What the Health Just Happened?
Forecasting Weather and Laughs in the Sunshine State with Michelle McCormick
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of what the health just happened when we talk about all things health care, community, business and life, the goods, the bads, the ups and downs, the lefts, the rights and everything in between. And that was a radio voice. That was good. That was weird. Also, I love what you're in the intro. We are so fortunate to bring on a variety of guests to bring their perspective on what they find to be healthy or not healthy in their respective fields and obviously share some laughs and share some wisdom. Right. That fair today's gas. We will be focusing on community and life. I'm guessing maybe some sports, maybe some nonsense sports and boy, is this conversation relevant to anyone that lives in Florida or other states that have ever experienced a hurricane or tropical storm. So everyone in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, in search state. I love the intros. I'm out of breath already just kidding. Welcome, Michelle McCormick meteorologist for news for Jack. Yes, sir. Can I say news for Jack? You can. Absolutely. I got W J X T here all these terms. The local station. I mean, bring it in. Slinging weather. We got through the intro. Short story. You used to work here. I did. I've been in Cox Media Group. Have done a radio show like this. But right off the bat, what is a meteorologist? Oh, yeah. Like do you. I'm coming to my son told me to ask you that question. We love weather. Now, you know, what is a meteorologist? Someone who reports the weather predicts the weather. There's many different levels of meteorologists. There's the very smart NASA. Let's launch a rocket meteorologist all the way to the national weather service. Meteorologist all the way down to us broadcast meteorologist who think we know everything now. I'm just kidding. We take the information really for broadcast meteorologists. We take the information that all those really smart, sciencey people and make it usable for the public. That's my role already. Look at just a very curious as to mainly because there's tons. I have to do a I have to help record a fishing show. And I feel like those guys are always. Critical just to see them being as the people that are like, Oh, no, we're fishermen. We know what we're doing. Are they the ones that like you get a lot of calls of people being like? Yes, you said this and not this. Well, the fishermen love their tides, right? They want to know what the tides are. The fish come in the fish go out. The tides come in the tides go out. So yes, and but they're the ones also on the water. I mean, we are surrounded. Our our demographic is really interesting. And we're really just a triangle of land and the rest is all water. So it's really interesting to talk about weather in our region, specifically, but the fishermen, they want that. Some of it's their livelihood, right? So if the weather is bad, especially out in the water, they're not catching any fish and making any money. Well, a good fisherman can catch fish in any conditions. I'm just going to let's go. I'll bring it on, Baba. So news for Jacks, yes. When just show on. So I'm the weekend morning meteorologist. So I work the six to 10 a.m. shift on Saturdays and seven to nine a.m. shifts on Sundays. I also do a streaming show on Saturdays on our Plus channel. And that's at 10 30. It can run as long as I want or as short as I want, depending on the day. You go on already, don't you? I have so many questions. So do I particularly the green screen behind you. Do you work with those? All the time. OK, I figured you might have to do a like. I kind of wish we have a wide a big day. I am happy to show you how to work a green screen. It is something that the interns are always really amazed about. So Saturday morning, is it live? It is. Are you are you reading the weather for the week? Are you like, hey, this is today or this is the forecast for the week? Right. So I mean, from in the six o'clock hour, I do a top. I do a 15. I do a bottom and I do a 45. So we're doing weather four times in the hour for four straight hours. OK, so mostly my weather is focused on what's happening today. Because it's a weekend at Saturday. Can we go out? Can we go to the park? Can we fish? I have a I have a tides report. Can we go play golf? We have a golfing report. What about the jumbo shrimp? Oh, I need to pack a poncho. Yeah, you know, can I pick it? Can I tailgate? These are all really important things for our weekend. So I start with that. And then I'll talk about, you know, when's the rain coming? Because it's summertime in Florida. And what always happens? It comes every day. It rains every day. And what's another factor in the summertime weather, folks? Heat. Heat. What? What in Florida? No, I don't believe it. So we always have that heat index story about also that feels like temperature on your skin, where that humidity and heat combined. And that's when you start to feel sick if you have heat-related illnesses. So informing the public on when these advisories go into place is super important, especially on the weekend. So I feel my role as the morning-- You're a hero. You're a hero. I'm a hero. She's a hero. I'm a hero. Thank you. It matters. It matters. It matters. It does matter. And then I forecast for the week, because no one wants to go back to work on Monday in the rain. OK, so this is an honest question. Do you flip a coin the night before and say rain or something? [LAUGHTER] What's the site with research behind it? Well, thankfully, we have many different things that we are able to use. We have lots of graphs, lots of graphs, lots of graphics. We have the National Weather Service that helps supply our daily forecast. And they're based out of the International Airport. So we have that. We have a system, a weather system with computers. And we have satellite. And we have radar. And we have infrared. And we have every possible tool to help us forecast what the weather is going