Josh Morgerman, World’s Top Hurricane Chaser

 

92-159. Josh Morgerman

SPEAKERS

Josh Morgerman, Will Bachman

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Hello and welcome to The 92 report,conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, and I’m delighted to be here today with Josh Morgerman. Josh, welcome to the show. Great to be with you will thanks. And Josh, right before I started recording, we were chatting, and you’re like, will like, how long is the show, typically? And I told you, oh, I don’t know, 3545 minutes. And you’re good, because I do a lot of media. I just need to know, because sometimes if a two and a half minute hit, you know, I need to get my points in there. So, I didn’t know that you were doing a lot of media to TV person. So anyway, I need to ask you the start off questions. So Josh, tell us about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

 

Josh Morgerman  00:47

Man, it’s been a it’s been a winding road. I could probably confidently say I’m probably one of the weirdest of all the people in our graduating class, in terms of just how I ended up.

 

Will Bachman  00:59

There’s a lot of competition for that category. Okay, good.

 

Josh Morgerman  01:02

That’s good to know, because sometimes I’m like, Okay, I’m too weird to have gone to Harvard, but, um, but no, it’s been an awesome road. So what happened was, okay, got out of college, didn’t know what I wanted to do, went out to LA to work in the movie industry, basically because my older sisters worked in the industry, and they’re like, hey, we’ll hook you up. Lived in LA that didn’t work out, just I wasn’t a good fit for entertainment. Then in the late 90s, I started a web design company and and because that was just what everyone was doing, and that was, you know, I was very opportunistic, jumped on that. That did very well. That expanded. Then there was thedotcom crash, and then we were able to survive. My company is called sim Blaze, by the way, it’s still in existence over 25 years after we founded it. But when thedotcom crash happened and things really dried up in California and the US, we were able to survive by establishing a foothold in Eastern Europe. We had a we had a we had some development executives were able to land contracts in Eastern Europe, among post-communist societies that wanted American branding and advertising expertise. They wanted our, you know, our special American flair for selling things. So we landed a couple of big accounts there, established an office, and I lived in Prague, in, you know, in Eastern Europe for the better part of my 30s, servicing clients throughout Eastern Europe, in Russia, in Romania, in Serbia, all those sort of Eastern Bloc countries. Great ride at the same time, I was always a really hardcore weather nerd, just obsessed with violent weather. In fact, I wanted to study meteorology, but my father was like, No, you’re going to go to Harvard and you’re going to do Liberal Arts. I had those kind of parents who really made decisions for me, no regrets, though. I want to be really clear, I love having gone to Harvard, but I so I didn’t study meteorology or anything. But as it turns out, I’m very obsessed with hurricanes. So in my 30s I started really just like when I was in the US, just hunting hurricanes, chasing hurricanes, you know, hunting them down, to get inside them, to collect data, shoot video, all that. So I had these two parallel existences of I’m like a brand and advertising consultant, working as a strategist and creative director in my company, and I’m also hunting hurricanes and typhoons around the world. So I have this sort of, like dual existence. And both of these careers are growing at the same time, and I’m keeping them very separate, this kind of, like Superman, Clark Kent kind of thing going on. And then finally, one day, I was in the Philippines in a very bad typhoon where a whole city went underwater, left 1000s dead. It was a big tragedy. At the height of the storm, I jumped into the water to rescue people, to pull people out, and someone shot that on video, and that ended up on every news channel, including CNN. And then one of my clients, my corporate clients at PwC, was like, um, why? Why were you in the Philippines? Why were you rescuing like, what? What was that? So my two worlds kind of collided, and then I had to kind of come out of the closet with my corporate clients and be like, Yeah, I’m also like, storm chaser. So both these careers are developed, and now Symblazeis still growing strong, although it’s more us focused again. And I live in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, which is the heart of the USA, is hurricane country, so that I could keep hunting while I sort of, you know, also continue to be a creative director and brand strategist at my company. So that’s my freak show life for you, in a nutshell. Wow.

 

Will Bachman  04:47

Okay, well, you are definitely among one of the top contenders. Thank you for the most unusual dual career. Okay, I gotta ask. I gotta ask about this, hunting hurricanes. All right, so maybe just tell us a little bit more about that. How does that? How does that? How does that work?

 

