, the New Bern area, you know, you start looking at the Pamlico Sound, we can target it. So I think some of the science is going to help us out, if that makes sense, that we could really target those evacuations to say, hey, these are the folks really in danger instead of this massive expanse of a cone where we have to have everybody on the road.
I think if we could do a good job with the science part of it, I think it’ll help us through this. I’m not sure that answers it, but if that makes sense, that’s kind of how I look at it at this stage. You mentioned Dorian earlier.
Obviously, the biggest storm of last season. I’m sure you must be satisfied how the models performed. What’s the storm assessment look like on how the Hurricane Center forecasted that particular event? I think it’s one of those lessons learned that how difficult the forecast is during the genesis phase.
And what I mean by genesis phase is when these storms first start. And, you know, we always think about the hurricane hunters when they go through the mature storm, the category five, the big one and the great pictures in the eye. I can’t even describe how important those missions are for us during the genesis phase.
At the early onset of Dorian, there were three centers. There were three separate scenarios that could have happened in Dorian. The left track went over Hispaniola, probably would have torn Dorian apart.
Would have been some rain for Florida, maybe some rain for Cuba. The middle track would have interacted with land, maybe a weaker storm, but would have been still faster, maybe impacted Florida more. And then there was the other scenario.
The center jumped to the right. And at that point, no land, plenty of warm water, all water, and at the same time, slower, which meant more time for it to lose the influence of the steering currents with the high pressure out there and stall over the Bahamas. So, you know, the models did great.
Our track forecast was great. And by the way, we can talk about it a little bit. The NSC forecast track beats the models every time.
We always spend so much time dissecting the models. We call them the spaghetti plots. But the data is very clear.
Our forecast beats the models every single time because we use a consensus approach. So in the end, the intensity is still tough for us. Great track forecast.
Intensity is still super tough with us. But at the same time, look at those three scenarios. All three of them would mean a huge difference in intensity.
Anything from a wave to a cat 5. And that’s why the intensity is so tough on us. There’s a lot of variables that go into it. We’ve seen so much property development over the years in Florida, especially along the coastline there.
What if Dorian had moved more further to the west and not turned northward and impacted the state of Florida? How devastating could that storm have been for the state? Yeah, I mean, if you think about that scenario, yeah, I think in that scenario, you would have had a high pressure that lingered in longer and steered it instead of recurving into Florida. Devastating. And that’s why everybody listening has to really think about this a little bit.
A lot of times, we humans will base our risk perception based on our previous experience. And that’s why I’m very big on the social science aspect of the hurricane business. It’s the physical sciences, the social sciences, the understanding of that risk.
And yeah, absolutely, a stalling category 5 or independent of that, any major hurricane like that getting into Florida is just absolutely devastating. Andrew was in Homestead. It was not further north.
For anybody further north that went through Andrew, it really was further south. It was pretty compact as well. And here’s another example from Irma in the Florida Keys.
When you talk to folks in Key West, love going down there, love talking to everybody. But when they say they went through a Cat 4 Irma, I remind them their winds were Cat 1-ish. It was further up the island.
So, you know, it’s just something to realize that the risk is there. And just because you didn’t get hit last time doesn’t mean you can get hit. We can’t think of what Dorian did as they always turn or anything like that.
A little change in that atmosphere, a little change in the weather pattern, all of a sudden we get hit along the Florida coast and a storm like that would be absolutely devastating. All right, stay with us. When we come back, we’re going to hear about some new products that are available from the National Hurricane Center for those in the emergency management sector.
We’ll be right back. You’re listening to Disaster Recovery Roundtable. Now, here’s a preview of our next episode.
Our special coverage of Hurricane Season 2020 continues with the CEO of FLASH, the Federal Alliance of Safe Homes, Leslie Chapman Henderson. Our organization started out as a volunteer committee in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, believe it or not, in 1992. And we are and remain a very diverse collective of folks who come from all the different fields that are relevant to making people safe and keeping homes intact after something like a hurricane.
So it’s everyone you’d imagine, emergency management, the Hurricane Center, the building code community, the builders, and all the other stakeholders pulled together by us. Now back to your host, Greg Paget. And welcome back.
We continue our discussion with Ken Graham, the Director of the National Hurricane Center. Typically every year, Ken, in the spring, you guys go out on the conference sector and circuit there and you speak to folks across, you know, hurricane-prone states in the community there with emergency managers. And you roll out those new products.
You talk about the new things that are coming from the Hurricane Center. What’s new this year? Yeah, we have a couple new things that, you know, for the storm surge watch and warning, we’ve had great success with that. In fact, it’s really, you know, time will tell, right, if we’re, the lives we’re saving.