to be like. I know when they want to ask a question. Well, I have to. But I'm curious if there's a specific storm or weather event that has happened in your career that you kind of remember reporting on and being like, this is insane. I can't believe people are experiencing this wherever they are. Yeah, so I have the privilege of having worked at both First Coast News and Action News in the past. And then I took a nice 12-year break. All right. In health care and nonprofits. I went into health care and nonprofit, exactly. I want to-- we'll put it back. Let's see a little weather than your life. And then I came back recently to News for Jax. And not a lot has changed as far as the forecasting. I mean, the graphics have gotten better. And the information is a lot. I mean, there's a lot of fake weather news as well. You know, you can get online. And everyone will talk about a hurricane, a tropical storm like they're the meteorologist. Wait, hold on. Fake news. Just saying. I don't believe it. Fake weather. Fake weather. Yeah. Fake weather. And a lot of hype, right? We just had a storm this past weekend. A lot of hype. We get the emails. You hyped up this storm. Well, no, we're just trying to keep everybody safe. That's really our main role. As a broadcast meteorologist, we're telling you about the weather so that you and your family can make safe choices for you and your community, right? So coming back now, so many years later, it is-- there's a lot. I haven't had a most recent-- it wasn't on air during Ian. But I do remember when I was at First Coast News, many, many years ago, I was the morning meteorologist and there was a terrible tornado. And I pretty much wanted to walk out the door and never come back after that because it was so challenging. And there are so many lives on the line. And it's your responsibility to really portray the information that keeps people safe. And so that one really stuck with me. And Debbie, this past weekend, was a lot. I mean, we did a lot. You got something before I go to go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to say, I'm going to pause on weather for a second because I want you to hear this story and understand, look, the show's called What the Health Just Happened, we're trying to focus on health care. But all of these things overlap health care in some capacity, right? So safety precautions. We're talking about hurricane preparation, tropical storm preparation, when you should panic, baby, when you should panic, right? No, no, I'm going to-- I love the question of when you should panic and when you should panic. So we'll have all of that for later. The second half, I think, is really diving into-- And talk about great timing. We just had this tropical storm. My pools overflowing. My kids are crying because they are lightning. I like good stories. And you have some good stories. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be an astronaut. Whoa. Whoa, not that story. I'm talking about the radio DJ in Colorado. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Awesome astronaut school. I'm coming back. Astronauts are awesome. But actually, it starts with being an astronaut because I knew I couldn't join the Air Force to learn how to be an astronaut. But it just wasn't in my DNA. So I went to college and I didn't know what I wanted to be. But I discovered the college radio station on campus. And I went to a really small state school in Colorado. And so my goal in life was to be a radio DJ. I wanted the 10 to 3 p.m. shift in Aspen or Breckenridge. I wanted to be that midday rock and roll classic rock DJ in a resort town and then ski the rest of the time. Ski in the mornings. Come in records in the afternoons. OK. Didn't really work out. If there was a hype song for today's episode, think '80s rock. What would it be? Who? '80s rock. The scorpions. Welcome to the jungle. Hey Ryan. You're watching Rocky like a hurricane. Oh my gosh. All day today, that song's been playing in my head. Yeah. We're talking about hurricanes too. I think that's incredible, right? So she's-- you've done radio. You've done TV. You left that industry and works in health care non-profits too. Right. Yeah. For four years, when I left television for good, really I was the director for Special Olympics, Florida, Duval County for four years. It was the most incredible. I felt like everything I had done up to that point led me into this position. And for four years, with a team of amazing volunteers, I was able to really grow the program. We had athletes of all ages. We had volunteers up to 800 at times. We grew the program with stand-up paddle. We had a surfing program. Just bringing athletes together of all ages that were incredible. I mean, talk about the Olympics that are happening right now. Special Olympics, I can't even begin to say great things about them. Was it localized? Are we traveling for this? Yeah, so for Duval County, being the largest county, we had an area. And our area was Nassau, Baker, St. John's, Clay. And then we had other areas like Volusia County would all come to Duval County. And at Atlantic Coast High School was where we really held our big events because it was such a great campus. Still is a great campus. But it had-- back in the day, it had all the sports complex, if you will, for what we needed. We needed a baseball field. We needed soccer fields. We needed a track. We needed a soccer field. So it was really a good place. But all the other areas, all the other counties, were able to come here and really get together and have great competition. Is it still a big deal? It is. OK. It is. I don't know. Yeah, do we have a big race for inclusion? It's coming up in September. Trying to help them out with that a little bit now, even 10 years later, since I left them. It's really a great program. And then, Cali, I can't think of the name. Donna, Donna, what's your last name? Deegan, the mayor of downtown. I know it's going with this. I'm kidding. So again, they run this very small marathon in Jacksonville every year. Yeah, so I have been