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Hurricane Helen: The Impact of Climate Change on Intense Storms · How To Protect The Ocean

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Hurricane Helen has come through the United States and
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it's had a lot of damage. Not only property damage, but
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it's taken 52 lives in the U.S.
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Not just in Florida, but in Georgia, North Carolina, and
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other places. And it's caused flash flooding in a lot of
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those places. Homes were floating around. It's
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not good. And it doesn't look like it's going to
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get better with storms. And I had a question from an audience member
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saying, hey, Andrew, can you start talking about how climate change is
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affecting these hurricanes? And we're going to talk about that on today's episode of
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the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
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your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how
0:50
you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by
0:53
taking action. And on today's episode, we're not talking about
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something that's fun to talk about, in my opinion. Hurricane Helen just went
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through Florida, Georgia, North Carolinas, and
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other places, taking 52 lives. causing
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so much damage and we need to
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talk about it. We need to talk about these storms. Interesting
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in a lot of different ways, in that it was a lot bigger,
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larger in space. When you look at the radius
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and the diameter of this storm, it really
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increased rapidly from a Hurricane 1, Category
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1, to a Hurricane 4. We're going to talk about these categories. And
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we're going to talk about what scientists are now thinking in terms of maybe adding
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another category. So we're going to talk about that today. But we're going to talk about
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why you know climate change is actually helping
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these storms become more intense and more frequent and
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even a lot more flooding, a lot more rain is being
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had in these hurricanes and
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that's a danger to a lot of places. So we're going
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to talk about that a number of times and we're also going to talk about
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ways that people can get better access, you
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know ways that you know past storms may have
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had an influence on the decision of how people or
2:17
when people will evacuate if they will evacuate and we're gonna we're
2:20
gonna talk about that as well so lots to get into before
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we do that though I just want to remind people if you want to know more about what's
2:27
happening in the ocean, you can get access to
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2:52
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www.speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. And
3:02
we can get into it. We can get find find out more about this information There's
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a lot of times we get you know We I just accumulate all these stories
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charge anything And I never share your email with anybody else
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But anyway, let's get into the episode. This is not
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a fun episode to talk about. Like I said, people lost their lives, people
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lost their homes. Insurance is really difficult to come by, especially when
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it comes to flash flooding or any kind of hurricanes, especially
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in Florida. I watched a lot of videos that
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were covering it. A lot of people were live streaming during the time. A lot
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more people didn't evacuate, and that's a scary
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thought. And I think a lot of it was because it
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started off as a category one. It hit the Yucatan Peninsula,
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so in Mexico. And it was like a Category 3. And once it goes
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over land a little bit, it kind of dissipates. And it went down to a Category 1. But
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it rapidly increased. And the size, the
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sheer size of the hurricane, not the intensity, but the size
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in terms of how the hurricane clouds, how much area
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it covered, was a lot bigger, probably one of the biggest ones we've seen
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in a long time. And you can see there were videos
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of people being rescued on sailboats and people being rescued
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from flooding, but even before the hurricane came in. And
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obviously, that's a danger. But I went from a Category 1 to a Category
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4. And I want to just talk a little bit about the category.
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So the Saphir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale
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is what categorizes these hurricanes. So
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it's categories right now currently 1 to 5. And
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it basically goes by wind. So Category 1 is a 74 to 95 mile an hour
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winds. Category 2 is 96 to 110 miles an hour. three
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attack at the hurricane category three which is a major hurricane is
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considered the beginning of the major hurricanes is a hundred eleven two hundred nine
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hundred twenty nine miles an hour winds category four
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which was what hurricane helen was was a hundred and thirty two hundred and fifty
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six mile per hour winds percent against big wins here and
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category five which hurricane barrel was earlier this year earlier this
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summer was a hundred and fifty seven mile an hour winds or
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higher The types of damage for Category 1, if
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you just think about that, is very dangerous winds will produce some damage. Well-constructed
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frame homes could have damage to roofs, shingles, vinyl siding,
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and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallow
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rooted trees will be toppled. Extensive damage to power
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lines and poles likely will result in power outages that
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could last a few to several days. So that's just a Category 1. I'm
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not going to read all of them because I'll put a link in the show notes
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of where You can get access to this. This is on the NOAA website. But
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a major hurricane, Category 3, is devastating
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damage will occur. Well-built framed homes may incur major
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damage or removal of roof, decking, and gable ends.
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I'm not sure what gable ends are, but many trees will be
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snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and
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water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes.
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I was involved in a Hurricane 3. when I
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lived in Halifax back in 2003, 2004. It was Hurricane
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Juan. It rapidly intensified. We thought it was going to
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be a tropical storm. It ended up being a Category 3. Those
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winds were no joke. We were lucky in terms of
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where my wife and I were living, but the downtown areas where
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there was lots of huge trees that were upended put the city, just
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disabled the city for like three weeks in a state of emergency. And
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that is obviously not good. Category 4, which is Hurricane Helen,
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has catastrophic damage will occur. Well-built framed houses
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can sustain severe damage with loss of most of
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the roof structure and or some exterior walls. Most
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trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed.