Josh Morgerman  05:13

Okay, so hurricanes, a big, giant system that, you know, swirls around, covers hundreds of miles. The very violent part is a little ring around the center, and then the exact center is a small calm area which is rich in interesting and useful data. So my My goal when hunting a hurricane, whether it’s in the United States, in Mexico, in East Asia, where they call them typhoons, is to hunt down, get inside that center and collect data. So, you know, kind of like basically a professional adventurer. So I go into these storms, I collect data. I’m not a scientist. I, you know, I concentrated in History at Harvard, but scientists use my work. I call myself the scientist hunting dog, because the guys at the National Hurricane Center use my work, especially when they’re doing post analysis on hurricanes that hit remote regions where there’s no other data except what I collected. So a lot of times the data I collected the missing puzzle piece to help them understand, to kind of do their autopsy on the storm. Okay, what happened exactly? My initial motivation was not data collection. It was just as adrenaline junkie, you know, being inside a bad hurricane, it’s like, it’s scary, and I get some kind of, like, drug like, rush from it. And it was definitely, like, a little bit of an addiction thing going on there. Just needed that, that intense feeling. But as I matured, it became about like the thrill of like, of like, hunting down the data. My last big conquest was actually Melissa in Jamaica, a really intense, category five hurricane, possibly the strongest on record to strike North America. They’re still analyzing it. And I was there at ground zero in Jamaica for the storm, which was very scary, and then I was trapped there for days afterward In Ground Zero, just kind of documenting the recovery. And you know, living there without plumbing, without electricity, and very low on food,

 

Will Bachman  07:00

okay, speaking of that, when you are packing your imagine you have a go bag, a H bag, my hurricane bag. Maybe you have a name for it. What is in that H bag that you take with you?

 

Josh Morgerman  07:13

Yeah, exactly. I do have one. And portability is key, because I’m literally flying all over the world to hunt down these storms. You know, the ones in the US are easy, because I just get in the car and go chase the ones on the Gulf Coast, typically, you know, it has, you know, just a few changes of clothes. I only I bring, like, nylon athletic wear, because it dries fast. I bring some, like, eye protection. I bring a few, like, sort of cameras to shoot with, usually, a couple of phones and a GoPro, like actual mobile phones. Now, like smartphones are actually very good cameras, and they’re very water resistant, good for the kinds of conditions I’m shooting in. And then my meteorological devices, which are a fleet of small, portable devices for measuring things like air pressure and stuff, and those devices I deploy around where I think the hurricane is coming ashore. But the important thing is that all that stuff fits inside a carry on. I gotta travel light with this kind of work.

 

Will Bachman  08:10

I mean, any kind of protein bars or bottles of water or anything, or it’s

 

Josh Morgerman  08:14

a good question. So, so the basically what I do when I land wherever I am, the very first thing is, you know, get the case of water. That’s number one. You always, you can go without food, but you can’t go without water. So always the big case of water first, then a bunch of, you know, protein bars and things like that. But I’ll get those things, usually on the ground, wherever I’m landing, usually in any country, anywhere, they have that kind of equivalent food, and because I try to travel light until I land, I’m worried if I’m bringing in a pack of like, 40 protein bars, that some customs official might think I’m trying to resell them and put me in jail or something.

 

Will Bachman  08:52

Okay, so how? Maybe explain to us we’ve seen the movies Twister, people who chase, you know, I guess the tornadoes, yeah, when you’re chasing a hurricane, what is the, what is the dangerous part, like the part that you’re driving towards? You know, how bad is the wind? Is it take, you know, flipping cars over and stuff, or is it not? Describe it for us, what’s the, what’s the center of it? Like, or not the center calm part, but the the outer part, that’s the scarier?

 

Josh Morgerman  09:27

Yeah, I’m glad you asked, because storm chasing, by far, storm chasers, it’s a whole community. It’s a world unto itself. You know how folks talk about, like the gamer community, you know young guys that play well, the storm chasing community. It’s another very it’s a it’s a real sort of, it’s a scene, and the folks who are in it are all kind of nuts and a little weird. Myself included. We’re all really hardcore about it. Most of them, the vast majority, are actually tornado chasers, like you know, as shown in that movie Twister. There’s a smaller subculture of us who’ve chased tropical cycle. Ones, meaning hurricanes, and I am the world’s top hurricane guy. No one has no one dead or alive has been in more hurricanes than I I’m up to 84 which is no one. My closest competitor, I think, is in the 60s. And I talk competitively about it because I am very I treat it as a professional sport, and I am super competitive, and I am very unapologetic about it. But anyhow, you want to get into that inner ring of violent winds. And in a severe hurricane, for example, like Melissa in Jamaica, oh, it absolutely, it’s cars flying, it’s concrete buildings collapsing from the force of the wind. We’re talking scary ass wind. I mean, it’s like, like, just like, like, flying missiles crashing into houses. It Melissa hit Jamaica with the force of an, like, an atomic bomb blast. I wrote it out in a strong concrete building. The structure itself was okay, but the entire roof ripped off, all the windows and doors blew off. That’s the kind of intensity we’re talking about, but the crazy, the trippy thing is, you get through that inner ring of those, those crazy winds, and then everything just suddenly calms down, and the sun kind of comes out because you’re in the eye the calm part, but you’re only halfway through the storm because you’re right in the center. So you know, it’s going to be coming back from the opposite direction in a few minutes, but it’s one of the most trippy experiences. You know, I’ve been in 84 hurricanes, more than anyone still has a certain magic to me.

 

Will Bachman  11:26

Okay, so I did not know that I was going to be, I don’t do enough research, really, for these things. I mean, I did not know that you were the world’s leading hurricane chaser. That’s amazing. So we have another first on the show.

