Greetings. I am Mark Sudduth. I own and operate HurricaneTrack.com and the Hurricane Intercept Research Team. I am based in southeast North Carolina where I have lived for almost my entire life. It is mainly for that reason, living along the North Carolina coast, that I do what I do today.
Growing up near water as I did (in New Bern, NC), I was always exposed to the weather. The weather influenced everything I did as a child even if I didn’t know it at the time. However, the greatest interest was in hurricanes. Those rare events captured my imagination and had profound impacts on my life and what would turn out to be my career.
After several close calls with hurricanes such as David in 1979 and Diana in 1984, I grew more and more interested in what they were all about. There was no Internet back then, not like today. Even in the mid-80s with the advent of The Weather Channel and CNN to provide live, round-the-clock coverage, I could not learn enough about hurricanes. I read books, studied old weather maps and had my father take me to the local TV station to learn from a real meteorologist. But still, I had never been in the core of a hurricane- not even once. By 1989 when I was ready for college, I moved with my family to Wilmington, just down the highway from New Bern. This would get me closer to one of history’s biggest hurricanes- Hugo, but it was not a direct hit. I wanted to see what a hurricane was all about. But it was more than that. I wanted to take measurements such as wind speed, rain fall and air pressure. I wanted to learn from actual experience what hurricanes were capable of.
After graduating from UNC-Wilmington with a degree in geography in the summer of 1995, I went to work as an intern for our local economic development firm. The Internet was just beginning to catch on and I had access to all sorts of weather data where I worked. The staff quickly became aware of my interest in weather and hurricanes. It just so happened that 1995 signaled the start to this new active phase of Atlantic hurricane activity. I was in the right place at the right time in more ways than I would ever know.
My boss asked me to write a report. He knew about my fascination with hurricanes and asked me to research the return period of all hurricanes to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina. After a few days, I had his results and I quickly realized how little people really knew about hurricanes. They seemed to think of them as happening in Florida or Texas. Little did they realize that North Carolina had a rich and storied hurricane history and that it was about to be re-written several times over.
In early 1996, I had completed my internship and moved on to developing new digital maps for the county tax department. I knew that this was not what I wanted to do for the next 40 years. I had in the back of my mind this sense of urgency to do something related to hurricanes. But what would it be? I had no money to speak of, I was not a degreed meteorologist and I had never been in the core of a hurricane. Then it hit me. Create a mass marketing campaign to get people aware of hurricanes in a way that is positive and exciting. That campaign turned out to be a poster-sized hurricane tracking map that dwarfed all others in size and content. I spent my off hours from work designing a 26″ by 38″ hurricane tracking map with very detailed information on it. I wanted to give something to people who were as fascinated by hurricanes as I was. I also wanted them to learn something that they did not know. I researched beyond the ordinary check-lists and added content on something called mitigation. My project was ready for marketing and I went out to sell it to local sponsors and the media. With no sales skills and business experience, I somehow convinced the local News/Talk station and several local businesses to invest in the project in order to make it available free to the public. That was the key. I wanted the poster to be free and readily available to anyone who wants it. I finished getting it ready for the print shop and had 10,000 copies in our local high-end grocery store just in time for my first real hurricane experience: hurricane Bertha. It made landfall right along the coast of southeast North Carolina on July 12- putting me in the western eye-wall with hurricane force winds. I had a home weather station and used it to measure the wind, rain and pressure. For the first time in my life, I was actually in the core of a hurricane. As for my hurricane tracking posters? Almost all 10,000 were given away in less than a week.
Little did anyone know that less than two months later, another hurricane would strike almost the exact same location. This time it was Fran. North Carolina was dealt a severe blow from back to back hurricanes and all of a sudden, the need for more hurricane awareness went way, way up. Imagine that.
By the summer of 1997, when the much-anticipated hurricane season rolled around again, my business of producing these poster-sized maps had expanded to other parts of North Carolina. I was now working with radio stations in Wilmington, Raleigh and New Bern. Business picked up and my map was being given away to nearly 100,000 people now. But the 1997 hurricane season was a dud, as far as seasons go. El Nino made sure of that.
In late August of 1998, the hurricanes were back. Bonnie hit the same areas that Bertha and Fran did. I now had maps produced for radio and television stations from Charlotte to Charleston and from Norfolk to Wilmington. Business was good. I felt good about it since I was in the business of educating people about hurricanes ahead of time. It was a win-win situation.
It was also in 1998 that I decided to take measuring hurricanes more seriously. I founded the Hurricane Intercept Research Team (HIRT) and made a choice during hurricane Bonnie to go out and take wind measurements all over the region. I was able to call in my readings to the local NWS office and the media. All of a sudden, it seemed that there was a demand, a need for this kind of information. How was it that I was the only one who thought of this? Surely that couldn’t have been the case. Why wasn’t The Weather Channel out there with a wind tower and live weather data to accompany their on-camera meteorologists? Surely there had to be others who thought that in-situ data was important and that hurricanes will not always make landfall on top of a NWS office. So once again, I saw an opportunity to fill a need and add to my knowledge base of what hurricanes do by actually studying them when they hit. I would then incorporate my first-hand experience in to my hurricane awareness products. I also began my web site, hurricanetrack.com, in late 1998.
By the time we got to 1999, my work had captured the attention of FEMA and the local Army Corps of Engineers. They asked me to help them mass produce a huge storm surge awareness campaign for all of coastal North Carolina. My business was doing well. I had a nice office PC as well as the latest and greatest Mac of the time. If I was going to advance my work in hurricane preparedness, it was time to move in to the world of CGI or computer generated images. I continued to produce hurricane tracking maps (posters) for TV and radio all across the Southeast and incorporated state-of-the-art computer generated examples of such concepts as what the right-front quadrant is. How storm surge is generated and so forth. The age of cartoon graphics was over. Photo-realistic images was the way to really drive a point home. It was doing wonders for the motion picture industry, so why not for hurricane awareness?
On the field-work side, I purchased a small SUV in the summer of 1999 and equipped it with permanent weather instruments in order to drive to hurricanes where ever they hit to take measurements. I did not have to go far- we were again struck with hurricanes that year: Dennis and Floyd. The two combined to create epic flooding that stands as North Carolina’s costliest disaster even today. I was out in the field with my SUV to gather the usual data and pass it along to who ever wanted it. I also had the chance to work with CNN and give them live weather data right from the instruments as it happened. This led to all sorts of opportunities and relationships with the media that remain today.
After completing a massive project for 21 coastal North Carolina counties, I won an award from FEMA in December of 1999. It was for my work as a small business to educate the people of North Carolina about the dangers of hurricanes. This led to more work and more projects for states beyond North Carolina. I completed similar projects for Georgia in 2000 and Long Island, New York in 2002. Along the way, I received other awards from the NWS and local municipalities for my work in hurricane preparedness. It was a great feeling to know that my creativity, along with my growing first-hand knowledge of hurricanes, was helping hundreds of thousands of people to better understand as well.
Over the next six years, I worked for Lowe’s Home Improvement stores as their hurricane preparedness expert. Together, we produced a variety of hurricane education products which included on-site seminars and events to teach people about mitigation- or the long term strategy to lessen the effects from hurricanes. I traveled the country, from Texas to Virginia and even New York to talk to every day people about their own hurricane situation. I had what seemed to be the best job one could want: doing what I love and getting paid for it. But it was more than that. My efforts, as well as those who eventually joined with me (my small staff) were paying off. We receive emails each year from people who take our advice and create a plan to better prepare for hurricanes.
Our field work took a giant leap forward when Sprint offered to support our work through a sponsorship that keeps us on the cutting edge with their latest in mobile-broadband technology. We have been working with Sprint actually since 2001. Since then, their technology has improved and allowed us to become a moving network of hurricane information- no matter where we are. Our field team is now capable of sending live video, up to the minute weather data, photos and constant updates to hurricanetrack.com during even the strongest of hurricanes. This technology helps to keep us safe as well since we developed a remote observation system where by we can send back live video and weather data without us having to be in harm’s way. It is the best possible solution to the problem of gathering data and video without putting lives at risk. We are proud to have worked with Sprint since 2001 to accomplish this goal. Our good friend Max Mayfield encouraged us along the way to do just that. He said we have to find a better way- now we have it and have put it to use several times in hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
So now that we are deep within the 2008 hurricane season and we have witnessed four named storms, it appears that we may be in for a rough August and September. No one knows for sure but the signs seem to be there for quite an active peak to the season. I am proud to be working with hurricanepreparedness.org to offer my 12 years of experience, a lot of it from the front lines, to you. I have talked to thousands of people face to face since 1996 and have a pretty good idea of what preparedness is all about. But like everything else in life, no one knows it all. I am just one resource to tap for information or advice. My best advice is simple. Be educated. Know the enemy and then learn how you can lessen the effects of that enemy. I look forward to posting my thoughts, stories and advice here as often as possible. I would also like to invite you to visit my site- hurricanetrack.com. My staff and I keep it updated every day throughout the season. We post field reports when we are on missions and even have a great subscription service for those who want to go beyond our free services.
So that’s what I am all about. On a personal note, I am married with five children who each keep me busy even when the tropics are quiet.
Tags: HIRT, Hurricane Intercept Research Team, hurricanetrack.com, Mark Sudduth