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Fallen trees and power poles will
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isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to
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possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks
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or months. I
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think the Tampa Bay area and the panhandle of Florida.
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And they're saying, hey, you know what? Earlier in the day, it's a category one.
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You might want to think about evacuating. But because the
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ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, is so warm, that this could rapidly
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increase into something like category 2, 3, or
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4. It ended up being 4. But a day is not
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a lot of time to get a lot of people out of a city or a lot
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of people out of the area. It's not just Tampa Bay. You've got surrounding areas.
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We knew the storm surge was going to be heavy. And storm surge essentially
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is what water comes to the land from a storm, right?
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Surging water that comes through, storm surge. They were predicting maybe
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about eight feet high. That's, you know, above
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most people's height, right? It'd be very, I would say everybody's
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height. It's safe to say, unless you're a basketball player and you're eight feet, that
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doesn't exist as far as I know. But, you know, so that's up
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above most houses, first floor houses. So that
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could be very dangerous in terms of flooding roads, you can't get out
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if you can't leave. There were videos that I saw of
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older people who were saying, look, I just
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don't have the means to leave. I'm going to ride it out. There was
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another gentleman who made CNN. During
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the storm, he was actually live streaming from his house. in
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a kayak, and he was on the kayak in probably about
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five or six feet of water, it looked like, and he was live
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streaming. He was fine, but he basically lost everything in
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his home. I think he tried to put stuff in storage. I don't know the full story on
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this, but he was just sitting on a kayak throughout the whole time, but
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that water could have gone higher, right? We don't
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know exactly what that was gonna do, depending on that
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surge. And when you have a surge, you have rapidly,
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We have water coming in rapidly, and it could
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have a current to it. And that could be dangerous if you're out of the house or
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you're not. Even on boats, boats were being flown all over the place.
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The next day, you saw boats all over the land. These
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are some 20, 30 footers, 40 footers that were just everywhere
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because the waves were coming in so high, the storm surge was coming in so high.
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The winds were crazy. Just as
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I read for the Category 4 hurricanes, catastrophic
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damage to houses. Homes were actually floating away. If
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it's not properly framed homes or not, what do they call
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it, well-built framed homes, your home
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has had a risk of just floating
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away. That's dangerous in and of itself, and you
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don't want to see that happen to anybody. The guy in the kayak was saying
10:13
to CNN, he doesn't have insurance on his home. He
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said, we'll just have to start over, and we're just going to have to continue to do this. This
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is why I tell people, you may not want to live in Florida. You
10:23
may not want to live in Florida. A lot of people still say, hey, I want to
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go to Florida because it's so nice. There are some times you may not want
10:29
to live there full year round or have an own property because one,
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you may not get insurance for flooding. And it's not necessarily just
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these major hurricanes. There's an article in The Hill. And
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I'll put that link in this show notes in the description. They
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start talking about how because the Gulf
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of Mexico and the ocean is getting hotter, then that
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means the clouds are holding more water
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because there's more evaporation of water, goes into the
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clouds, and the clouds are holding, so these hurricane clouds are holding more water. It doesn't matter
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if it's a hurricane one, four, or five. It matters how
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much water this is holding. There's more water that's coming down, and
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that means more flooding. You know, when you add that to the
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storm surge, you add that to sea level rise, there are a lot of
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vulnerable areas along those coastlines and maybe even inland more
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because they're not ready for this type of rain, the
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amount of rain that we're willing to have. The infrastructure was not built
11:29
that way. And so even if you have a Category 1, people
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didn't leave when it was a Category 4 because they couldn't because they thought it was a Category 1 or
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2 when it first started to come. They think, hey, you know what, I can survive
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a category one. Well, one, you have the risk of it increasing because of
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rapidly increasing because it's getting hotter and hotter in the ocean, more
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evaporation is coming. Apparently, this is how the winds increase
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is when it gets hotter and hotter. And so that energy transfer from
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the ocean to the clouds gets
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faster. And so that means it increases not only the size of
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the storm, but it increases the wind speeds. Hence why we had such
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a rapidly increasing category 1 to 4. It increased that wind speed
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super, super fast. So you have that risk of it actually increasing as
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it comes closer to land. But then you also have the risk of just the flooding
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that comes. Even if it's a category 1, you risk people saying,
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hey, you know what? It's only a category 1. I live in Florida. I've lived my
12:21
entire life here. And I've gone through hurricanes. And there have been some
12:24
where we've evacuated. But category ones, that's just like a
12:27
big storm. And you kind of get that toughness to it because you're like, yeah, we got some damage, maybe
12:31
a couple of broken windows. We'll put the protectors on the windows. And
12:35
we'll make sure we reinforce some sandbags and things like that to make sure
12:38
the water doesn't come in. But we'll be fine. But then you get more water than expected.