 

Josh Morgerman  11:42

Very random thing to lead in, is

 

Will Bachman  11:44

there an official kind of leaderboard that this, that your community maintains? Is this, like, you know, great.

 

Josh Morgerman  11:53

It’s a great question. No, there is not. But I’m, you know, I’m just like, I am sort of, if you look at my Wikipedia page, and if you just research other hurricane chasers, I’m the undisputed leader. I have a very big following on social media, and I have about 600,000 fans on Facebook, about 212,000 on on x and you know, that’s where I sort of preside over my my achievements. And you’ll see there that I’m just acknowledged as, like the top dog, no, no competition,

 

Will Bachman  12:26

all right. And no pun intended there when we say no, no, no competition. So all right. So by the way, within the whole world of storm chasers that you said, most people are doing tornadoes. How do the tornado chasers feel about the hurricane chasers? Is that it’s like,

 

Josh Morgerman  12:47

it’s, it’s a great question. So generally, the way I look at it is, um, the hurricane chasers were the James Bonds. We’re the sophisticated um, international travelers with passports flying around the world to, like, random points, to, you know, to do our sort of international intrigue, because to really, to really Chase hurricanes, to really be a top chaser, you got to do it internationally. Because the US, yeah, we get hurricanes, but other countries get a lot more. The tornado chasers, we sort of almost look down on a little bit. They’re, you know, they’re sort of like guys in pickup trucks driving around Oklahoma. You know, a lot of them have never even left the country. They Yeah. So there’s definitely a little bit of a cultural difference. The hurricane guys are more international, like, I say we’re the James Bonds. But I think the tornado guys also, I think they kind of look down on us a little bit. Now, there are some guys who do both. They’re kind of like well rounded. There’s a lot of that, but there are definitely sort of supremacists in each field. And I want to say, I said guys, I shouldn’t say that, because actually it used to be an all male sport. Slowly, over the last few years I have actually some women are starting to, you’re seeing more and more. There’s sort of like a a community of women chasing as well. There’s a there’s like a an Instagram community called girls who chase so that’s becoming a thing, but it still is largely a male dominated sport.

 

Will Bachman  14:17

Are there any other categories of storm is there any snow storm chasers?

 

Josh Morgerman  14:22

Yeah, typically, the tornadoes and hurricanes are the two main ones. But there are, there are, like, folks who, like, love winter weather and everything else. Generally, I would say most storm chasers are fairly versatile where they kind of go after any kind of extreme events. And largely that’s also because those of us who make a living doing this, or a lot of us are working for some kind of media outfit where they want us to, like, cover those different kinds of events. Me, I’m actually unusual in that I am very, very, very narrowly specialized. I only do hurricanes. I don’t do anything else. And the TV network that I work with, they respect, they allow me to be me. They don’t make. Cover snowstorms and other stupid things I’m not interested in. They allow me to just be the hurricane dude. So that’s good. I get to stay on brand.

 

Will Bachman  15:10

All right, all right. So we talked about your your go bag and how? How does one go about? Explain to me kind of the process, right? You hear about, oh, there’s a tornado coming to Jamaica or the Philippines, or even,

 

Josh Morgerman  15:31

well, I know before, I know before anyone’s talking about it. So we use what are called computer models, which are there different computer programs that sort of show weather maps of the future. They’re like, they’re like, the chaser and the and the weather forecasters crystal ball. They literally spin out weather maps for what’s going to happen in five days, in 10 days, in 15 days. And you look at those, and there are a lot of different models. There’s a European one, there’s an American one called the GFS, and then there are special hurricane models. So there’s all these different models, and you’re looking at them, and they’re like, your crystal ball. And you look at them, and you start to see hints of, Okay, looks like a cyclone is going to be hit in Australia. In Australia, by the way, that’s what they call hurricanes. They call them cyclones. But you start to see the like, like, the computer models are suggesting that something is going to happen. And you start to get that feeling of like, okay, I might have a chase in 10 days, sometimes the computer models are wrong, sometimes they’re right, but it starts like that. It’s always something you see in the computer models an initial hint, and then eventually something might actually grow from it. Okay, oh, wow. That disturbance becomes something, it starts to turn and then it intensifies, and it becomes a hurricane. And then a certain point you have to pull the trigger and go now, if it’s something in the Gulf of Mexico right here, well, I could just kind of hang out at home and just kind of watch it and then get in the car at the last second and go for it. If it’s something in Australia or Japan or Taiwan or the Philippines, I got to pull that trigger a few few days before. So there’s a tough decision about investing time and resources money to get over there, you know. And it’s usually a few connecting flights to get to some random island. So there’s a big process there. And what separates the man from the boys, not to gender it again, sorry. What separates the rock stars from the lesser beings is knowing which ones to go after and which ones to say, ah, that looks like it’s going to be a dud. I’m not going to go for that. Okay.

 

Will Bachman  17:26

Now these the data models. Are those open source, are those government run, or those your own proprietary models? I wasn’t quite sure the US, the American and the European.