tied to the Donna Foundation for 18 years. This is year 18 coming out of 2025. Donna started her foundation in 2003, I believe, after her first or second round of breast cancer. And it evolved into the breast cancer marathon, which started in 2007 in Jacksonville Beach. So now, this is year 18. Yeah, so it's pretty amazing what that's done. It raises money to help men and women who are facing breast cancer treatments with any money financial that they need all through the Donna Foundation. If you had to recognize the most well-known events in Northeast Florida, Jackson-- well, let's say Jackson most specifically, right? TPC is up there. Florida, Georgia, what's going to happen there? Gate River. Jaguars, Gate River Run. I would put the Donna Foundation-- Breast Cancer Marathon, for sure. I would put that up there in the top five, I think. Yeah, it's a whole weekend now. I mean, there's a 5K, that the stadium. There's a half marathon and full marathon out at the beach. So yeah. Let me tell you who's not running a marathon. Is that you? Justin. Oh, Justin, no? Trey and me, not a single one of us. However-- I did it once. Yeah, yeah, that's brutal. Now I just work it. I take all the phone calls. I get all the emails. Anybody who has a race related question, they know me by name. Hey, Michelle, it's me again. Can I change my race from a half to a full? Never, never. It's always a full to a half. Yeah, from a half to a 5K. The half to a 5K with the craziest excuses. I'm like, I don't need your excuse. I'll just change your race. Yes, sir, my kids got a fever. It's like, you just can't run. You just can't run 23 miles. 26.2, I know. 26.2, sorry. Yeah. I said, it doesn't. No, you're right. Again, we love talking about-- we're in Northeast Florida, right? And we have guests on from a couple different states now. It's weird people ask us to come on from other states. That's weird, right? No, I mean-- You think it's awesome? But how do we promote this community? We love what's healthy versus not healthy here. And you've clearly have been tied to that for a long time. Back to weather? Should we do it? I did the weather conversation. I like the fun stuff, but you've done this for a long time. We're going to hammer you with weather questions. OK. All right. I'll hang in there with you guys. Good news is you have your pamphlet with them. I do have your pencil. I literally brought cheat sheets just in days. I'm like, I don't want to mess anything up. Actually, I brought some really cool swaggy gear stuff. We're going to hold those out in front of the cameras, digital versions. We'll get out free copies for anyone who wants to. I was curious in terms of when you're giving the reports, is there something that you see as a common misunderstanding or misconception from a listener standpoint? You say one thing and they think-- The consumer misinterprets what she says. Yeah, you're saying-- I know a lot of times people-- I think, again, you can correct me on this is when you say 10% chance of rain, it doesn't mean 10% chance of rain. You just hit my favorite topic. Yep, there you go. So, dang, bro, I'm about to lose my job when we're here, Justin. So, I get to answer all our help desk questions. So, thank you to everyone who sends in a help question. They come to me. But we get a lot of questions about, well, you say it's 50% chance of rain. It didn't rain at my house ever. Well, think about our market size. Okay, we predict the weather from Brunswick, all the way down to the tip of Flagler County at the end of St. John's County, all the way out to Lake City at I-75. It's about 20-- So, like, bigger than the state of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, basically, yeah. Right. It's over 20 counties, and Duval County is the largest county, right, our square footage. And so, if it's going to rain in Brunswick, it might not rain in Flagler Beach, right? Or it might not rain in Lake City. But sometimes, that's where the 100% is. Now, on Monday, for example, 100% of everybody received rain. Finding a person that didn't see rain on Monday, and I will stand corrected. Yeah, as they tell me, we got to acknowledge, like, we just got hit by a tropical storm. Yeah. That's Portland hurricane. It was raining every second for the past three days. Right. So, 100% everywhere. Yep. But I always say, if it's a 20% chance of rain today, when it's raining on me, you know what it is? That's 100% chance of rain, if it's raining on me. So 20% of the market could be just our areas west of I-95. Maybe that's just Union or Baker County, or maybe that's Union and Bradford County. It could be Alachua County, just getting rain. That 20, so break it up into, like, a pie, if you will, and you have your quadrants, and this quadrant is 20% or 25% of rain. But keep in mind, we also have a whole half of our market. That's water. The Atlantic is water. So if you're in a market like Dallas, Texas, for example, where I grew up, your DMA is a big old circle. DMA. Your DMA. I'm sorry. Yeah. You're the market area. That was terrible. Yeah. Domestic market area. Sorry. We're going to edit that out. But see, you're the health guy. So you would go the DNA route. I see where you're coming from. No, I apologize now. So, the percentage you said to, like, so if it's 25% here and 5% of where else do you combine those percentages and then it makes it, I don't math so good. Right. No, you're right. If only our southern counties are going to receive rain that day, that could be 50%. So it's a very, people have different opinions on the percentages. For me, I would just say there's a chance of rain. Hey. And honestly, it's not a lie, right, because especially in the summertime, we have our sea breezes. And where we are in Florida, we get a sea breeze from the Gulf Coast. We get the sea breeze from the Atlantic side. And you know what happens? They bump into each other. And when they bump into each other, you know what that causes? Thunderstorms. And then add heat to that. Heat rises. And you have a bunch of convergence. And you have thunderstorms. Hold