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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. I am joined today again with my friend and friend of the show, the not yet Calvinist, Matthew Henson. How are you doing today, Matthew?
Always glad to have the correct intro. That's, that's where, that's where, uh, that's what I'm here for. That's right. I'm gonna have you a t-shirt made.
Uh, yeah, mine says five point Calvinist is yours is just going to say not yet and have the same exact design. That's right. I've got a five solos shirt. So, you know, that'll work. And that, and that, you know, that puts you in a really great camp.
Well, today we're going to be talking, uh, about something that's very different than what we normally talk about on the show. Usually we talk about, uh, theology or politics or some other type of social thing, but Matthew and I both live in Florida and this time of year, Florida becomes the target of the world's hurricane, uh, center and the focus of, of all of the hurricane news, uh, it becomes Florida and, uh, the Atlantic ocean and all that, that we, the area we live in and, and most Floridians know that this is just the one time of year that, that we know storms are coming.
We don't know when they're coming. We don't know how they're coming, but we know we got to start preparing and I'm going to do today. And, uh, I have some plans for some future episodes of what we, what I'm, what I'm calling the helping the brethren series where even though we're not technically talking about a specific theological issue, we're going to talk about things that are helpful to us as believers and one of the things we're called to do as believers is do life together and to, uh, use our specific gifts and talents and, uh, our, our, our ministry abilities to, to better the lives of those around us and help each other and minister to one another.
And, and Matthew has actually helped me, uh, because he is a person who is a student of, and, uh, a person who looks into and studies meteorology, particularly the, the behavior of storms. And so a few years ago, I actually had to go out of town.
I was with my family. There was a big storm coming. I think that we've decided that it was Dorian, but we, we haven't really, we haven't determined for certain, but it was, it was one of the times where we had to close the church and very few times in the last, you know, 15 years, maybe in the past or have we ever had to close the church, but we did, uh, close for one Sunday because the storm was literally going to be right here in Jacksonville and we were concerned.
We didn't know if it was going to veer to the right or come to the left. It was, and we didn't want people driving on the Lord's day out in the middle of a storm that could cause them to be caught into a flood or high winds or tornadoes or something like that.
So we just went ahead and closed the church and, and my family and I went to a friend's house in Valdosta. We were staying in Valdosta during the storm, which is, you know, over in Georgia, nice far Inland.
And I, I picked up on Matthew posting every few little while, you know, every few minutes, every couple hours, it was, it was an update on the storm and it was better than anything I was getting on the news.
I, and I'm, and I don't say that, I say that, you know, not to put him on a huge pedestal, but, but it was just, it was really, it was smart. It was insightful. It was much better than the, what I, what I can only describe as the absolute chaos that you get on the news, because everything, everything on the news is you're going to die.
I remember, uh, there was one guy, I think it was Shepard Smith, but I could be wrong, who basically said, well, if you haven't evacuated, you just want your family to die. Yeah. And I remember, I remember thinking, wow, this guy, uh, he is basically just gaslighting an entire state by saying, if you, if you, if you're not, if you're not willing to, you know, get out of the way of the storm, you just want your family to die.
That's not exactly true. Uh, people who have lived through hurricanes and lived through what we, what we in Florida just sort of, you know, called the fall or the late summer, early fall. Um, double meaning there.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, we, we understand that, um, we can't up and leave every time there's a hurricane coming, we have to make educated, intelligent decisions, and because you mentioned it, I do want to go back, uh, you know, on a theological note, the, the, the, the hurricane is what I believe.
And Matthew and I talked about this before the show, it is part of the fall. This is, uh, I don't believe there were hurricanes and tornadoes in the garden of Eden. I wouldn't, I wouldn't think so either.
And, and so, um, As people who live post fall, we have to learn to do certain things that would not have been a part of the life of man had sin not entered the world, you know, like I teach self-defense classes that would have been entirely unnecessary in a pre-fall world.
Uh, I teach people how to shoot guns that would have been entirely unnecessary in a pre-fall world. So the idea that we do have to do certain things that would not have existed in a perfect world and probably are not going to be part of the.
The new, the new heaven and new earth, because it's going to be a reconstituted perfect state. And so we, because we live in an imperfect, sinfully broken world, we have to learn how to manage these things.