 

Josh Morgerman  17:40

They’re mostly, it’s a combination of government run and also private companies. But they’re all open. They’re all available, mostly, mostly available for anyone to look at for free, mostly sometimes to get better access or to get more higher resolution sort of outputs. You might have to, like, pay a subscription fee. But most of these things are things that are just they’re available to you if you know where to look. Okay.

 

Will Bachman  18:05

And are you looking at kind of that raw model that the government puts out and constantly monitoring it yourself? Or do you have some kind of alert set up so that it triggers? Hey, Josh, you know, it looks like Australia 10 days from now. How? How are you constantly monitoring 1015, days out?

 

Josh Morgerman  18:27

So like most professional chasers, I’m on basically a clock all day. Every the models, most of them, update either every 12 hours or every six hours. So every six hours, especially during season, I do a Model Review. I take about 10 minutes to do a quick spin through all the computer models, to kind of just check everything, about four or five different models, and checking all the different oceans where there might be activity, like, for example, in the northern hemisphere, our season where stuff is going to happen is mostly like June to November, which North northern Hemis, the Atlantic, including the Gulf and Caribbean. It means, you know, the Pacific, including, you know, East Asia, and also, like the Indian Ocean, you know, like the Bay of Bengal. So I’ll be quickly looking at all the models and looking at those places, and looking for any hints of a low pressure system starting to sort of foment. And if I sense that something might be forming, then I’ll really zero in on that every six hours, looking okay. Is that thing happening? Is it coming together? So it’s every six hours, okay?

 

Will Bachman  19:27

So every six hours you’re taking a quick look at these models yourself, and yes, scanning, okay, and seeing if there’s anything that might look promising. Exactly. Okay. So tell us a bit more about like the travel and how this works in practice, maybe you pick a case example because I’m kind of curious. Just give us a little practical story of like booking the flights to some random Island, and like, arranging your hotel or stay or do you sleep in the car? Just give us a story of how that part works.

 

Josh Morgerman  20:24

When you’re doing this kind of international storm chasing one thing. It is a sport, and it requires like and like. They always say that the winning athletes, it’s not their physical abilities. It’s like the mental ones, their ability to kind of emotionally deal with certain things. And I think the thing I’ve most learned how to deal with is just getting on a plane to go to the opposite side of the Earth, you know, just the middle of the night, rushing to the airport to go to some country, literally on the other side of the Earth, and not knowing where I’m going to end up. Literally, no idea. It’s like, okay, I know it’s Taiwan, but I’m not I don’t know what city like. I just don’t know. So a lot of it is winging it. You don’t book a hotel days in advance, because you don’t know where the typhoons or hurricanes can be coming ashore. So there’s a lot of sort of improvisation that’s involved with this. It’s like, it’s, it’s being able to, kind of like, adapt constantly, change on a dime, constantly, you know, just being fluid, being able to react to the situation and to keep going to deal with the fear of it. You know, sometimes it’s scary. You know, you’re in a remote part of some developing nation. The roads are dirt. You’re alone. You know, you’re maybe it’s not a safe region. Maybe it’s an area that the State Department said you shouldn’t be in as an American, because it’s because there might be drug cartels. There’s all those fears, and then there’s just the fears of the hurricane, you know, God, like, what you know, like the one in Jamaica that you know, that really intense Melissa, that thing was scary, that thing, that thing that had the power of an atomic bomb, it was like it was intense. So, it’s learning how to deal with all those emotions, um, in terms of the car, rule number one is, protect the car like it’s your own. So I so in those really intense hurricanes, like a Melissa, you don’t drive around in them. What you do is, at a certain point, right before the storm hits, you commit to your location, like, like, driving around in a storm like that, you would die because the car would fly, or, you know, like flying wooden planks would go right through the car and, like, kill you. I mean, literally, you see stuff like that after hurricanes. So you pick your location, then you put the car in a protected place. That’s rule number one, you know, you know, you treat it like it’s your own property. Okay?

 

Will Bachman  22:29

These are good tips for any of us who ever do get caught in a storm, what would be a good protected place? Where are you looking to safely park the car,

 

Josh Morgerman  22:38

you know, just indoors, preferably, or, you know, or in, like a protected, kind of, like courtyard or something. And also, I think the important thing also, is personal, protecting yourself, personally, you know, knowing how to ride out a hurricane, you know, and that does happen to it, like just normal people sometimes, you know, you’re on a Caribbean Island vacationing during hurricane season, and then boom, something hits. That actually happened. I was in Cabo San Lucas chasing a hurricane, and it was a very intense hurricane that really smashed the city. I was obviously there for the hurricane, but afterward, the story became the 20,000 Americans who were trapped there, who had just been there vacationing and went through a really scary hurricane where you know they’re in their hotel room and all the windows are smashing and the roof is lifting up and they’re hiding under the bed, that was a lot of very traumatized people who are not freaks, like me, who don’t covet that experience.