on. I got to write this stuff down. So how does the Sahara dust come to play? I promise. I'm serious. I like. I like not being serious. Oh my God. I think about, again, weird things about Florida. There's a lot of things I love, mostly love, but when it rains in my backyard and it's pouring and I look in my front yard and it's sunshine, kids are playing like, I think this is what other states have that. I don't know. It's just crazy. You can see it on the interstate when you're driving, right? Oh, yeah. You see when you're about to drive into like a downpour. On the eastbound road and the westbound road is pouring on this side and you're just like, yeah, it's only Florida. Yeah, health. They're not healthy. Healthy. This is the greatest state ever. Oh, yes. Okay. How much time we got left before commercial break? Eight minutes. Okay. I'll have plenty of time. All right. I promise we'll get to hurricanes and healthy stuff, but I like the fun stuff. Yeah. Well, it's real fun. Weather is fun. So the degree or studying, what's the process of becoming a meteorologist for young kids? Like there's kids out there like, I want to be up there on that green screen and point on the camera. There's so many different levels of meteorology. So I'm very good friends with the one of the senior meteorologists at the National Weather Service here in town. Her name is Angie. She's brilliant. Shout out Angie. We got shout outs. I love shout outs. What's Angie's last name? Uh oh. Edit that out. But anyway, she's brilliant and she's a giant too. She's beautiful. She's very tall. But anyway, I digress. She went to Florida State University, which has an amazing meteorology. My daughter's a knoll. Okay. So we all went to UNF, but we're Seminoles at heart. Okay. Yeah. My daughter's a Seminole. So yeah. What's your daughter's name? Leah. Shout out. Thank you. You know, she thought she wanted to be her dad was a hurricane hunter in the Air Force, which is like, oh my God, like how cool is that? And then she couldn't get in the military for whatever reasons. So she decided at that point, she was just going to become a meteorologist and she's been with the National Weather Service in Jacksonville for 24 years. I mean, she's so smart, but TV is not her thing. So broadcast meteorology, she's not comfortable getting up in front of people. Yep. And I'm doing the hands and pointing out the stuff. Mark Collins, who's one of my co-workers. Shout out, Mark. Thank you. He also went to FSU because they have such a great meteorology program, but he's more on the broadcast side, but he's very much a knowledge machine, like talk about Saharan dust who will talk your ear off about Saharan dust. Me on the other hand, I am a late in life meteorologist, if you will. So I like that term. I like that term. I went to school in Gunnison, Colorado. All I ever wanted to do was a radio DJ in Aspen or Breckenridge. And I wanted to fly planes. So I did radio broadcasting. I was the station manager, my senior year. And this was all I wanted to do. Well, my parents bribed me after I graduated from college to come back to Dallas. It's funny. Like how do they bribe you? Okay. If you move home, we'll pay for your pilots. Shout out, parents. Oh, yes. Yes. I went back home and I got my pilot's license and then I realized moving on, I really wanted to fly helicopters. Well, flying a helicopter is ridiculously expensive. I already knew I wasn't joining the Coast Guard or anything to get a pilot's license that way. So I became an airborne traffic reporter. So I was able to put my radio background and my flying background in the air as a traffic reporter. Did you ever do any police chases? I did. Here in Jacksonville. During the Super Bowl in 2005. When they were here, I got to be in the helicopter for first coast news during the Super Bowl. And there was a car jacking of a limousine like the night before the Super Bowl. We were up in the helicopter just doing a report and we got to chase that. That was like one of my most fun times. Awesome. Yeah, it was way cool. So anyway, but I went to Mississippi State University to get my degree and it was a three-year degree as a certified broadcast meteorologist. Like anything right. So in health care, you have different levels of degrees like a registered nurse. You can have a doctorate nursing, a master's, a bachelor's and associate's. Any degree out there. So very similar to broadcasting meteorology, say meteorology really fast five times. Spell it. Stuff, yeah. Oh, don't ask me. There's like a lot of o's. There's schooling, which, which again I like, you have different perspectives. I promise that was a fun first half for almost wrapping this up. I hate that the first half's almost over the second half. We're going to dive really deep into a hurricane preparation, tropical storm prep. We're happening just to pass through one and we want you to share your wisdom even with your cheat sheet. Is that fair? I'm good. How much time we got left? One minute. Okay. Any shout outs before we go to the second half, we love shout outs. I would love to shout out like the Tim Degan and Mike Burish and Richard Nunn are three big chief meteorologists in town. These guys are so good. They are so smart. I've worked with all three of them in my career here and learned something amazing from all of them. So your TV meteorologists are here to help you. We are here to help guide your decisions in the community when a weather event happens. Which we'll get to. We're not just flipping. You're a good coin scene. They're not. They're not the same. Sun rain. Sun rain. No. Man. Dang it. First half's gone. I'm going to die in the second half. Yeah. We're going to have fun in the second half, but really dive deep because his life's like the breed every second of the weather. Good time. Second half, we'll get back to it. Michelle McCormick, a meteorologist with news for Jax. That's what the hell just happened. Welcome back to the second half of what the hell just happened. If you missed the first half and you're catching us here