And when you have somebody like Matthew that I have as my, what I call my personal meteorologist, who's that guy? Who's always flying everywhere. Uh, Jim Cantore. Yeah. You're my, you're my Jim Cantore.
You're my, you're my man. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, uh, so I'm going to ask him a few questions today and, uh, hopefully this will be a benefit to you, the listener. And, uh, you know, we're, we're just going to talk about some of the things that, that, uh, Floridians and Georgians, Georgians, uh, right.
Right. People who live on the coast, even South Carolinians, uh, you know, probably need to consider when we're watching the spaghetti models and all those things. The first thing, uh, Matthew, what are some of the, what are some of the things that are, would you say are often the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to, uh, hurricanes and their understanding when they're looking at the news, when they're watching these things, what are those things for you?
For me, I would say it's an unbalanced intake of information and that can lead you to some wrong conclusions. So your point about Shepard Smith or whoever it was, the storm will kill you and you need to run or else you don't care about your family.
Um, the fundamental problem is that the media hat, and this is applicable way beyond meteorology, the media has a profit motive. Um, they, you have to look at incentives. Their incentives are, um, make the storm seem bigger than it is, um, to frighten people so that they will continue to tune in because it turns out just the way God designed us.
When there is a threat or a danger, we are naturally on alert and we're paying attention and our, our faculties for taking in information are enhanced. Um, that's why in the middle of the night, if you hear a glass break, you're instantly on alert, your hearing becomes more intense, you know, you're perceptive to the tiniest changes and God gave us that to respond to danger.
So when you have these breaking news graphics and the bright red colors.
And you know, coming over the screen, sometimes it is breaking glass, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, you know, big wave or something, or you see the guy out there with my dad calls their parachute coats, then the weather channel loves to be out there. You know, we're fighting the storm and all that.
Um, you see people in, and I'm going to put it in quotes for the listener who can't see in danger in quotes, um, and you become alert and you're like, oh, I need to tune in and pay really close attention.
And then there's a commercial break. And so then you are more attentive to what they're selling. So that's the biggest problem I would say is that it's both, it's both a local and a national problem in the media of, of hyping these storms up.
Now, the other mistake that people make, um, I think is a, uh, a misallocation of preparation. So what's the first thing that happened when COVID hit is all of the toilet paper went away. Um, why did the toilet paper go away?
There was no logical because, because I will tell you what I think you tell me where I think it's because somebody said it was going away. I think it was because somebody said the toilet paper is, uh, you know, there's going to be a run on toilet paper.
And as soon as you hear that, you go out and buy some. And so does the guy next door. And so does the guy next door. And it's an artificial, uh, problem because you're creating the problem, but go ahead, I'm sorry.
It's okay. Uh, so hur, a hurricane's coming in immediately. What sells out bottled water every time bottled water sells out. Um, nevermind that people have cups and glasses and bottles and gallon jugs that they can fill up, um, in, in, uh, Puerto Rico and in other places that got hit people before the storm would fill up their bathtubs so they would have clean water and stuff like that.
We don't have that problem really in Florida. The last time we had a boil water advisory was because of a malfunction at the treatment plant. And that was like a couple of years ago and had nothing to do with a hurricane.
So people just going out and feeling like they just need to do something, buying canned food, buying bottled water. Most of the time, these things are not necessary most of the time. Um, so that's probably in, in broad strokes, the two biggest mistakes I would say that, that people make.
Okay.
All right. Now, when it comes to what I was seeing out of you and what I was seeing on the news was again, the first thing was a lack of hype. It was understand this is, this is what is potential. This is what can happen.
And, um, how do you, how do you, how did you learn that? How did that, was that something that, that you just sort of picked up as a hobby or have you, uh, have you been trained or is this something that you sort of trained yourself?
I know that you're, uh, you are a technical person by trade and, and, and probably like, uh, like me, a little bit of a tech nerd, uh, enjoy that kind of stuff, but, but how did you, how did you come to where you're at as far as understanding these things?
So I've lived in Florida my whole life. I went to college up in Northeast or Northwest Georgia, excuse me, um, for about four years. But every summer I was back and the hurricane season was there. And, and I grew up with these storms.
