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Looking for video for a television show or other project? Send an email from our email page for information about obtaining video for use in a commercial project. Hurricane Bertha: July 12, 1996 Hurricane Bertha was the very first hurricane that I filmed. It was close to mid-July in 1996 and I had just begun my business, Hurricane Maps Enterprises. In fact, my very first set of paper tracking maps, huge poster sized maps, had just been published in and around the Wilmington, NC area. Local News/Talk station WAAV was promoting them on-air as Bertha approached the NC/SC coast. During the daylight hours of July 12, Bertha strengthened from a weak category one hurricane to a strong and intensifying category two hurricane. The eye passed just to my east. I was living in a brick house in Leland, NC- just across the river to the west of Wilmington. The video is not that dramatic or coordinated- but none-the-less, this is what started it all for me. Little did I know that just a few weeks later, powerful hurricane Fran would pass right over me. Hurricane Fran: September 5, 1996 Hurricane Fran was perhaps the most powerful hurricane to strike North Carolina since Hazel in 1954. The category three hurricane made landfall in almost the exact same location that Bertha did just a few weeks prior. Again, I filmed the evolution of the effects from my home in Leland, NC. This time, I set up the camera on a tripod in my carport and turned my Nissan Sentra around so that the headlights would shine out in to the approaching eyewall. It worked- and you can see the blasting rain pass in front of the camera. Then, the eye passes directly over my location and I walk around in my front yard amid total darkness. Two days later, I drive around the region with my wife of two weeks (my how time flies) and survey the damage. Notice the boats on high-ground towards the very end. The sound drops out during the aftermath video for some unknown reason. Probably good that it did- who knows what I was blurting out after seeing the extensive damage left by Fran. Hurricane Bonnie: 1998 By 1998, I had decided to get out in the field more during hurricane landfalls and since most were hitting right in my backyard- literally- '98 was a good year to officially begin the Hurricane Intercept Research Team. Working with FEMA's Project Impact program on hurricane awareness projects, I knew that learning more about hurricanes when they impact land would help me to better convey my message of why it is important to prepare. Thus, I formed HIRT in the summer of 1998 and Bonnie was my first mission with the new name. I was joined by Jamie Arnold who was a student at UNC-Charlotte at the time. He is now a meteorologist at WITN in Washington, NC. We both tackled Bonnie's extended stay in the Cape Fear region and were able to drive in and out of the eye several times. The video gets a little more exciting this time around as I gained more experience filming the before, during and after of a landfalling hurricane. Hurricane Dennis: August 30 and September 4, 1999 Hurricane Dennis was the highlight of my young career in late August of 1999. I had started this site earlier in the year and as luck would have it, a CNN producer from Chicago, working with Jeff Flock, read my commentary about my pending mission to intercept Dennis- and the rest was history. I worked the mission along side Jeff Flock, who had been in many hurricanes for live coverage on CNN. My first HIRT partner, Jamie Arnold, was not available to join me and so I relied on him for up to the minute info via cell phone (we did not have the luxury of Sprint wireless Internet in 1999). I set up in Carolina Beach, NC for round one of Dennis- which was not too bad. I was able to relay information to the New Hanover County EOC and they, in turn, sent it to the NHC. I did several live appearances with veteran Jeff Flock- often times showing the actual wind speed from atop the little green Isuzu Rodeo (those were the days). The hurricane passed just offshore of Cape Fear and sat off of the Outer Banks for nearly a week. On September 4, my college astronomy professor, Dr. Brian Davis, and I went out in to the far reaches of Carteret County- along Hwy 12- to observe and document the final landfall of Dennis. It was amazing to see the storm surge coming in from the Pamlico Sound. We were surrounded by water on all sides but had a chance to measure wind speeds within a very flat and marshy area. We had no way of knowing that this hurricane/tropical storm would pave the way for a monumental flood event 11 days later: Floyd. Hurricane Floyd: September 15-17, 1999 Floyd. The name is infamous for flooding. I had just finished a presentation on hurricanes for the GE facility here in Wilmington after Dennis' second landfall and low and behold, Floyd had popped up. The near category five monster had all of the East Coast on edge. Floyd demonstrated how difficult it is to move millions of people from several different states while trying to work out where to send everyone. I was working closely with the US Army Corps of Engineers as well as the local governments to produce a new storm surge information website and met my second HIRT colleague, Eddie Smith. He was working for New Hanover County's Emergency Management office and he and I became good friends very quickly. When Floyd threatened Florida, off we went to document the massive evacuation and what effects might hit the Sunshine State. But as luck would have it, the forecast track shifted from Florida to Georgia and South Carolina right back to our hometown of Wilmington. Eddie and raced back north beating Floyd to the Carolina coast by several hours and I managed to capture some pretty dramatic storm surge video directly on the beach front at Wrightsville Beach. I dropped Eddie off the the EOC and met up with Jamie Arnold who drove down from Charlotte. Some of the video was later used to very accurately determine how high the water rose with the surge. However, it was very dangerous to have been there in the first place and it is a good thing that Floyd was weakening at landfall. I know better now (hopefully). The second mission of Floyd was to document the massive flood that inundated a good deal of eastern North Carolina. The video below is a blend of some of that footage- as seen in chronological order from Florida to the flooded coastal plain of North Carolina. Hurricane Gordon: September 17, 2000 After the bombardment of hurricanes in the late 90s along the Carolina coast, the year 2000 would see a complete absence of hurricane landfalls altogether (for the United States). However, one came fairly close: Gordon in middle September. The "G" storm for that year did briefly become a minimal hurricane as it approached the west coast of Florida. Eddie Smith and I took off on the 16th and caught up to Gordon as it made landfall near Cedar Key, FL as a strong tropical storm. This video piece has music in it from the soundtrack of