 

Will Bachman  23:33

And so where do you recommend? How do you when you’re in remote locations? What? What are you looking for in terms of a safe place to stay?

 

Josh Morgerman  23:41

Well, in hurricane like Melissa, I’m going to keep going back to that one in Jamaica, because it was such an extreme event. It just just happened a few three months ago. With that one, you definitely want to be in a solid concrete building, because in that one, all the wooden structures just got completely mowed down. So I found a concrete structure. And then you want to, you know, if you don’t want to see the hurricane, if you don’t want to, like, observe it, you just want to be safe. You know, you get in an interior room in a hurricane like that. I looked around. I said, Okay, what’s my safe room? Where am I going to go if, if the s really hits the fan? Okay? And that was a little closet, you know, that had no windows, a very small space. And I was like, right, that’s where I’ll get if things get really bad, you know, if you know, and you know, just that’s where I’ll shelter myself, you know. And then you just get down low, get as many walls as possible between you and the winds get away from windows and doors, and that’s how you survive a hurricane like that.

 

Will Bachman  24:40

And was this somebody’s house, or was it a shop? I mean, it was a hotel, oh, it was a hotel room.

 

Josh Morgerman  24:44

It was, it was like a guest house. They call it there, but it was like a, you know, it was a, it was in a remote it was in a small town in Jamaica, just on the side of the highway, just this sort of concrete structure. And I just found it just the night before the hurricane hit. And I was very lucky, because the place where I was. Was going to stay. They just, I don’t know, when I got there, there was no one there, so I had to, I had to find somewhere, you know. And sort of that said, Yeah, but that’s part of the sport is, you know, unexpected things constantly, unexpected crises all the time. Stay calm, find the next solution.

 

Will Bachman  25:17

Okay, how often? Tell us any stories that you’ve had where you run into authorities, maybe there’s a roadblock. Maybe the police are saying, No, you’re supposed to be leaving this area. I can imagine there’d be sort of one way out of this section. It’s supposed to be evacuated. How do you deal with with that sort of a situation

 

Josh Morgerman  25:38

that happens? Sometimes every culture is different in terms of that question. Some some cultures, they police more aggressively during hurricanes, some less. So. What I’ve noticed interestingly is that in in East Asia, no problems. Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and those cultures, by the way, are all very different from each other, but one commonality among those cultures is you just chase the typhoon and everyone just leaves you alone, like just you just do your thing. Way. On the other extreme would be in Australia, the state of because it varies state to state, the state of Western Australia, in Australia is exceedingly strict when they put up a red alert because a cyclone is coming, which is what they call a hurricane, you will be fined 1000s of dollars and put in jail if you were out driving. So that’s the other extreme. The US is somewhere in the middle. And the US, it depends on the state and the county. I’ve run into cops in certain small towns in Louisiana, where they’re like, Get out of here, you know. But it depends. I have a press credential because I am, I am media, you know, I do a lot of TV, so that often helps. It’s not a magic, you know, it’s not like a, you know, a magic pendant that’s gonna, like, get you anywhere but, but the media credential will often help

 

Will Bachman  26:58

do and you and you mentioned that some people are, like, doing this, making money at it. Do you? Do you actually get paid by the by the TV state? Did they help cover your costs of getting there?

 

Josh Morgerman  27:10

So, yeah, of course. I mean, I’m, I don’t, I don’t appear on TV as charity work. Okay, I’m a paid, yeah, absolutely, absolutely no, no. This is, this is a career. I mean, I It started as a hobby. It is actually a career. And some and, you know, depends on the year. It depends on how sim Blaze, my advertising agency is doing. But there, you know, there’s some years like, you know, I’ve started a couple of reality series. The first one was Hurricane man, which was for BBC. It was actually a british series. The this British producer said, We want to make a show about you, and they sold it to the BBC. The BBC paid for it, and it’s called hurricane man. It’s a british series, but starring a crazy American hurricane chaser and his crew, his British crew, that he leads into dangerous hurricanes. So that was one. Then I started in another series. But those years when I, you know, when I’m doing, I’m leading in a series, those are, those are big money making years. You know, I’m on contract with the TV network weather nation, that I do sort of coverage for. And I’m an influencer who promotes brand. I promote a few brands which my house is a model of, but certain brands that make my house hurricane resistant. I’m a, basically like a spokesperson for those brands. And yes, I do things like infomercials, you know, I do all that. You know, I’m not above it, but, yeah, but, but it’s, it’s actually, it is actually a lucrative career, believe it or not. Wow.

 

Will Bachman  28:35

I mean, hey, we’re all about self promotion here on this show. So do you want to give a shout out to any of the brands that your house is like Incorporated, you know, give freebie to any of your sponsors. I mean, tough. Yes.

 

Josh Morgerman  28:51

James Hardie, which is a beautiful fiber cement siding, which like, which is just, it’s absolutely gorgeous sighting, but also very climate resistant.

 

Will Bachman  29:01

Okay, as the first fiber siding promo sponsorship that we’ve done on this, yeah, fiber cement, fiber cement, fiber cement, fiber I didn’t even know that was a thing. Fiber cement well.