Um, for those who remember 2004, uh, when we had, uh, Charlie Francis, Jean and Ivan, which someone said sounds like a waffle house, wait staff, just hanging out, you know, one of my favorite jokes of the season, but we had four storms in about 45 days.
Um, and Ivan actually was the one that hit Florida, looped around in the Atlantic and came back and hit Florida again. So Ivan's Ivan made landfall twice. Um, that was a very powerful storm.
Was that the one you asked about on Facebook? You put a picture up of a storm that had gone through and circled back. And I, I, I w I couldn't remember. So I didn't know pine, but I know you. So that was the answer to your, to your, it was.
And then, uh, Ivan made landfall in the panhandle as a category four or five. I mean, that's, that's a powerful storm. And my grandmother lived, uh, North of Tallahassee. So very far inland, but still lost a number of huge pine trees that I couldn't even barely wrap my arms around.
And so I remember as a 10, well, yeah, as a 10 year old going over there with my dad and my brother and four wheelers and chainsaws, cause these were big trees in her yard and, and taking them down and having an appreciation for these storms.
But on the other hand, I have an extreme distaste for fretting and panic and people trying to hype each other up, especially when there's a profit motive. I don't think that's good. And so what I started doing is you would see this, you'd see on the, on the news.
There's always this cone, you know, and, and the national weather service does it in white, but of course the media always does it in red. Have you ever noticed that before the cone that they show on the local news is always in red and, um, always in bold letters above it.
It's like hurricane extreme danger track or something like that. And so I started thinking to myself, well, where do they get this cone from? And of course it said nhc .noaa .gov. And I was like, well, let's, you know, see what it actually is.
And it's just a much more dispassionate analysis of what's going on. The national hurricane center is probably one of the last parts of the United States government that has not been heavily politicized.
Everything in the government has unfortunately been politicized as we've seen with COVID and vaccines and healthcare and all of these kinds of things. But fortunately the national hurricane center and NOAA in general, climate change, notwithstanding has generally stayed true to the science and that's been very useful.
So what I started doing was just looking and saying, where are they making their predictions from? How are they coming to the conclusions that they're coming to? And you start looking at some of the models that they run.
You start looking at some of the data that they're intaking. And when they look at, okay, well, there's a front over here and there's a low pressure over here. And if this interacts with this, then it'll mean it's going to go this way.
And you start looking at all that information. And then you start, my brother and my father are both civil engineers by trade and by degree. And so then you start thinking about, okay, what does 30 mile an hour winds mean?
What does 50, what does 70, what does a hundred? And you say, how likely are we to get it? What's likely to happen? You start doing risk calculations. And I really enjoy doing that. And then sort of condensing all of that down into about two sentences to say, here's what's happening and here's what could happen as a result of that.
And that's, that's really where it, where it came from. Um, Dorian was the one, I think, where I started posting every couple of hours and then went ahead and made a dedicated page for it. And I've had more people come to me later on and say, thank you for posting that stuff about Dorian.
We turned off the news and just started hitting refresh on your page. Yeah, that was me.
Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, let me ask you this is, is the national weather service, the one that you're talking about, are they the ones that produced the spaghetti models or those produced by meteorologists?
How does that, where do those come from?
Does everybody talk about the spaghetti? So spaghetti models, if there was one thing I could do, it will be number two. Yeah. Number. So we won't go into number one. If there's the number two thing I would do for, uh, making hurricane season.
Less panicky would be to completely get rid of spaghetti models forever. Spaghetti models are horrible. Don't trust them. Don't look at them because what they are is, uh, it is a spaghetti model. For those who don't know is that, um, there are certain meteorological and mathematical models that take an initial set of conditions, uh, wind speed, temperature, this front over here, this ocean current over there, and then they make an educated guess and a prediction about where the storm is going to go and how strong it's going to get based upon those initial conditions.
The problem with a, when people call it a spaghetti model, a better word would probably be a spaghetti plot. It's when you have the track lines from multiple models shown on the same graphic. Now, the problem with that is that the human eye gives equal weight to each one of those lines.
So for example, with hurricane, uh, uh, Harvey, when it made landfall in Texas, Harvey spaghetti models had usually about 10 or 15 lines on them. Well, one of those was simply a straight line and it was, what if the hurricane continues on its current track?
