What it was like being at ground zero of Hurricane Ian
Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer recounts what it was like being in the direct path of Hurricane Ian on Sept. 28, 2022, in Pine Island, Florida.
Transcript
00:00 We saw right off the bat that, hey, listen, this storm was going to be exploding once it got into the northwest Caribbean and southern Gulf of Mexico.
00:09 It was just a matter of what part of Florida. Can you take us back to what your early thoughts were as you were preparing to go chase this storm?
00:20 Well, I definitely thought it had the potential to intensify, especially given recent years, what the hurricanes have been doing. 2020 with those six hurricane landfalls in the Gulf Coast and all of those were intensifying.
00:31 You had Hurricane Harvey in 2017. So this storm entering the Gulf of Mexico, I thought it was going to rapidly intensify. I knew that there was a lot of warm water just off southwestern Florida.
00:42 I didn't think it was going to take that hard right turn, at least as sharp as it did right at the last second. But there were a lot of tornadoes the day before. So I was actually chasing tornadoes in the outer bands out down in the Everglades.
00:54 And there were several confirmed tornadoes out there in the outer bands. So you definitely had the feel that it was a very unique storm that was going to rapidly intensify.
01:02 There was a lot of lightning near the center as well. And then I found my shelter there in Pine Island, Florida, and then woke up the next morning and the thing had rapidly intensified into a Category four borderline Category five hurricane.
01:15 And when you woke up, you realized that you were right where the eye was going to go over as a Category four hurricane.
01:24 Take me through the day, then you get up in the morning, you see the satellite, you probably said the oh, crap, it's coming here. I'm in the right spot or wrong spot.
01:33 Then take me through the morning as the storm started to arrive as that eye wall started to arrive.
01:40 Well, when I woke up that morning, I was at my friend's house there in the southern tip of Pine Island. Chris is his name.
01:47 And he has an elderly mom that lives there on the southern tip of Pine Island.
01:51 And so he saw that it was rapidly intensifying, maybe a Category five storm.
01:55 We didn't think it was necessarily survivable at that location, at least for his mom.
01:59 And so the first priority was to get her evacuated to a safe place.
02:03 And then we realized that the hurricane was taking a hard right.
02:06 And Chris and I decided to ride out the hurricane there.
02:09 We knew it was a still home, that it was a very solid structure and it gave us a unique opportunity to cover that powerful Category four or five storm surge.
02:18 And it started that morning well in advance of the eye wall.
02:21 The water started coming up and over that sea wall.
02:24 And there you can see my vehicle and what that storm surge did to the Dominator four, which ended up getting swept away from Pine Island.
02:31 But the storm surge arrived that morning and it just continued to increase.
02:35 The winds continued to intensify and that was well in advance of the eye wall.
02:39 But we knew that once that eye wall came ashore, especially the front right eye wall where you get that onshore flow ripping right off the ocean, we knew that a tsunami like storm surge was well on its way.
02:50 And we could see Sanibel Island off in the distance.
02:53 We could see that that was getting overtopped.
02:54 Then we started to lose visual of Sanibel Island as that eye wall arrived and then basically white out conditions as those winds gusted over 150 miles an hour.
03:04 You could see waves coming in off the Gulf of Mexico.
03:07 I could see my car just floating, bobbing up and down in the storm surge.
03:11 And then the debris started flying.
03:13 Big projectiles and pieces of roof were flying through the air and that started penetrating my vehicle, blowing all the windows out as it was bobbing in a storm surge.
03:22 But definitely one of the most extreme, I would say, life threatening storms that I've ever chased.
03:28 And that includes all tornadoes, hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina as well.
03:32 But it makes such a big difference when you're right on the coastline and that wind is just ripping off the ocean.
03:37 But then we got in the southern edge of the eye and you saw that beautiful blue sky and the appearance of a stadium effect as the backside of the eye wall was starting to move in.
03:46 And really quickly, in about 20 seconds or so, Dr.
03:49 Reid, can you describe what it's like to be in that eye?
03:53 It's incredible.
03:55 It's a unique experience because you have kind of a brief calm after the really intense winds in the front eye wall.
04:01 And then, you know, that the back eye wall is arriving as well.
04:04 And you can almost feel the pressure fall.
04:06 You can feel the minimum pressure in there.
04:08 You can almost feel the descending motion as well.
04:10 And just looking up and seeing that blue sky right next to the powerful back eye wall as it's about to approach, you know that conditions are going to rapidly deteriorate once that eye wall moves in.