on the radio, good news is you can catch us on your favorite podcast platform under what the hell just happened. Word on the street is I think YouTube's ready. Is it ready Trey? We're up and rolling. Finally, we're going to start putting this out there too because you know what the world needs? More content. Absolutely. Just kidding. Again, if you missed the first half, we have Michelle here from news for Jax, a meteorologist who is I think a stair goal. Thank you. And we had a blast talking. We did. That was a funny thing. It's a little bit of weather, schooling, 80s rock stations, 90s rock stations in Colorado. I think a helicopter police chase. Helicopter police chase. Yeah. You're in a super bowl. 2005. But again, the second half here, let's keep it community and healthcare related. All right. Just kidding. We always go off the rails. Always go off the rails here and we try to rain it back in. Most times we just stay off the rails before that my favorite game, healthy or not healthy. You know the rules. Okay. Healthy or not healthy, predicting the weather. Healthy. Mm. Okay. Healthy hurricane parties. Well, it depends. Are they at Pat O'Brien's? So that would be healthy. Okay. No, but probably not healthy. How about the hurricane? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Healthier, not healthy. Hoarding water. Not healthy. Let's show the hoard water. Healthier, not healthy. The price of gas during hurricane. Not healthy. Healthy. You're not healthy staying in town when evacuations are recommended. Oh, that's not healthy. Healthy or not healthy group text threads. [laughter] Unhealthy. Unhealthy. Unmute. Healthy or not healthy, the 80s song by the scorpions rock you like a hurricane. Super healthy. I love that song. You got it. You want to throw in? No. Okay. I'll just say riders on the store. That's a good one. It's a good one too. Okay. I like these two. Okay. So second half, we're going to try to stay serious here. Like legitimate questions because we just had a, I guess here was considered a tropical storm when it hit lands. It was a hurricane, but not like when, when it hit Jackson. I don't know how that works. It was downgraded back to a tropical storm. So all weekend we tracked it through the Gulf of Mexico. It made its turn off of Cuba. It came like pretty much straight north along the coast, the west coast of Florida as a tropical storm and then overnight or in the evening, Sunday into Monday became a category one storm. So it's dependent on the winds. So when it hits, when it hits land, it's a, it's a hurricane and then depending on the, miles per hour, it drops to a tropical storm. We'll get to the categories of hurricanes. You got your cheat sheet there. I do. I just don't want to get it wrong. Well, we get a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. Already. You made me think like, is it the, is it the fall farmers almanac that will put out the predictions for like a busy year? And is there anything behind those predictions when they're like, it's going to be a bad hurricane. So it's funny you say that because it's Colorado state university is pretty much kind of the go to source for the predictions. And I literally just wrote an article on this today at news for Jacks.com Colorado state university leading person that's talking about hurricanes in Florida. Yeah. That's not the money. They're texts. Right. Okay. So the National Hurricane Center, right? They are based out of Miami sense, but they have Colorado state university has like the resources. They have the staffing. It's kind of like their thing that they do. And then on April 4th of this past spring, they put out their predictions that there would be 23 named storms and maybe like 13 of those were going to be major, which means a category three or above how many major you said, how many major I think it was 13. And so yeah, but 23 named storms. So that could be a category or tropical. Any tropical cyclone. That was my next question. When are they named? Like, hey, we got to name this thing. Right. So when it becomes a tropical storm, that is when it gets named. So we just had Debbie. And the next one will be Eric. No, I'm just. It's going to. I really wanted it to be Eric with an E to like what are the categories or things, you know, that it has to check off to be considered a tropical storm at that point. Right. So a tropical storm when it becomes a category one storm, right? So a tropical storm is anything over, I want to say 40 miles per hour. Don't have it in front of you, by the matter, we can, we can, yeah, we can fact check it. We'll look it up, but a when the winds hit 74, so a tropical storm will stay a tropical storm until 73 miles per hour sustained or a gust. That's the sustained winds of the storm, usually over water. So then it becomes a category one, when it becomes 74 miles and higher up to 95 miles per hour. So Hurricane Debbie, for example, when it was still a tropical storm, Debbie, it was, it had a width of 140 miles. I mean, so that's, that's a lot, that's a wide berth of storm. So even when it comes, and the winds can be felt, I mean, we were feeling the winds even before it came up on land, right? Because they were just gusting and churning and, and a tropical cyclone is counterclockwise. So now you got me thinking like, when you flush a toilet, is it clockwise or counterclockwise? I think it's clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise, by the way. Yeah. Sorry. Go back. Now I want to know. So it's a low pressure storm and low pressures rotate left. So when is, what's the, the miles per hour at category two? So category two is 96 miles per hour to 110 category three is a 111 to 129. Four is a 130 to 156. And a category five storm is a 157 or higher, and this is all being clocked over the water. Is that correct? Absolutely. I mean, yeah. What is the sustained wind gust that will shut down the bridges here? So that's 40 miles per hour. We'll shut down a bridge, but they have to be sustained and that's a key factor. So anybody who moves to our area, that's one of their very first questions. We have a ton of bridges, right? When do the bridges close? I'm new. Am I going to be stranded on the beach? When winds get to 40 mile per hour sustained, clocked constant winds, the police will be standing at the ends of the bridge as they know it's coming, right? They will shut the bridge down. A gust of 40 mile per hour will just, you'll feel it on a bridge and you do feel it scary, isn't it? Oh my gosh. It happened Monday, but before that, I'm just envisioning, you don't answer this yet. You ever, do you watch baseball? I love baseball. How do they, how do they measure the miles per hour for a pitcher, right? How do they measure the miles per hour? Like is there some guy holding it like an anemometer? Anem, it's like one of those words, it's really hard to say an anemometer and they hold it up and it literally spins. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And how long are they having to track it that sustained wind? Is it a five minutes? Yes, correct. It's a great question. That is a very good question and I will get that and email it to you. I love that. We get questions later, maybe like 30 minutes to an hour, I mean, it has to be sustained for a period of time. It's going to be multiple hours. Gotcha. Otherwise it's just a gust. Sure. Okay. At that point. Gotcha. I don't know that. It has to be constant. If anyone's curious about that, we'll find it out. We will find it out. I wish I knew that answer. Just a great question. That is a good question. It's a great question but it is one that people are very, very concerned about. So when a big storm is coming our way, Hurricane Matthew in 2017 was the last one that was in the Atlantic Ocean. I live in Jack's Beach and every year they're like, "We're going to do an mandatory evacuation." And basically what that means is you're not going to have access to 911. Your power will likely go out and your bridges will be shut down. That's a great segue into it. Let's get really localized hurricanes in general. So when there is a mandatory evacuation, you said something on our prep call, right? What does that mean if you stay in town? It means you very much do not have access to emergency services. So that is a good question. It's when it's your own risk, in a sense. It is totally at your own risk. You stay in town for that hurricane party like you're on your own. Fair enough. How much of an evacuation do you, what's normal? When do you get an evacuation? Is it six hours, eight hours, 24 hours? The good thing about hurricanes, the good thing about hurricanes is we have advanced notice that they're coming. Unlike a earthquake or unlike a tornado, you know, so we have a heads up with hurricanes. We know they're coming. We have a seven day forecast in most times and we have wiggle. We know that it will wiggle and that's that cone of uncertainty, right? You can't ever really like, the cone just means it could go this way. It could go that way. It's not coming up the center of the cone. It's on either side. You can just change it just to mess with people, just like, yeah, stop, stop, yeah, just me. Okay. Guys, watch this. We're going to freak him out. Jack's Beach. Jack's Beach. Go for it. It's terrible. It's terribly funny. No. I'm doing a Saturday night live. I like school. That is a good school. That is a good school. Yes. April Fool's behind it. You'll be fine. Yeah, that's right. No, so. I'm sorry. No. Okay. You can predict that. To me, it's, again, we don't, if it's like, who's your listeners? What's your audience? We never know. What are must haves, right? So if you're hurricane preparing, we know this as we've lived in Florida a long time. Like you better have this in your house. Yeah. A generator is a great idea to have. I keep mine in the shed in the backyard. Every year I go out, I have to pump up the tires and roll it around the front and plug it in 20 feet from my house. 20 feet. 20 feet. 20 feet. Fire. Is that why? Carbon monoxide poisoning. You could spark a fire with the gas. I actually, Richard, none and I were having this conversation the other night. He just bought this really cool thing for the gas tank that he has connected, you know, forward to fill his generator. Hey, bought his wife this cool little like connector that will automatically fill the gas. When gas is low. To the thing, all she has to do is like push a button and that way you're not tipping the can into the generator and spilling it. Yeah. So, you know, we have to work. So we have to make sure our families are prepared. I live at the beach. I have a generator. I have to make sure that the tires are pumped up, that the gas cans are filled. That is 20 feet away from my. Yeah. That's a big one. If it's a home built generator, that's different. But if you have a portable generator in the state of Florida, it should be 20 feet away from the house. At least. And I mean, not in your garage, not in your garage, not in your garage. That's the carbon monoxide's going to come back in, you're going to fall asleep and you're never going to wake up. Oh my gosh. Fire. Ex firefighter here. We saw a lot of generator fires. Okay. So generator. Great. Twenty feet from the house. There's a lot of stuff you do to it. What else? You want to have flashlights with batteries, plenty of batteries, a weather radio, like a hand, like an old timey hand crank weather radio. NOAA does weather reports on their radio station and they update you. Your phone, of course, is going to be a good resource, but you don't want to charge your phone in your car in the garage with the door shut. Because what's that going to do carbon monoxide again, but chargers, you know, there's blocks that you can buy now to keep your phone, charge your phone is an amazing resource. Your phone's also good to record the contents of your home. Should you evacuate? You have a recording of your phone. Go through your house, take pictures of anything that's valuable and make sure you take it with you when you leave. So I have old rolls of film still with pictures of jewelry and