It stops turning and it just locks into its current track and keeps moving in that direction. There's no math behind that. There's no meteorological data behind that. There's nothing. It's just, this is the current direction it's moving.
So, but your eye gives equal weight to that as it does a different model. Another one was a 60 year old model used by the U S Navy to decide whether or not a, a submarine can launch a ballistic missile through it.
Based on six. Yeah. Say that again. Okay. So, so there are certain United States submarines that have ballistic missiles on them, your nuclear missiles loaded on them and, and they can launch the missiles from deeply submerged, but once the missile emerges, if there is a S a sufficient amount of crosswind, it can interfere with the missiles ability to make it into space.
Okay. The Navy has a model to, to look at storms and decide whether or not you, they have ideal launch conditions because the idea is that you want your submarines to always be able to launch. And so if there's a storm on the predicted patrol path, even though the submarine is going to be way underwater, the Navy will divert it to go around that so that at all times it can launch the missile if it needs to.
And so that model is sometimes included on spaghetti plots, but it's, it's from the 1960s, it does not include any new information and it is horrifically wrong in most cases, and it's only answering one question, can I nuke Russia?
And so, and that's not useful for us. Um, anyway, there's a whole bunch of other ones on there, but a spaghetti model is not a good, a good thing to look at the two.
However, the can I nuke Russia? We'll probably get this podcast put on a special list. So that's probably true. Yeah.
That's yeah. You're welcome. By the way, theology and your hate speech. Weren't going to do it then.
Well, you know, the, the, those things on Facebook now, it's like you be concerned about who your extremist friends might be pretty sure. I'm the guy, the guy. Yeah. So, so now that my podcast has, has specifically addressed nuking the Russians, uh, we, we, we have reached a new level of extremism, but go ahead.
Yeah, sure. So honest, ignore spaghetti plots. Basically there are two, there are really two relevant models that really need to be considered when you're looking at a spaghetti plot, the very best one we have.
Um, and the one that is consistently had the best track record in the way we measure that is okay. Uh, the five day plot, it says that in 120 hours it will be here. And then we wait five days and we say, how far off was it?
And we, we get that, that error. Cause there's always going to be some error. The, the model that consistently has the lowest three and five day errors is from the European center for medium range weather forecasting, ECMWF, and the model is commonly simply called the Euro model.
Um, EURO for short. And so, so you'll even hear our local weather guy, Tim Deegan will occasionally say the Euro has it going this way. And they just refer to it as that as shorthand. Um, the European model runs, they run the model basically hourly, but they release it to the public every 12 hours.
So at 2am and at 2pm, we get to see the public gets to see what the model's predicting. The other one is the GFS, which is called the global forecasting system. It runs every six hours. It's not as good as the Euro because it's running faster.
And so they don't have enough time for the supercomputers to crunch on it. Um, but it's generally pretty darn, pretty darn good too. It's not quite as good as the Euro, but those are the two that we really look at.
Nice.
That really are, are relevant. I guess. I remember the 12 hour one from your update, cause you would say this is, we're waiting on this update, you know, we're waiting on, and when we see this, we'll know more.
Right. And again, most people watching the news are only seeing, you know, what the guy on the news is saying. And when, and when he says the Euro, this or the G what was it? GFS or GFS. Yep. Yeah. People don't know the difference.
They don't know the difference from that. And the, the, the spaghetti, uh, uh, nuclear, as far as they're concerned. I mean, those guys, I mean, those are Navy guys. They know what they're talking about.
Right. Now the models are used by the professional forecasters at the national hurricane center, which incidentally is based in Miami. Um, now I was talking to my wife about that and she said, yeah, that's right.
Where you would want to be for hurricanes. And I said, I kind of want the guys who are making the predictions to not be in the storm, this path, you know, uh, you can have hurricane hunters go out there and gather data, but I want the eggheads crunching the numbers to be somewhere safe.
Uh, but no, they're, they're based in Miami. So there you go. They can be in Walla Walla, Washington. Pretty much. Yeah. I was like, I'd put them in, in, you know, Michigan or something like that. Uh, so, uh, yeah.
So, so those, the, the national hurricane center creates the cone that we've all seen. And the cone is ubiquitous. It is the graphic that they show on the news. Of course, it's always red because more panic and whatever.