 

Josh Morgerman  29:13

And the thing is, if you looked at my house, my house is designed. I designed my house to look so I live just outside of New Orleans. I live in a town called Bay St Louis, which is actually, it used to just be a town where rich New Orleans people had their summer homes because it’s right outside New Orleans. But it has a very specific style of architecture. It’s actually very New Orleans. So I built my house. It looks like a, like 100 year old house. And the cool thing about the James Hardy siding is that, okay, it’s this, it’s this sort of modern, you know, sort of climate engineered substance, but it actually, you can’t tell from the street. It just looks like, it looks like cedar side siding. So that’s really cool about it. But my house is worse, but my house is more weather resistant, and then, like sort of other houses, and also, you know, termites. To find it advertising, which is a very good thing, because the termites in Mississippi are very aggressive.

 

Will Bachman  30:06

You talked a bit about data, and these devices say a bit more about the measurement devices that you take with you, and what data are you capturing on these storms and like, what are even scientists trying to do with it? To your knowledge,

 

Josh Morgerman  30:27

a hurricane is a low pressure system, meaning, as you get closer to the center, the air pressure gets lower. But a hurricane is a very extreme low pressure system. So one of the most important sort of metrics with a hurricane is the air pressure in the eye in the exact center. The lower it is, the more intense the hurricane. And that’s one of the key things you want to know, is, what is the air pressure in the center? And it’s especially useful to know what is that? What is that value as it’s crossing the coast, as it’s making landfall? Now, a lot of times, the National Hurricane Center does not have a recon plane in the storm at that time, or the storm does not pass over a weather station as it’s coming in. And that’s where I come in, is that I am almost always in the center, or at least one of my devices is to measure that air pressure to get that value as it’s crossing the coast. And from those data, not just what’s the lowest number, but also how fast the air pressure falls and how fast it rises, you know as the hurricane is passing, those things tell you a lot about the intensity of the hurricane, the structure, many and the exact timing and location of the landfall. Those numbers just tell a whole story about the storm.

 

Will Bachman  31:47

And it’s he’s saying it’s important to get it like right at the coast. So it’s sort of the hurricane forms over water and then it hits land, but it dissipates. Is at it when it hits land. So you’re trying to get the measurement right when it hits land,

 

Josh Morgerman  32:02

exactly, exactly. Hurricanes, as soon as they as soon as the center crosses the coast, they start to rapidly weaken. So you want to know what the intensity is right at landfall as it’s hitting the coast. Oftentimes, that’s at peak intensity. Often, not always. Sometimes it’s, you know, weakening as it’s coming in. But with, you know, whatever the case may be, you want to know, what was the intensity when it struck because, because one of the important things is they want to know, okay, what category was it when it impacted places with people,

 

Will Bachman  32:35

and what, what do people do with that data? I mean, does it help predict them for the future? Like, do a better job predicting or,

 

Josh Morgerman  32:48

like, it’s it’s more about having a proper historical record. So after each hurricane, and scientists all over the world do this, but our National Hurricane Center is particularly good about this after every hurricane. They do after every storm, whether it hits land or not, they do what’s called post analysis. So after the season ends, they go back and look at all the data, and they do it’s sort of like an autopsy of the of the storm, to really just dig deeply into the data to kind of very precisely indicate what happened, exactly where it went, exactly how strong it was, etc. These data that I collect help with that post analysis process. Right now they’re analyzing again, Melissa in Jamaica. I’m going to keep talking about that because it was such an important event. Melissa may have been the strongest known hurricane landfall in North America, with records going back to 1851 right now they’re doing post analysis to precisely assess exactly how strong it was, and my data play a role in that, in understanding, okay, exactly how strong Was it when it crossed the coast in Jamaica.

 

Will Bachman  33:54

Okay, so tell us about over the years. You know how you have, you know, how, maybe, how this, how you got started with this. And, yeah, it’s like a little bit about how this hobby evolved, or the sport, how you got more into the sport over time.

 

