Hurricane Helen: The Impact of Climate Change on Intense Storms

Hurricane Helen has come through the United States and it's had a lot of damage. Not only property damage, but it's taken 52 lives in the U.S. Not just in Florida, but in Georgia, North Carolina, and other places. And it's caused flash flooding in a lot of those places. Homes were floating around. It's not good. And it doesn't look like it's going to get better with storms. And I had a question from an audience member saying, hey, Andrew, can you start talking about how climate change is

affecting these hurricanes? And we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode, we're not talking about

something that's fun to talk about, in my opinion. Hurricane Helen just went through Florida, Georgia, North Carolinas, and other places, taking 52 lives. causing so much damage and we need to talk about it. We need to talk about these storms. Interesting in a lot of different ways, in that it was a lot bigger, larger in space. When you look at the radius and the diameter of this storm, it really increased rapidly from a Hurricane 1, Category

1, to a Hurricane 4. We're going to talk about these categories. And we're going to talk about what scientists are now thinking in terms of maybe adding another category. So we're going to talk about that today. But we're going to talk about why you know climate change is actually helping these storms become more intense and more frequent and even a lot more flooding, a lot more rain is being had in these hurricanes and

that's a danger to a lot of places. So we're going to talk about that a number of times and we're also going to talk about ways that people can get better access, you know ways that you know past storms may have had an influence on the decision of how people or when people will evacuate if they will evacuate and we're gonna we're gonna talk about that as well so lots to get into before we do that though I just want to remind people if you want to know more about what's

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is where you would go for that sign up for free. I don't charge anything And I never share your email with anybody else But anyway, let's get into the episode. This is not a fun episode to talk about. Like I said, people lost their lives, people lost their homes. Insurance is really difficult to come by, especially when it comes to flash flooding or any kind of hurricanes, especially in Florida. I watched a lot of videos that

were covering it. A lot of people were live streaming during the time. A lot more people didn't evacuate, and that's a scary thought. And I think a lot of it was because it started off as a category one. It hit the Yucatan Peninsula, so in Mexico. And it was like a Category 3. And once it goes over land a little bit, it kind of dissipates. And it went down to a Category 1. But

it rapidly increased. And the size, the sheer size of the hurricane, not the intensity, but the size in terms of how the hurricane clouds, how much area it covered, was a lot bigger, probably one of the biggest ones we've seen in a long time. And you can see there were videos of people being rescued on sailboats and people being rescued from flooding, but even before the hurricane came in. And obviously, that's a danger. But I went from a Category 1 to a Category

4. And I want to just talk a little bit about the category. So the Saphir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is what categorizes these hurricanes. So it's categories right now currently 1 to 5. And it basically goes by wind. So Category 1 is a 74 to 95 mile an hour

winds. Category 2 is 96 to 110 miles an hour. three attack at the hurricane category three which is a major hurricane is considered the beginning of the major hurricanes is a hundred eleven two hundred nine hundred twenty nine miles an hour winds category four which was what hurricane helen was was a hundred and thirty two hundred and fifty six mile per hour winds percent against big wins here and category five which hurricane barrel was earlier this year earlier this

summer was a hundred and fifty seven mile an hour winds or higher The types of damage for Category 1, if you just think about that, is very dangerous winds will produce some damage. Well-constructed frame homes could have damage to roofs, shingles, vinyl siding, and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallow rooted trees will be toppled. Extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that

could last a few to several days. So that's just a Category 1. I'm not going to read all of them because I'll put a link in the show notes of where You can get access to this. This is on the NOAA website. But a major hurricane, Category 3, is devastating damage will occur. Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof, decking, and gable ends. I'm not sure what gable ends are, but many trees will be

snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes. I was involved in a Hurricane 3. when I lived in Halifax back in 2003, 2004. It was Hurricane Juan. It rapidly intensified. We thought it was going to be a tropical storm. It ended up being a Category 3. Those

winds were no joke. We were lucky in terms of where my wife and I were living, but the downtown areas where there was lots of huge trees that were upended put the city, just disabled the city for like three weeks in a state of emergency. And that is obviously not good. Category 4, which is Hurricane Helen, has catastrophic damage will occur. Well-built framed houses can sustain severe damage with loss of most of

the roof structure and or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months. I think the Tampa Bay area and the panhandle of Florida. And they're saying, hey, you know what? Earlier in the day, it's a category one.