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That's dangerous, right? That's dangerous to your infrastructure that's not
12:46
used to that much water, right? At that amount of time. Case in
12:50
point, Burlington, Ontario, where I live, we had the
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remnants of Hurricane Beryl came right up the Midwest, and
12:56
it took a little right turn, it came right into Ontario. And we
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had massively rapid rains. We had squalls. It
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was like, you know, rain squalls, which we don't normally have. We were in squall warnings
13:06
for a long time. And not only did we get so much water, we had so
13:10
much water that a lot of the infrastructure couldn't hold. People were flooded out
13:13
of their homes, in their basements, even in the first level. Though not only
13:16
their basements filled up all the way, but the first level filled up about five
13:20
or six feet in certain areas. That infrastructure gets tested
13:23
during these storms. We just can't continue to
13:27
have this. That infrastructure is going to have to change. We're going to have to adapt. We're going to have to put more money
13:30
in the system and really start to look at our politicians to
13:34
make sure that they are protecting us for that adaptation. Because
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until we do something to reduce climate change, which we're not doing fast
13:41
enough, We are going to have these storms. They are going to
13:44
increase in intensity. They are going to increase in number. There are
13:47
two more storms apparently right behind Hurricane Ellen, and the
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ocean hasn't really cooled down from these storms, so it's just going to
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get hotter and hotter, and we're just going to find, like, we're late September
13:58
up here in Ontario, and it's 23 degrees. Celsius.
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That's really hot for this time of year. We are not used to
14:05
seeing this on a regular basis. We barely had a winter last
14:09
year. I don't know what this winter is going to be like, if we're going to get more snow, less
14:12
snow, cold, or even just mild temperatures as we did before. A
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lot of it's up in the air. And the thing is, no matter what, it's
14:20
going to test our infrastructure. Not only in Ontario, but
14:24
across the Midwest, and across the United States, across
14:27
Canada, down into the southern United States, especially where they
14:30
get these hurricanes, there's going to be more and more damage. and people are
14:34
not necessarily leaving their homes. There are a lot of videos of people staying
14:38
on boats and things like that, and that boat's going to get capsized at
14:41
one point. At one point before the
14:44
hurricane even came in during the day, there was a rescue for
14:48
an emergency that a man and his dog were in the actual water. They
14:51
had to abandon their sailboat because they're in these massive waves. and
14:54
their boat was basically just couldn't go anywhere, it was just stuck,
14:58
it was isolated and they just couldn't move and they were afraid, they couldn't get
15:01
out of the, they couldn't get to shore and they had to, you know, there's video,
15:05
harrowing videos of these rescuers, you know, saving
15:08
the person and the dog. And to be honest, like what are they doing out there in
15:12
the first place? I don't know how they got out there or if they did that
15:15
on purpose, but that's a danger, right? You know, I'm a dog lover. Nobody
15:18
wants to see dog die. Nobody wants to see their owner die either. They
15:22
put themselves at risk just by being out there, whether it was on purpose or not,
15:26
I don't know. So I don't want to make assumptions, but that's, that's, that's taking
15:29
resources away to save those people because they have, They
15:33
have to save that person, excuse me. But also, that's
15:36
taking time away from going elsewhere and saving anybody else,
15:40
right? So things move fast. And case
15:43
in point, there was a video on Fox News. The guy was on live, the
15:47
reporter. There was water behind him. Classic shot
15:50
in a hurricane. There was a car that was almost submerged.
15:54
You can almost just see the top of the window and the
15:57
roof. And then you hear someone saying, help me, help me, help me. And
16:00
the reporter said, we've called 911. should be here any minute,
16:04
told the reporter that he was talking to, the anchor that he was
16:07
talking to, that they've called 911. But then he finally just said, you know what, I
16:10
gotta do something. And he hurriedly walked into the
16:13
water. You don't know what the current is like. Walked into the water, got
16:17
the woman out, carried the woman all the way to safety, thank
16:20
God, and then went back and did his reporting. Emergency
16:25
services can't get everywhere all the time. And by staying in
16:28
those areas, which is risky, you want to have a
16:32
service or something that can actually try and predict these things faster,
16:36
that people can tune into. It's going to be extremely important in
16:40
the future when you have you know, rapidly growing hurricanes.
16:44
You have more water in these hurricanes, so more flooding available
16:48
in these hurricanes, lack of infrastructure, right? And then lack
16:51
of action. Florida has a governor who's not taking any
16:54
action against climate change and has removed the word climate change from all
16:58
of their policies. They've gone in the opposite direction and
17:02
the people are paying for it. The people are paying for it. The people who vote them
17:05
in are paying for it, but also the people who didn't vote for them, they're paying for it as well. And
17:09
Florida is predicted by the IPCC to go underwater, half
17:13
of it to go underwater at some point in the future, whether it's 2050 or
17:17
not. And people aren't believing it. The IPCC was right when they said, hey,
17:20
clouds are going to hold more water. It's science, folks. This is what's
17:23
happening. And we're fighting against governors and
17:27
politicians who are denying this. They're getting paid by fossil fuel
17:31
companies and super PACs that are funded by
17:34
these fossil fuel companies to say, hey, you know what? There's nothing we can really
17:37
do. But people are losing their lives. People are losing their homes, their
17:41
livelihoods. It's going to take a long time to recover from this.
17:44
And the amount of money that has to go into the recovery and
17:48
cleanup of this mess, it's insane. It's
17:51
an insane amount. And I'm working on a story now to look at the
17:54
actual coverages of like the amount of money that it takes to do
17:58
this. But this is insane to see this
18:01
on a, you know, this is going to be regular happenings from now on, these
18:04
intensified storms, right? And whether they're category one
18:07
or category four, you're still going to get the same amount of rain. Right? And
18:11
so that's the concern. And with climate change
18:15
continuing to affect and influence our weather systems, we
18:18
are going to see these storms continue to happen. And that is
18:22
scary in itself. Right? But I
18:25
don't want you to think that we're done, for this is going to
18:28
be it. This is going to be it. There is hope. There is optimism. There are people out
18:32
there, there are politicians out there who want to do something about climate change. It's
18:35
a matter of can we vote them in? At some
18:39
point, The work for climate adaptation, the
18:42
work for reducing the emissions that will affect climate change will
18:46
come into play because it's going to affect our economy. I know politicians normally
18:50
focus more on economy versus the environment, so
18:53
we have to fund to maintain the economy, but that means a lot of times
18:56
that we don't fund environmental practice. At some point, those
19:00
two are going to come together and the environment is going to affect the economy as it's
19:03
doing in Florida, as it did in Georgia, as it did in North Carolina.
19:08
By these major floods, it takes money to clean
19:11
this stuff up. It takes money to adapt. And eventually, that
19:15
money is going to affect our economy. It could be already. That's
19:18
the story I'm working on. So hopefully, I'll be able to have something for you soon. But
19:22
this is a huge, huge problem. And it's not something that
19:25
we need to turn a blind eye to. So
19:29
sorry for this Monday episode being a little bit pessimistic, but
19:33
sometimes we have to talk about these things. And the hope that I have is
19:37
that we can actually take care of this. We can actually help the people
19:40
in Florida, help the people in Georgia, help people in North Carolina and elsewhere,
19:44
so that we don't have to go through this in the future. All we have to do is just reduce
19:47
emissions. Just reduce emissions. As complex as
19:50
it is, it's not difficult to do. We just need to have the people
19:54
in power to actually do that. And that's up to us to vote. There are major
19:57
elections coming up in the US, and there's going to be some major elections coming up
20:01
in Canada. And it's up to us here in North America to
20:04
help make sure these politicians get into power.
20:08
So ask people about their climate change policies if they come around to your door. They
20:13
should be answering. If they don't have an answer, they don't have a plan, they
20:16
should not be in power. They should
20:20
not get your vote, in my opinion. For this audience, climate change is
20:23
a big deal, and I think we need to hold our
20:27
politicians accountable for that. We need to act faster, because we're
20:31
not only seeing these problems happen, now it's starting
20:35
to get regular occurrence, and we can't get used to this. There's just too much
20:38
money involved, the livelihoods of people, people's lives involved,
20:42
and we just don't want to see this happen again. So let's
20:45
get on it. Let's get out and vote. You know, register to vote if you
20:48
if you're able to register to vote and vote wherever you can and
20:52
however you can. All right. Only once, of course, but vote. That's
20:55
it for today's episode. If you have any questions or comments on this episode or if
20:59
you've been in the areas or you know of any crowdfunding
21:03
ways to help some people out, please let me know. I'll post them, I'll add
21:06
them to the list in our show notes. But let
21:10
me know. You can get a hold of me just by commenting on the Spotify
21:14
video or audio, however you're listening to this, or You can
21:18
go to YouTube where you can see the video of me talking about this
21:21
stuff. And of course, you can just hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean.
21:25
That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. DM me, feel free to do so.
21:28
Because this is the starting of a conversation, and I want to hear your opinions on
21:32
this. Let me know what you think. And I want to thank Nicole for
21:35
suggesting this episode. Thank you so much. It
21:39
was great to get your email and your interaction. If you have a suggestion or
21:42
a comment, feel free to get a hold of me. I just told you how. And I want to thank you
21:45
so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have