Josh Morgerman  34:12

Well, when I was, you know, when I was a kid, I was obsessed with weather, and my parents could see and they would give me books about the weather, and my dad gave me a barometer for Christmas. And then, you know, when I was in high school, I’d make before I could drive and make my dad. I grew up on Long Island just outside of New York City. I’d make my dad drive me to the beach when we were getting a storm, you know, things like that. And I wanted to maybe go into meteorology. My dad was like, Nope, you’re gonna you’re gonna go to Harvard and you’re gonna do liberal arts. He didn’t pick my area of concentration, but he was very specific about what he wanted me to do. But you know what? He was right. He was actually right. I’m very like, I’m so happy that I did my dad. My dad had a lot of wisdom, and that was one thing, because I think I was not meant to be a meteorologist. I was meant to do what I do, which was to hunt the storms down. But anyway, so then, um. During Harvard, I was doing an internship on Capitol Hill one summer, and there was a hurricane going up the coast, and that was the first time I decided I was like, I’m gonna go hunt it. I did it on a train. I took a train up to New York. It was, it was, it was approaching New England. It was Hurricane Bob. I took a train to New York from Washington, DC, and then another one to Providence. Okay, my first chase on a on a train with, you know, with a paper map. I mean, it was like, so primitive. I look back at it, it was before mobile phones and mobile data and all that. But that was my first Chase. And I didn’t know that there was, this is before the internet. I didn’t know there was such a thing as storm chasing. I didn’t know there was a word for it. I just wanted to be where the hurricane was coming ashore. Cut to 1999 I’m living in LA and there’s a hurricane about to hit Texas, and I decided I’m gonna go fly, I’m gonna go fly there and go after it. And then it’s, that’s when I started the official chasing. I flew to Texas, and I, I ended up writing it out in some random Southern Baptist Church on, you know, some ranch land, and it was so exotic. And the other thing I got a taste for was the Travel Log experience, you know, on this, you know, from New York, you know, I was born in New York City. I grew up in New York area. I went to Harvard. I come from a certain part of the country. The thing about chasing hurricanes all over the United States in the world is, man, it has just, it’s gotten me out of that, you know, that sort of, like, I don’t know, Yankee elite lifestyle, or whatever, that we’re all, a lot of us are from. It’s like, and it’s gotten me just, I’ve experienced, like, all kinds of just cool cultures and, you know, just sort of, like, interactive people, not like me.

 

Will Bachman  36:38

All that list, some more locations that you’ve been you mentioned already, Jamaica,

 

Josh Morgerman  36:42

every corner of the United States, every corner of the Philippines, every corner of Japan, Taiwan, China, actually the like mainland China, Australia, like remote Queensland, several Caribbean nations, Belize, Jamaica, The Bahamas, where else? I mean literally, just like all over all over the world, you know. And I’ve designed to go to other places. I keep wanting to chase in India, but India has been having sort of a drought lately. They’ve not had a good cyclone in about since the pandemic. So I’ve not had the opportunity.

 

Will Bachman  37:18

Now tell us a bit more about once you’re there, how do you actually zero in and make sure that you’re in the path of the eye of the storm? And I imagine maybe not, but I imagine that, you know, sometimes you might not have internet connectivity when there’s a big hurricane raging. So how do you stay connected? And how do you find, you know, navigate to the eye of the storm.

 

Josh Morgerman  37:44

It’s a really good question. So it depends on the nation. Chasing in the United States is very easy, because we have really good data connection and also a great radar network. As a hurricane is approaching the coast, as I was saying, you want to get into that center, you know, inside that, that ring of maximum winds, that is actually that has a very specific appearance on radar that actually there’s, it’s like a little ring with a hole in the middle. It’s a very specific target, and you can watch it on radar. You can watch it moving, and you could hunt based on that. A lot of countries don’t have radar you know, they don’t have radar networks, especially some of the poorer Caribbean countries, or, you know, other places, Mexico has radar coverage in some places, but not others. So then, when you don’t have the radar connection, then you have to use satellite imagery, which is not, you know, particularly it’s not high res enough, but it’s sometimes all you have to work with. So in each location, the tools vary, and you got to just make do with what you have. But it could be very challenging. You know, some of those chases in remote parts of developing nations where you don’t have a good data connection, you don’t have radar, those could be some of the toughest chases. Those are the real tests. Chasing in the US is easy. Anyone could do it.

 

Will Bachman  38:54

Okay, wow. All right. And for each one you mentioned very precise number, 84 hurricanes, do you have some kind of like diary or journal or log book that you’re tracking each one?

 

Josh Morgerman  39:09

Yes, okay, so I keep, I keep meticulous records of all my chases. And you can go on my website, for example, I keep so it’s so my, my brand name is I cyclone. So the letter i in the word cyclone, and if you go on my on my website, and you go to the Chase’s page, it has all 84 just listed right there. I constantly update it. Also, I have some really devout fans, like obsessive fans, who who keep my Wikipedia page. They made a Wikipedia page about me, and they and they keep my records better than I do. It’s like they’re kind of like sports fans, almost like they have all my stats, like, so it’s there too.

 

Will Bachman  39:48

Wow. Okay, so people are really trying. What makes for a really good report on the news? So you’re, you know, you’re being funded to go out there and report on these hurricanes. What? Makes a compelling news story.

 

Josh Morgerman  40:03

Well, it’s a good question. So my being a really hardcore weather nerd, for me, it’s always been about the hurricane. I just, I just want to be in the hurricane. Feel the hurricane. Experience energy, measure it. Okay. The TV networks tend to want the human interest stuff.

 

Will Bachman  40:19

You know, Rooster, that’s human interest.