Um, but the cone is manually created. It is not computer generated. It is picked by a group of forecasters who are looking at the Euro. They're looking at the GFS. They're looking at some other internal models.
They have, they're looking at history. What have hurricanes in the past done when the ocean is in this particular state? And they are trying to track a likely path for the eye of the storm. And so that's what the cone is actually telling you.
It's answering a very specific question. Um, it's saying, well, we'll, we'll, we'll look at some graphics in a minute, but it's, it's answering a very particular question and it's important that you know that when you're reading it.
Well, now that you mentioned the graphics, let's, uh, let's move to that. Cause I know you, you had some things you wanted to show. If you're listening to the podcast, I want you to know that over the next few minutes, Matthew is going to be showing some things on the screen.
So if you're listening to listening to this on anchor or on apple podcast, you won't be able to hear what he is, uh, what he is describing, or you won't be able to see, I'm sorry, what he's describing.
You'll only be able to hear it. So keep that in mind. If you want to have a better visual of what he's talking about, you can find us on YouTube. Uh, you can find us and that's S GFC jacks at sovereign grace family church of Jacksonville.
Uh, this is where we, we post our pastors podcast and, uh, as well as on our Facebook pages. So, um, if you want to go find the video to see the graphics, uh, please do that. Just, just to keep in mind, you, you may hear some things over the next few minutes that, that, uh, you'll, if you're not seeing this, uh, may, may have some trouble discerning.
So, all right, brother.
Sure thing. So I'm going to click my share screen button here and we're going to look at hurricane Irma. So, uh, can you see what you need to see from your, your angle? So this is a cone diagram for hurricane Irma.
Um, and this is the classic cone that we all see during hurricane seasons. And, um, it has, of course a legend there's the hurricane warning is in red and all that, but I want to talk about specifically, what is this cone telling you, so the national hurricane center, um, every six hours, uh, or three, if it's an incredibly dire storm that is about to cause massive tragedy of life and limb, and occasionally they'll, they'll do more updates every three hours, but generally every six hours, they release an updated cone or track.
And here's what this cone is telling you. So you have this, uh, orange dot that tells you where's the eye of the storm right now, what they do is they go out 24, 48, uh, uh, excuse me, uh, 12, 24, 36, basically 12 hour increments.
Um, and then out here, there's a 24 hour jump and they draw a circle and that circle is where draw a circle that the eye of the storm has a two thirds probability of being in. So I'm going to say that again, they draw at 24 hours from now, where, what size circle would we draw that the eye of the storm has a, has a two thirds, a 67 chance of being in, and then go another 12 hours and draw another circle on another circle.
And eventually you have this, this, this not concentric, but you have this line of circles and then they sort of smooth out the edges and create a cone. So what the cone is telling you is at any given moment in the future, where can we say with, with 67 accuracy, the eye of the storm will be.
That means that the storm could, and very likely in some cases can be outside of the cone, uh, the eye of the storm. Uh, it means that it could speed up, it could slow down. The cone is the best guest from the national hurricane center, collapsing all of this data into a single graphic.
It's sort of like your GPA in school. The GPA does not tell you how long you studied each night. The GPA does not tell you if you got extra tutoring. It does not tell you if you partied or worked hard.
It is a single collapse number that is trying to give an approximation of how you, how well you performed in school. The cone is trying to tell us where can we say with a two thirds probability the eye of the storm will be.
Gotcha. So that's what it's saying. Now the NHC is very clear to tell you dangerous conditions exist outside of the cone. For example, here, uh, that's probably Tallahassee right about where my mouse is.
You might say, oh, in Pensacola, I won't see anything. Not true. Because if the eye tracks to the left of this cone, then you are very much under the hurricane. And so some people say, oh, we're outside the cone.
We're inside the cone. Not an especially helpful. I mean, it is, but it's, it's not a very precise measure. It's saying, where's there a two thirds shot of the eye being at this moment? That's the question that it's answering.
And so when you have something like this, and this is a three day cone, here's what you should know. The, the five day error for the national hurricane center on the eye of the storm is about 200 miles.
I'd say that again. Yeah. I would say what's what 200 miles is like from here to Orlando, right?
Yeah, maybe, maybe a little, I'd say probably here to like Vero beach or something. Okay. So at five days, the average error, meaning the average amount that the national hurricane center is off is about 200 miles.