You might want to think about evacuating. But because the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, is so warm, that this could rapidly increase into something like category 2, 3, or 4. It ended up being 4. But a day is not a lot of time to get a lot of people out of a city or a lot of people out of the area. It's not just Tampa Bay. You've got surrounding areas. We knew the storm surge was going to be heavy. And storm surge essentially is what water comes to the land from a storm, right?

Surging water that comes through, storm surge. They were predicting maybe about eight feet high. That's, you know, above most people's height, right? It'd be very, I would say everybody's height. It's safe to say, unless you're a basketball player and you're eight feet, that doesn't exist as far as I know. But, you know, so that's up above most houses, first floor houses. So that could be very dangerous in terms of flooding roads, you can't get out

if you can't leave. There were videos that I saw of older people who were saying, look, I just don't have the means to leave. I'm going to ride it out. There was another gentleman who made CNN. During the storm, he was actually live streaming from his house. in a kayak, and he was on the kayak in probably about five or six feet of water, it looked like, and he was live streaming. He was fine, but he basically lost everything in

his home. I think he tried to put stuff in storage. I don't know the full story on this, but he was just sitting on a kayak throughout the whole time, but that water could have gone higher, right? We don't know exactly what that was gonna do, depending on that surge. And when you have a surge, you have rapidly, We have water coming in rapidly, and it could have a current to it. And that could be dangerous if you're out of the house or

you're not. Even on boats, boats were being flown all over the place. The next day, you saw boats all over the land. These are some 20, 30 footers, 40 footers that were just everywhere because the waves were coming in so high, the storm surge was coming in so high. The winds were crazy. Just as I read for the Category 4 hurricanes, catastrophic

damage to houses. Homes were actually floating away. If it's not properly framed homes or not, what do they call it, well-built framed homes, your home has had a risk of just floating away. That's dangerous in and of itself, and you don't want to see that happen to anybody. The guy in the kayak was saying to CNN, he doesn't have insurance on his home. He said, we'll just have to start over, and we're just going to have to continue to do this. This

is why I tell people, you may not want to live in Florida. You may not want to live in Florida. A lot of people still say, hey, I want to go to Florida because it's so nice. There are some times you may not want to live there full year round or have an own property because one, you may not get insurance for flooding. And it's not necessarily just these major hurricanes. There's an article in The Hill. And

I'll put that link in this show notes in the description. They start talking about how because the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean is getting hotter, then that means the clouds are holding more water because there's more evaporation of water, goes into the clouds, and the clouds are holding, so these hurricane clouds are holding more water. It doesn't matter if it's a hurricane one, four, or five. It matters how much water this is holding. There's more water that's coming down, and

that means more flooding. You know, when you add that to the storm surge, you add that to sea level rise, there are a lot of vulnerable areas along those coastlines and maybe even inland more because they're not ready for this type of rain, the amount of rain that we're willing to have. The infrastructure was not built that way. And so even if you have a Category 1, people didn't leave when it was a Category 4 because they couldn't because they thought it was a Category 1 or