 

Josh Morgerman  40:23

So, so I’ve had to learn how to kind of balance those things, because that’s, that’s, you know, it’s not as much of an area of interest for me. I’m really, like, a hardcore weather nerd. And also, the other thing is, and they also like the like to see the destruction, and that’s also, believe it or not, like, that’s also not a thing I’m as interested in either. Like, I’m not. People are like, Oh, you chase disasters. It’s like, No, I don’t chase disasters. I’m actually, yes, destruction is a product of a hurricane impacting a populated region. But it’s not what I’m I’m hunting, literally, the experience of being in it, that the energy of it and and the joy of measuring it and getting good data that’s going to give scientists the missing puzzle piece when they’re trying to figure out, like, what happened exactly, that’s what motivates me, but, but in terms of TV news, they want the damage and they want the human interest. They want the crying people. They want all that stuff. I try to balance it. I have a YouTube channel, and after my major chases, I make a video, and my video actually about Melissa. Again, I’m going to mention it because it’s so fresh and it was such a big Pinnacle chase that one actually broke from my usual style of only covering the hurricane to actually bring in the human interest, to bring in survivors talking about their experiences, because I found them so compelling. So many people just barely escaped with their lives. And the stories were unbelievable.

 

Will Bachman  41:46

How about you? Have there been anywhere you barely escape with your life? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

 

Josh Morgerman  41:50

I say the chaser, dude has nine lives. I mean, I mean, there, my God, so many. You know, you know that one in the Philippines, where I was rescuing people, the whole city went underwater, and another guy and I jumped in the water to rescue people. I was fine. I got out without a scratch. And God knows what was in that water is probably like sewage. It was in a city. But the fellow who was helping me rescue people, there was wreckage under the water, and he tore his leg open and and by the time he got home to Taiwan, he’s British, but his wife is Taiwanese, so they, um, that’s where they lived. By the time he got back to Taiwan, he was a day from amputation. His leg was just like, basically rotting off. So I got lucky, um, that hurricane in Cabo San Lucas. I was in a hotel, the hotel, a hotel, all the windows exploded at once, and I found myself, you know, crawling on broken glass with my legs all bloody. I rolled down a hill in Taiwan and dislocated my shoulder and a hurricane in Mexico and trying to wedge a mattress in the ceiling because the roof was ripping off, I strained a muscle and couldn’t use my arm for weeks. The list goes on, but I’m very lucky. I’ve never had any major injuries. Oh, and a nail went through my foot in Belize, I stepped on a nail. So all kinds of things. Wow.

 

Will Bachman  43:09

All right, I don’t want to forget this segment of the show. We could keep going about hurricanes, and obviously it made whole documentaries about you, which will point people to but tell us about any courses or professors that you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you.

 

Josh Morgerman  43:28

So folks are like, Wow, do you regret concentrating in History at Harvard, like, because you don’t do anything with it? And the answer is no. And if I went back to school, I would study the same thing. I actually have a passion for history. My focus was, was specifically Cold War foreign policy. And what’s so interesting is that, you know, we were, we were at Harvard in the late 80s and early 90s, as the world started to change, as the communist sort of countries started to one by one, you know, collapse or become free, or whatever. So it was like, all the training that I had at Harvard about Cold War containment strategies, it suddenly became like, like, everything I was taught became like irrelevant, because there was a sort of a new world order, just as we were finishing Harvard. What’s so interesting is that looking at big historical cycles, things have made a I think sort of they’ve come around again, and sort of those Cold War containment strategies that I learned at Harvard are, sadly, once again applicable, you know, and whether our government agrees or not, and I don’t agree with our current government’s policies, but I believe that threats like Russia and China, We absolutely do need to take a sort of a Cold War style approach of containment. So what’s interesting is that my training at Harvard now, you know what I learned is, is suddenly those principles are applicable. Applicable again. One professor I remember was Ernest May. One of his big things was historic. Analogy and how you know history rhymes a lot, and like you can, you can look at one situation and compare it to a previous situation and find commonalities. But he was also, despite being a proponent of historical analogy, he was also very aware, and talked a lot about the limitations about making comparisons that were, you know, maybe too aggressive or not applicable, but I find that I kind of carry his wisdom in my analysis of what’s going on in the world in terms of, okay, what things are rhyming, but how aren’t they rhyming? And sort of keeping myself from making, you know, drawing analogies too closely.

 

Will Bachman  45:41

Yeah, Josh, where can listeners go online to find out about your advertising marketing firm, which we didn’t really get a lot of chance to talk

 

Josh Morgerman  45:51

about, yeah, wanted to talk about that because that actually is another passion of mine. I’m a very passionate brand and advertising consultant. My company is called Symblaze, S, Y, M, B, l, a, z, E, and you can find out about that we do totally cool work. And if you want to follow my, you know, professional adventurer side, my like, you know, my TV personality side, it’s a i, Cyclone, the letter i and the word cyclone, that’s my handle on Facebook, on Twitter or x Now Instagram and YouTube, and you can also just google me and find out about all my cool statistics with my hurricane chasing if you desire to learn more about this twisted sport. Amazing.

 

Will Bachman  46:38

Josh, thank you for joining today. Thanks.

 

Josh Morgerman  46:41

Will I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks.