Hurricane Hermine In Review

Big Picture Review:

I know this is a few weeks after Hurricane Hermine has come and gone but I wanted to take some time to review what was the first Atlantic hurricane to strike Florida on over 10 years. The last hurricane to hit the Sunshine State was hurricane Wilma in October of 2005. Hurricane Hermine started out as the 9th tropical depression, became the 8th names storm and the fourth hurricane for the 2016 Atlantic season.

Let’s begin by tracking it’s progress from initial tropical wave to Hurricane Hermine. It was first noted as a tropical disturbance in the Caribbean Sea on August 18th. On August 28th it was finally designated as a tropical depression and continued to meander in the Caribbean. It became A tropical storm on August 31st and a upper trough that was pushing across the center of the country helped to steer Hermine towards the north and northeast across the eastern Gulf of Mexico.It became a hurricane just before it made landfall in Florida during the early morning hours of September 2nd.  Hurricane Hermine struggles fighting some dry air which is one reason it strengthened slowly and only achieved Category 1 Hurricane status before making landfall.  Once Hermine made landfall it weakened pretty quickly and became a post-tropical cyclone off the Mid-Atlantic coast where is spun and brought some pretty rough surf and some coastal flooding to parts of New England. Check out the full track of Hermine below

Chasing Hermine Recap:

When I realized the potential for what was at the time Tropical Storm Hermine to become a hurricane I quickly made plans to go down to Florida to chase it. I was not going to miss this. I knew this was going to be historic in that it would be the first hurricane to hit Florida in over a decade! My brother Jonathan and I lived in Miami, FL when hurricane Wilma hit Florida in 2005. We both realized we needed to go intercept Hermine and so we left Wednesday night, following our evening Bible study and drove down to Madison, FL. Our EWV Admins, Jesse and Dan both assisted us with navigation and giving us the latest information on the developing situation. I want to thank them for all their help! We could not have done it without them.

We arrived at our hotel at 1am on Thursday morning September 1st. We were pretty tired and knew we had a long day of chasing ahead of us. We put our a Facebook Live video that night giving everyone our plans for the morning and following day. At 9 a.m. we woke up and looked at the latest data to pinpoint exactly where we thought Hermine would make landfall. We found a small town, St. Marks and decided that would be where we went to start our chase.

St. Marks Lighthouse, approximately 8 miles south of the town of St. Marks is basically on a peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles east of Apalachicola, FL. Many of the other news crews and storm chasers had set up in Apalachicola. But we decided not to go that far west because each of the latest model runs had Hermine trending a bit further east. We spent about an hour or so that afternoon at St. Marks taking video and just enjoying being in the outer bands of the storm.

From there we decided to go into Perry, FL about 30 miles east. Perry, FL and the surrounding area were hit with a couple tornadoes late that night. I wanted to get to the Gulf again once more to see how conditions were. So we went to Keaton Beach FL. The local authorities had closed the roads due to flooding and so we parked ourselves near a rental condo and got some more film. Knowing that Hermine was going to make landfall around midnight or shortly after, and that I had to be at work the following day, we headed inland that evening around 8pm to Valdosta, GA.

At around 1:30 a.m. on September 2nd, Hermine made landfall just east of St. Marks, FL at peak intensity, with a minimum pressure of 982mb. Hermine became the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Wilma on October 24, 2005. What was I doing at 1:30am? I had left our hotel and was driving south on US221 back into FL to intercept the eye of Hermine as it moved ashore. I did that around 2:30am near Greenville, FL. Hermine had littered the roads with alot of treee debris. On my was back to the Hotel in Valdosta I found this tree along I-10 just east of Greenville, FL.

I was very fortunate and thankful for no injury to myself or damage to the vehicle. It was something I’ll remember. All in all the rest of the drive back to the hotel was pretty slow due to so much debris. When I got back to the hotel around 4am I knew I had just been a part of history by getting to chase Hurricane Hermine.

I want to let you know that I am actually in the process of creating a short documentary of our chase so be on the lookout for a teaser video on out YouTube channel! Till the next storm I will keep my eyes to the sky!

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