stuff. Exactly. I found them in a drawer the other day. I was like the wind of the phone. Yeah, exactly. So just little things like that, a cooler, you know, ice, water, you know, you want to have your essentials if you're going to stay. We made jokes about hoarding water, right? But like if you're going to, if you're going to be in the house, you need water. Yeah. But I think it's a gallon a day per person. It's silly to say if you got in a huge pickle, you just put a bucket outside and there's your water here in the middle of a storm. It depends how it's funneled in. That's a whole website. I'm not so sorry. Sorry. You just put a bucket on back. But there are like, look, all you guys living in bunkers and prep for that, there are ways to gather that. Yeah. Rainwater collection. Yeah. I know. Oh, medications. That's how I hold you. What did you think of that? We're going to talk about evacuations, shelters, et cetera. This is every county in Northeast Florida specifically because we're in hurricane season, but medications. Yeah. So you want to make sure you have enough medication to last you at least five to seven days because the pharmacy might be closed. You don't ever want to be without your essential medication. And so there are medication lockboxes that you can get. There's medication, envelope things with zippers that you can lock because another thing about taking medication out of your normal storage place is kids can get into it. So you want to be sure that you have these safety measures in place, not just keeping your medication nearby. Medications. What are first aid supplies? Right. Pets. What about pets? Pets. Well, pets have medication too. Do you have a pet? I had to. I have a cat. I have dog. And so my poor dog was going stir crazy over the past few days. Couldn't go outside. Couldn't go for long walks. So you know, how do you keep your pet from going completely stir crazy to make you completely stir crazy. I would recommend not getting pets by the way. Yeah. I mean, pets are a factor too. My parents, what they do is they'll grab fake turf and they put a little like tub together in the garage so that the dog can go out because our dog won't go to the rain. Pads are good too. Yeah, you know. The puppy pads. I wrote down a couple notes from it. So know your plan, right? You don't have to go 30 miles in storm to avoid a storm. Right. This is something that I really wanted to focus on for this year's hurricane season because when you have to evacuate, it doesn't mean you have to go to Georgia or Alabama because what if the storm is going that way and that's your plan? That's your happens. I can. I can win to the storm. Right. When you drive into the storm. Correct. And that happened with Irma, right? A few years ago, 2016, Irma came straight up the state and people had already started going like up to Georgia. Well, it was still going to go up to Georgia. So what what you can do is find a friend in town who isn't in a flood zone and know your flood zones. That's another thing. And Jack's ready.com. We have flood zones on our website. Flood zones are very easy to to search for your county. Duval County flood zone, a really pretty colorful map will pop up. It'll show you in red where not to be during a storm and then green, I think, is a better color. So this is applicable to all Florida, by the way, all counties, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, all counties have these, these flood zone maps and they're super helpful. But we for Hurricane Matthew, knowing it was coming up the Atlantic, knowing that there was an evacuation order in Jacksonville Beach, even though my house is 10 feet above ground, I'm behind a gate station, like a gate gas station. So it's built up a little bit for the tapes. I know the gate. Oh, shit. So I went two miles inland to a hotel at JTB and Hodges, knowing I was going to be safe there. I brought my mom. I brought our animals and my kids, and we hold up there for about three days. You mentioned something, right? If you know you know where to go, know your plan, what if you don't have friends like myself? Like who am I? I'm kidding. Oh, sorry. I feel bad for you. I know. Like shelters. Yes, shelters are. You can't phone a friend. You can't go to a hotel. Duval County, when they're in full blown, you know, status of their emergency operation centers in full blown mode, I think they have 29 shelters. Some have our medical shelters, some are pet friendly shelters, and they have a laundry list of these shelters at Jack's Ready, also Jack's Ready dot com, Jack's Ready dot com. And like I said, every like one Nassau dot com is the Nassau County one and Clay County has one in St. John's County has one Baker County. All the counties have their emergency operations center information on their city county websites. Man, there's so much done and alerts. We had so much fun. Oh, yeah. So every county has alerts. Do you remember a couple months ago when every when the entire state of Florida had that alert system? Yeah. So they work. Yeah. They work. Yeah. Know your flood zone. We hits. I wrote this down on how to do this. I like this. The storm. A lot of people think the storm is the worst part. Nope. No, it's not. It's the following days. Right. And we saw we're seeing that now, like with Hurricane Debbie and Tropical Storm Debbie dumped a plethora of rain. I mean, like more rain. I just saw this morning, the National Weather Service said Jacksonville recorded the third highest one day rainfall ever. Yeah. The third high in August. In the month of August. Okay. Yeah. No. In the month of August. Yeah. My level's overflowing too. But what was your question? It's not the storm. It's the worst part. Outdoors. So with all this, I was like, I was like, so with rainfall, that happens that fast in that short amount of time. Rain has to go somewhere. So if it's raining in Georgia and the St. Mary's River, for example, it has to drain somewhere. And the governor in one of his reports over the past few days actually made a really good point about this. The