2 when it first started to come. They think, hey, you know what, I can survive a category one. Well, one, you have the risk of it increasing because of rapidly increasing because it's getting hotter and hotter in the ocean, more evaporation is coming. Apparently, this is how the winds increase is when it gets hotter and hotter. And so that energy transfer from the ocean to the clouds gets faster. And so that means it increases not only the size of

the storm, but it increases the wind speeds. Hence why we had such a rapidly increasing category 1 to 4. It increased that wind speed super, super fast. So you have that risk of it actually increasing as it comes closer to land. But then you also have the risk of just the flooding that comes. Even if it's a category 1, you risk people saying, hey, you know what? It's only a category 1. I live in Florida. I've lived my entire life here. And I've gone through hurricanes. And there have been some

where we've evacuated. But category ones, that's just like a big storm. And you kind of get that toughness to it because you're like, yeah, we got some damage, maybe a couple of broken windows. We'll put the protectors on the windows. And we'll make sure we reinforce some sandbags and things like that to make sure the water doesn't come in. But we'll be fine. But then you get more water than expected. That's dangerous, right? That's dangerous to your infrastructure that's not

used to that much water, right? At that amount of time. Case in point, Burlington, Ontario, where I live, we had the remnants of Hurricane Beryl came right up the Midwest, and it took a little right turn, it came right into Ontario. And we had massively rapid rains. We had squalls. It was like, you know, rain squalls, which we don't normally have. We were in squall warnings for a long time. And not only did we get so much water, we had so

much water that a lot of the infrastructure couldn't hold. People were flooded out of their homes, in their basements, even in the first level. Though not only their basements filled up all the way, but the first level filled up about five or six feet in certain areas. That infrastructure gets tested during these storms. We just can't continue to

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 in the system and really start to look at our politicians to make sure that they are protecting us for that adaptation. Because until we do something to reduce climate change, which we're not doing fast enough, We are going to have these storms. They are going to

increase in intensity. They are going to increase in number. There are two more storms apparently right behind Hurricane Ellen, and the ocean hasn't really cooled down from these storms, so it's just going to get hotter and hotter, and we're just going to find, like, we're late September up here in Ontario, and it's 23 degrees. Celsius. That's really hot for this time of year. We are not used to seeing this on a regular basis. We barely had a winter last

year. I don't know what this winter is going to be like, if we're going to get more snow, less snow, cold, or even just mild temperatures as we did before. A lot of it's up in the air. And the thing is, no matter what, it's going to test our infrastructure. Not only in Ontario, but across the Midwest, and across the United States, across Canada, down into the southern United States, especially where they get these hurricanes, there's going to be more and more damage. and people are

not necessarily leaving their homes. There are a lot of videos of people staying on boats and things like that, and that boat's going to get capsized at one point. At one point before the hurricane even came in during the day, there was a rescue for an emergency that a man and his dog were in the actual water. They

had to abandon their sailboat because they're in these massive waves. and their boat was basically just couldn't go anywhere, it was just stuck, it was isolated and they just couldn't move and they were afraid, they couldn't get out of the, they couldn't get to shore and they had to, you know, there's video, harrowing videos of these rescuers, you know, saving the person and the dog. And to be honest, like what are they doing out there in

the first place? I don't know how they got out there or if they did that on purpose, but that's a danger, right? You know, I'm a dog lover. Nobody wants to see dog die. Nobody wants to see their owner die either. They put themselves at risk just by being out there, whether it was on purpose or not, I don't know. So I don't want to make assumptions, but that's, that's, that's taking resources away to save those people because they have, They

have to save that person, excuse me. But also, that's taking time away from going elsewhere and saving anybody else, right? So things move fast. And case in point, there was a video on Fox News. The guy was on live, the reporter. There was water behind him. Classic shot in a hurricane. There was a car that was almost submerged. You can almost just see the top of the window and the roof. And then you hear someone saying, help me, help me, help me. And

the reporter said, we've called 911. should be here any minute, told the reporter that he was talking to, the anchor that he was talking to, that they've called 911. But then he finally just said, you know what, I gotta do something. And he hurriedly walked into the water. You don't know what the current is like. Walked into the water, got the woman out, carried the woman all the way to safety, thank God, and then went back and did his reporting. Emergency

services can't get everywhere all the time. And by staying in those areas, which is risky, you want to have a service or something that can actually try and predict these things faster, that people can tune into. It's going to be extremely important in the future when you have you know, rapidly growing hurricanes. You have more water in these hurricanes, so more flooding available in these hurricanes, lack of infrastructure, right? And then lack