Storm surge is half the fatalities in a tropical system. It’s water. Water is 90% of the fatalities in any tropical systems.
So we’re trying to tackle those things. So the storm surge watch and warning continues to be successful. And only 4% of the fatalities we look at since the implementation that we’re getting from these tropical systems in the continental United States.
So I think we’re making a difference. So we’re expanding that Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, we’re continuing to expand that through the, you know, basically the Caribbean Islands. So I think we’re going to make a difference there.
So that’s one thing. We’re expanding that. Southern California, by the way, you don’t think of that as hurricane-prone, but guess what? Brand new this year, we have the storm surge products that we can issue for Southern California, because absolutely you could get a hurricane come up Baja and impact California.
So that’s brand new. The other one is we have an experimental peak storm surge graphic that we’re going to debut this year. It goes back to the social science.
How do you depict on a map, you know, all this data, the uncertainty, there’s so much that goes into this. So it’s brand new this year. It’s a very simple, very simple look, really quick to see areas along the coast and what the values are for peak storm surge.
We added a 60-hour forecast point. That was not on the map before. We have it.
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We’re adding that to the, when you see the cone this year in the forecast track, you’ll see a 60-hour point. That smooths it out, and it also allows another data point to use in the calculations of storm surge and the wind radii. It helps with those interests.
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And the last one, well, it won’t impact most everybody here, but we’re going to add local time zones across the entire Atlantic. The one thing most people probably don’t know about the Hurricane Center is the fact that our area of responsibility is from the European and African coast all the way to 140 degrees west near Hawaii. We have a huge expanse.
So we are responsible for the forecast for all those international entities. The countries, we coordinate with them constantly during a hurricane. We’re responsible for those forecasts and coordinating watches and warnings with them.
So we’re going to have their local times in the product for all of them to help them out internationally. Sounds like some great resources. Now, with this being the first day of hurricane season, what are the action items you are asking the public to take this year? You know, we can’t stress enough about the preparedness part because I can tell you just living on the coast for almost, you know, most of my life, you know, when we start putting out hurricane forecasts, you start seeing, you know, where we could be impacted.
It’s stressful. You know, it’s not the time to really start writing the plan. You have to write that plan early.
It’s just so critical to write it down. Where are you going to go? Do you have supplies? Are you all set? A lot of it’s identifying your risk. You know, we talk about having a plan kind of loosely, but what does it really mean? The first step is what’s your risk? Are you in a storm surge zone? Are you in an evacuation zone? You have to know that because we constantly brief and talk to the emergency managers.
I have so much respect for the emergency managers. I could just go on and on about that. We constantly brief them and listen to them.
You know, if they’re talking about evacuations, it means something. We’re all in this together. So, know if you’re in the evacuation zone.
If you’re told to evacuate, get out. The other part of it is know your risk. Look around.
How sturdy is your house? You know, you think about a Michael situation. We had trees down in devastation all the way into Georgia. You know, what kind of structure do you have identified? Can you fortify that structure? You know, you look at hurricane strong.
You look at how we can build, you know, your house is strong or fortify that. And if you can’t, you know, you got to have an alternative place to go. Look around your house with trees.
You know, is there a tree that could fall? I can’t tell you how many, you know, 27 years of doing storm surveys, how many times you see somebody get hurt or lose their life because there’s an old tree, a lot of times either damaged, sick or termites that falls on a house and hits the house or hit somebody. So, identify the risk. Are you 100 miles inland? You’re not safe.
If you’re, you know, you still need to look at the rainfall. Are you in a low area? Are you on a river? All those considerations, please. I just urge everybody.
It’s one thing to keep saying things like have a plan. It becomes a little bit of a bumper sticker, right? I think the biggest thing, identify your risk. Be honest.
It’s okay. It’s okay to be in a risky area. A lot of risky areas are really pretty, but at the same time, have a plan to mitigate this to protect your life.
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Thank you very much, Ken Graham, the director of the National Hurricane Center. Great information today. We appreciate this for our first episode as we kick off hurricane season 2020.
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We’d like to thank you and your team there at the Hurricane Center for all your efforts each year to protect the public. Really appreciate the great work you guys do down there. And for our listeners, if you’d like to learn more about the Hurricane Center’s mission, the new products that Ken mentioned, research on past storms, and of course, the latest forecast, you can find all that on their website at hurricanes.gov. You’ve been listening to Disaster Recovery Roundtable, a platform to explore, engage, and educate.
For more information on this episode, visit our podcast page at tidalbasingroup.com. You can download previous podcasts, learn more about the programs we discussed, and suggest a topic for a future episode. You can also find us on your favorite podcast provider. This has been a Tidal Basin production.
Thanks for listening.