water has to drain somewhere. So that's why we have retention ponds. And that's why we have rivers and the Black Creek right now down in Middleburg. It's still, they've all crested now and we have tides here. You know, we have the tide that comes in and the tide that goes out. We talked about it with fishing in the last hour. The tides here are really, when you have high tide, the water's exceptionally high. Add three to four, five inches in some spots to a high tide. You're going to have flooding. So that's what we are seeing after the storm. So we grew to storms. Slipping falls, trees falling out of here. Trees of really saturated ground. Or even the three days afterwards, if you leave town on a Sunday for a hurricane, it hits Monday. You come back to a tree limb down, the electric lines down like it. The hurricane's tough. If you knew evacuate, evacuate, but when you come back sometimes, it's oftentimes worse. Right. I have to acknowledge is, do you surf? I don't. Let me tell you the one pro of hurricanes. This body, this surfer's are all in. Yeah. Yeah. More fishing. I mean, the pier now. Okay. So not healthy. What's not healthy? Surfing in the heart of a hurricane. Not healthy. It's the days before and then the days after sometimes, especially if it's coming in off the Atlantic and you have the swell coming in. If it comes the other way, does that make the waves bad then if it's coming from the Gulf? It's so funny. Again, to me, like you said, tides, winds, rain, all that stuff, but when it's offshore, it's days in advance. Like if a hurricane's three days out, the waves are firing those, like you're going out there. Yeah. Those days. And then sometimes again, what direction is it coming? Let's go back to the serious stuff because we're running out of time here. It's my leisure part. What else are relevant things like I've got to acknowledge this. We got it. We got to address this. This is important because we talked a lot of nonsense. Yeah. No, the major important thing is have your plan in place well in advance. Know your plan. Your family needs to know your plan. You need to know where your medications are. You need to know where you're going. If you don't have friends, pick a hotel that's nearby and make that reservation seven days in advance or make plans to go further away. Because if you are leaving on an evacuation day, it took me 10 hours to go 30 miles during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and I told myself I will never evacuate again and I have evacuated again since then. But I made smarter choices. So again, I'm going to acknowledge three dumb cavemen, husbands here, young kids, wives. You hear that? Have the plan. You write this down. Tell the husband. Thanks. Tell us what we need to get. Yes. Show up. Buy chains. All's gas. Having a plan is a must. Waiting. Like if you anticipate an evacuation coming, evacuating on the day that everyone says evacuate, guess what? Every one is doing it that is so rough. Any other big nuggets? Big nuggets. Know your flood zones. Big one. Yep. Have flood insurance if you live in a flood zone. I would say a lot of Florida should probably have a flood insurance. Yeah. And you cannot purchase flood insurance once a storm has been named, just so you know. No, that's good. Still on that side. That's the weather there. You're like, it's fine. That's a problem. You just bought a house in March and you don't have flood insurance as you're going through the home of the buying purchase and a named hurricane or tropical storm hits. Yeah. That's pretty bad. Trim your trees, clean your sewers, you know, your gutters, rather, you know, just what about cash on hand? People have cash. Cash, you know, you see the you go around these days and people don't have cash, right? It's cash. Cash free. Yeah. What is cash? What's an ATM? I don't ever go to the bank, right? So yeah, cash is always good to have small bills, fill up your car, you know, get your gas in advance. Gas is a must. Take care of your pets. If you can't bring them with you somewhere, make sure you have them boarded somewhere safe. Is it actually important? I know my wife tells me this is the one thing she always tells me to do is take the ice, put a quarter on top of the ice in the freezer and then we'll leave. So that will tell you if that court, if you see the quarter, all your food is bad in the refrigerator. So we have no, but you've been known to pack coolers with our food. Bring it with. Oh my goodness. It's a lot. Real food is a really big deal. At the bottom of the ice. That means it's everything for everything thought that nugget. We have like 60 seconds left. No, that's a good tip right there. Our emergency plans are so readily available. News for jacks.com slash hurricane. You will find our hurricane page. I'm happy to email it to anybody and McCormick at wjxt.com jacks ready dot com your county alert systems vital. That is a great closing comment right there. This is my least feared part of the show. We run out of time because I think we have a good time. Say those websites again, jacks ready dot com. Oh, that one is for jacks slash hurricane dot com news for jacks dot com slash hurricane news for jacks.com dot com slash here we go just like we butcher the intro. We're going to butcher the extra extra extra. I like extra. We're making words here to man, do you have fun? I had a great time. This is awesome. Yeah, I would come back, but I would have an answer to your question. So how long I'm going to get you this answer. I promise how long does the wind have to be sustained at 40 miles per hour before the bridges. Let's go. Real quick. Go you. I'm saying four hours. I'm going to go. One hour tops. Yeah, I'm going to say 45 minutes. If you're a big truck, yeah, I don't think I don't think it's I don't think it's more than 30 minutes. I take my bit back to bring out my faults again, my failure to the answer your question. But I'm transparent that way. Michelle McCormick meteorologist news for jacks. Thank you for joining us. The health just happened. (upbeat music)