the hit movie Gladiator. Ever since, I have composed and performed my own music for my hurricane documentaries. Gordon was the first mission that I used a SCUBA housing to film otherwise impossible shots with an unprotected camera. TS Barry, Hurricane Michelle and the first year working with Lowe's What most people perhaps do not realize is that 2001 was the second year in a row that no hurricanes hit the United States. That year was also the first year I would work with Lowe's as a major sponsor and supporter of my work. And it just so happens too that 2001 was when I met my good friend and colleague, Jesse Bass. And, in another ironic twist, I would use a Sprint phone for the first time to access the Internet while out on a mission. It all came together in a year more remembered for the date of September 11 than for any hurricane threats. This video is a look-back piece that I produced for Lowe's at the end of that season. It showcases the work that HIRT and HurricaneTrack.com did to educate the public about hurricanes- as well as the tropical mischief that followed. Tropical storm Isidore: September 26, 2002 After a fairly quiet start to the 2002 hurricane season, the action picked up significantly in August, September and October. One of two landfall missions that I worked was T.S. Isidore along the Mississippi coast. I was joined by Jesse Bass for this mission which lasted for a week. Isidore looked like it might head for the Louisiana coast as a monster hurricane but it ran deep in to the Yucatan Peninsula and weakened significantly. Jesse and I waited for three days to see what would happen and ultimately ended up in Gulfport, MS. Even though the center was forecast to make landfall in SE Louisiana, we wanted to be on the right hand side of the large wind field of Isidore. We accomplished this goal in Gulfport and captured some incredible storm surge video from the Urie Pier near Gulfport Harbor. Knowing what I know now about how bad the surge can be in Mississippi, I am glad that Isidore was not any stronger than it was at landfall- about 65 to 70 mph. I would return to this very spot on August 28, 2005 for the epic hurricane Katrina- as seen on our 2005 DVD. Long Island, NY storm surge education video In 2002, I produced a video for the villages of Freeport and East Rockaway in Long Island. The video was part of their FEMA initiative, Project Impact. Even though the video is tailored to Long Island, it is still a good introduction to what storm surge is and how it can be planned for. Click on the link below to watch the entire video. Hurricane Isabel- 2003 as seen from Atlantic Beach, NC Hurricane Isabel was an enormous hurricane that was a category five for a period of time before weakening and making landfall in eastern North Carolina. The video from Isabel is not that impressive as I was on the west, or weaker, side of the circulation. However, I was still able to capture some interesting effects. The video begins with a several hours long time lapse condensed down to about a minute. You can see the high level outflow cirrus clouds and the lower level inflow moisture-laden clouds at the same time. One of the most spectacular memories of Isabel that I have was the swells that moved in off the Atlantic from the south. You can clearly see the long period swells move in- and a surfer taking advantage of a good thing. The rest of the video has some wind, rain and rough weather but nothing that would even make the evening news. If you want to see what a difference being on the weaker side of a hurricane makes then be sure to visit Jim Edds' website at ExtremeStorms.com and look for HIS Isabel video. You will clearly see that his location on the Outer Banks near Nags Head made a huge difference in the impacts that were felt.
The following videos are lengthy. They are the raw video files digitized directly from the video tapes that were inside three cameras during our project in hurricane Ivan. We had placed our old and outdated Isuzu Rodeo "chase" vehicle out on the beachfront in Gulf Shores, Alabama to record the worst that Ivan could throw at it. This was the start of our remote camera project and we figured that by loading the old Isuzu up with cameras and weather instruments, and then sacrificing it to the hurricane, that we could learn something without having to place ourselves in harm's way. It worked very well. The Isuzu was of course destroyed and its cameras captured the surge rolling in to Gulf Shores- until darkness set in after sunset. Each link below will play a different camera's video just as it was recorded on the night of Ivan's landfall. I suggest you right-click on the links and download them to your desktop and then view them.
The first part begins with an excellent example of convection- or thunderstorm growth- during what was tropical storm Barry along the Florida Panhandle in August of 2001. The next clip shows sunset and sunrise before the arrival of hurricane Ivan in mid-September of 2004. Then, we have a time lapse of the storm surge moving in to Gulf Shores, Alabama as hurricane Ivan drew closer to the coast. Part 1 ends with a roof top time lapse of the outer bands of hurricane Rita as seen from near I-10 in Beaumont, TX in late Sept. of 2005. The second clip shows the only video that we know of ever shot of storm surge in time lapse. This was done using our new remote camera system that we invented in 2005 to study hurricanes through video like never before. As you will see, the use of time lapse in understanding storm surge is fantastic. The footage was captured atop of a concrete building in Everglades City, Florida during hurricane Wilma in October of 2005. The clip shows no surge in the beginning, only rain water on the streets of the city. Then, the surge advances from the Gulf of Mexico along the SW coast of Florida. Only because Wilma made landfall slightly farther south than forecast did Everglades City escape a possible 15-18 feet of surge. In this video, the water level clearly rises from nothing to about 5 feet in less than an hour (compressed in to <50 seconds here). The third video clip is from ex-hurricane Noel in November of 2007 along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This video again illustrates the power of using remote cameras placed where we want them. Even though the storm surge from Noel along the Outer Banks was minimal, this time lapse helped us to understand how to effectively capture video in a harsh, sandy and salty environment. There is a stark contrast between the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Everglades City, Florida. Watch the two video clips and you'll see this difference prominently. The time will come when we place one of these remote camera systems in just the right spot to capture video over a long period of time of an extraordinary event. Our work even in years with little impact on the U.S. coast, like 2007, helps us to prepare for just such an event in the future. 
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