My Top Weather Events
As a little view into my life, I thought I'd share the six biggest weather events I've personally worked in my career, in reverse order. Click on each title to see more information about each.
6. Mississippi River Flooding of 2002
This event probably was what first got me really interested in hydrology. Heavy rains caused some quite serious flooding along the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri, eastern Arkansas, and western Tennessee. We traveled all around surveying the flooding, including places where the levees were actually acting in reverse, trapping water on what should have been the "dry" side of the river. Little did I know I would become the hydrology program manager of an office less than five months later.
This really wasn't a huge event in the big scheme of things. But it dropped a lot of rain, and I was deployed to Tallahassee, Florida after the storm to assist with post-storm flooding evaluations. I learned so much about working a hydrologic event as a result of this deployment, and I have already had the opportunity to put some of that knowledge to good use.
I have colleagues who have much more compelling stories about this event than I do. Being based in Huntsville, AL at the time, I did not experience nearly what some other people did. However, our office was responsible for backup procedures for the Jackson, Mississippi office, and we ended up tracking the eye of the storm through our "area" after the Jackson office went out of service. That made for a challenging event unlike any I've experienced.
This was the first big event of my career. I was actually a volunteer at the time, and still in school. I didn't want to evacuate, and I didn't want to spend the entire event in the basement weather center at school...so I went and volunteered at work. Ultimately, I broadcast warnings and information on the radio for nearly 20 hours, until I lost my voice. This event was my first real work with 'impact weather,' and really showed the difference we can make during impact events.
2. 2008 "Super Tuesday" Outbreak
Most people remember this severe weather event from February 5-6, 2008 quite well. Eighty-seven tornadoes occurred in ten states. Five of the tornadoes were classified as EF-4 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Two of those five occurred in my service area, and I was the primary warning operator for one of those two. Things looked quite quiet across Northern Alabama until two strong thunderstorms dropped two intense tornadoes, causing significant damage and sadly, killing four.
Ellicott City Floods in 2016 and 2018
Inexplicably, the town of Ellicott City, Maryland was struck twice by catastrophic flooding in less than a two year period. These events changed so much of my thought process on extreme events and have shaped much of what I communicate about significant floods since. My office's writeup on the 2016 flood is available here, and the 2018 review here.