of action. Florida has a governor who's not taking any action against climate change and has removed the word climate change from all of their policies. They've gone in the opposite direction and the people are paying for it. The people are paying for it. The people who vote them

in are paying for it, but also the people who didn't vote for them, they're paying for it as well. And Florida is predicted by the IPCC to go underwater, half of it to go underwater at some point in the future, whether it's 2050 or not. And people aren't believing it. The IPCC was right when they said, hey, clouds are going to hold more water. It's science, folks. This is what's happening. And we're fighting against governors and

politicians who are denying this. They're getting paid by fossil fuel companies and super PACs that are funded by these fossil fuel companies to say, hey, you know what? There's nothing we can really do. But people are losing their lives. People are losing their homes, their livelihoods. It's going to take a long time to recover from this. And the amount of money that has to go into the recovery and cleanup of this mess, it's insane. It's

an insane amount. And I'm working on a story now to look at the actual coverages of like the amount of money that it takes to do this. But this is insane to see this on a, you know, this is going to be regular happenings from now on, these intensified storms, right? And whether they're category one or category four, you're still going to get the same amount of rain. Right? And so that's the concern. And with climate change continuing to affect and influence our weather systems, we

are going to see these storms continue to happen. And that is scary in itself. Right? But I don't want you to think that we're done, for this is going to be it. This is going to be it. There is hope. There is optimism. There are people out there, there are politicians out there who want to do something about climate change. It's a matter of can we vote them in? At some point, The work for climate adaptation, the work for reducing the emissions that will affect climate change will

come into play because it's going to affect our economy. I know politicians normally focus more on economy versus the environment, so we have to fund to maintain the economy, but that means a lot of times that we don't fund environmental practice. At some point, those two are going to come together and the environment is going to affect the economy as it's doing in Florida, as it did in Georgia, as it did in North Carolina. By these major floods, it takes money to clean

this stuff up. It takes money to adapt. And eventually, that money is going to affect our economy. It could be already. That's the story I'm working on. So hopefully, I'll be able to have something for you soon. But this is a huge, huge problem. And it's not something that we need to turn a blind eye to. So sorry for this Monday episode being a little bit pessimistic, but sometimes we have to talk about these things. And the hope that I have is

that we can actually take care of this. We can actually help the people in Florida, help the people in Georgia, help people in North Carolina and elsewhere, so that we don't have to go through this in the future. All we have to do is just reduce emissions. Just reduce emissions. As complex as it is, it's not difficult to do. We just need to have the people

in power to actually do that. And that's up to us to vote. There are major elections coming up in the US, and there's going to be some major elections coming up in Canada. And it's up to us here in North America to help make sure these politicians get into power. So ask people about their climate change policies if they come around to your door. They should be answering. If they don't have an answer, they don't have a plan, they should not be in power. They should

not get your vote, in my opinion. For this audience, climate change is a big deal, and I think we need to hold our politicians accountable for that. We need to act faster, because we're not only seeing these problems happen, now it's starting to get regular occurrence, and we can't get used to this. There's just too much money involved, the livelihoods of people, people's lives involved, and we just don't want to see this happen again. So let's

get on it. Let's get out and vote. You know, register to vote if you if you're able to register to vote and vote wherever you can and however you can. All right. Only once, of course, but vote. That's it for today's episode. If you have any questions or comments on this episode or if you've been in the areas or you know of any crowdfunding ways to help some people out, please let me know. I'll post them, I'll add them to the list in our show notes. But let

me know. You can get a hold of me just by commenting on the Spotify video or audio, however you're listening to this, or You can go to YouTube where you can see the video of me talking about this stuff. And of course, you can just hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean. DM me, feel free to do so. Because this is the starting of a conversation, and I want to hear your opinions on this. Let me know what you think. And I want to thank Nicole for

suggesting this episode. Thank you so much. It was great to get your email and your interaction. If you have a suggestion or a comment, feel free to get a hold of me. I just told you how. And I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have