Now that sounds like a lot, but that is five days and it's actually gotten quite a bit better as we've gotten more and more computerized weather models. Things have actually gotten way better. The three day error is down to around about 80 miles.
And so that's why whenever I'm making posts or talking about, about the position of the storm or anything like that, I will very often say, this is a five day. It doesn't matter. So the Euro model and the GFS model both run out to 20 days.
That's complete fantasy at that point. There's absolutely. They're never correct at that point. Um, anything beyond three days is questionable. Anything beyond five days, discard it completely irrelevant.
It's just not, the error is so big that you're talking about the difference between Texas or Alabama. And it's, you know, that that's not helpful information. Um, but the three day track is pretty useful.
So once you're within 72 hours, the national hurricane center has gotten pretty good at this and can tell you within about 80 miles where it's going to land and they're, they're pretty consistent about that.
Nice. So when you, I understand, of course, 20 days, that's ridiculous. And five days is even, you know, you're, you're stretching the bounds of what can happen. And I do remember you saying that specifically it's five days.
It doesn't matter. Um, so, but you're saying the three-day models are pretty accurate. Do you remember? And again, I'm asking you on the fly here. I know you may be prepared for this question. Do you remember, uh, in the recent past and maybe the last few years, since you've been really studying these things, do you remember any storm that did something totally unexpected where the three-day models were a hundred percent off and, and everything just, and what, and what are the causes of that?
What causes a storm to do something like the one in my mind? And this may, I don't want to take away your answer, but the one in my mind was the one that sat over the Bahamas for like three days, uh, which one was that?
Yeah. I mean, it just sat there. It didn't go left, right. Or, I mean, it moved like a foot or something. It didn't that's right. Yeah. And nobody expected it to just stop. Um, at least I, I, at least I, I didn't think anybody did.
What, what, what are your thoughts?
Um, so that was hurricane Dorian and, um, I can remember breaking character a little bit on my weather updates of being sort of dispassionate because, um, hurricane Dorian parked over grand Bahama for about 36 to 48 hours.
And it was the first time I had ever seen, and I'm going to share a screen again for just a second. Sure. It was the first time I had ever seen this part right here. So this is Irma movement West at 12 miles an hour.
This entire line was replaced by the word stationary and had never seen that before. It's always West Northwest at one mile an hour or something like that. But Dorian was literally stationary. And, um, while Dorian did not really affect Northeast Florida at all.
Um, it did park over grand Bahama for about 48 hours. Now the national hurricane center had predicted that it would slow down, but they did not predict that it would sit there for two, three days. And, um, sorry, tone's changing a little bit.
It was heartbreaking because we didn't even have any information coming out of the Bahamas. It was such bad weather that satellite phones were having trouble getting any kind of information out of there.
We just knew that there was 185 mile an hour storm, and we'll talk about Winfield in just a minute. But, but the winds on grand Bahama, the eye was sitting basically sort of wobbling around grand Bahama.
And it was getting the eye wall at 185 miles an hour for, for almost two days. And it caused unbelievable destruction and loss of life there. And the only thing it was just, the only thing we could do is literally just sit there and watch it.
You can't get rescue ships to them. You can't, there's nothing you can do. And it just, the utter powerlessness of all of our technology in the face of that kind of ferocious power was, um, I don't want to, I don't want to, to parallel myself with those who were actually there, but, but understanding what was probably happening on that island was just one of the most grim moments I can ever remember.
It was a severely dire situation. Um, and in fact, I remember posting, we're going to talk data because my heart just can't think of those people right now, and it did end up killing many hundreds of people.
Dorian storm surge was 42 feet high. The highest point on grand Bahama is 28 feet. And so that means that at moments there was no grand Bahama, there was only ocean. And so how anyone survived is, is a miracle.
Only God can answer. So why did Dorian's good.
I was just going to say, just, uh, there are moments in scripture where we see God's hand move in, in judgment. And I, and I want to be very clear that I'm not saying that that was a, a specific judgment on the Bahamas, but, but, but, but we see moments in like with Sodom receiving the judgment of God or, you know, other, other times when God moved in, in a way that is, um, just unfathomable when it, when we consider the, the, just the, the way he demonstrated his power and God is the God of all things, including the God of nature.
And when we see what we say, look at the sheer power of nature. Now you've heard people say that, and that's what we're seeing, but we have to remember that is only a fraction, only a, uh, uh, one, one led light on the full screen of God's, uh, massive power that he has, that he is upholding the universe by the word of his power that in him, we live and move and have our being.
And so moments like that, though, horrific, and they are, are a, are an important reminder of just how small we are. Like you said, we couldn't even get a ship in to rescue. Yeah. I'm reminded of not just a few weeks ago.
There was a ship in the, what was it? The Panama canal that got turned to us. Yeah. That turns to us, can I turn sideways and got stuck in the sand and we couldn't do anything. It was like with, with all of our, you know, we can send a robot that goes to Mars and takes beautiful pictures better than I can take on my phone.
And we gotta, I get this kid, we got pictures coming back from Mars that are just high quality, high def. Um, but we can't move a ship that's stuck in the sand because we, we still have this limitation called humanity.
And sometimes the world demonstrates just how small we really are in comparison to the, to the, to the power of the world. And then again, that's just a small piece of the power of God. So it's just as horrific as it is.
And it is, it's an emotional wreck, but to try to take a step back and look at it from a theological perspective and say, um, you know, what a, what a mighty God who is, who is able Jesus, you know, he, he said, peace be still in the storm ceased, you know, that demonstrates the power of Christ who, who is able and, uh, I don't know, just, just, I thought about that as you were saying it.
So, uh, continue on, you were, you said about the wind field, I think. Yeah.
So, so two thoughts on that just last night at our, our praise team practice, we read Psalm 46, um, and that Psalm, uh, cause we're doing the song that, that quotes that Psalm. And so we like to take, if we have a song that is specifically based on a specific passage of scripture, we like to go through that with the praise team.
Um, and it says we will not be moved though. The earth gives way though the mountains are thrown into the sea, uh, because God has overcome and Psalm 46 has that be still and know that I am God, which we think is like, oh, just be peaceful and, and rest in God.
But the verse right before that is saying he shatters chariots, he destroys walls, he overthrows kingdoms, be still and know that I am God, meaning shut your mouth and, and recognize the awesome power of who God is.
And, um, the other thing that came to mind to your point about, is this storm a specific judgment on the Bahamas? I don't think so. Uh, and there's a scene in the help. If you've seen the movie where, uh, I think it's Abel and says, uh, there's a tornado comes through and she says, God don't, God don't pay any mind to color when he decides to set a tornado loose and it's like 10 black people and eight white people or whatever it was were killed that night by the tornado.
And, and it's just, um, you know, the, his demonstration of his power affects all people, you know, though there are specific cases where in like Sodom's case, they were specifically judged.
Sure. Well, I think, I think, uh, just to, because I do want to mention this, you brought it to my mind with the referencing that movie, um, when Katrina hit, there were so many people who said that was a judgment of God because of the casinos in that, you know, in, in, in, uh, and the voodoo stuff or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah. And I said, you know, how many churches were destroyed in the midst of that? How many, how many Christians died when the, you know, when, uh, The, the floods came and, you know, people were, people were having to live in the stadium because they couldn't live in their homes.
I remember it was horrific with what happened with Katrina. And, and, and, uh, there was some, some Yahoo on, on Christian television who came out and said that Katrina was the Greek word for judgment.
Uh, I said, I said, I said, no, no, it's not. It's crema is the Greek word for judgment. Not Katrina doesn't even, doesn't even sound the same. Uh, even though it starts with a K and ends with a, uh, it's not the same word.
Uh, yeah, but, but, uh, I remember somebody in our church actually said that, oh, well, Katrina is the Greek word for judgment. I said, no, it's not. And whoever told you that is demonstrating nothing more than their, than their willingness to lie to you, to make some, to make a point.
Yeah. And, uh, and Jesus tells us in Luke, uh, one of my favorite passages, you know, somebody came to him and said, um, you know, there were people who the tower fell on them, it's Luke 13. He said these people who the tower fell and Jesus said, were they worse centers than you?
No, no. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Yeah. And that, that, that was my answer to that lady.
I said, you know, who sinned, was it this man or his parents? Uh, neither, uh, was this way so that God's glory may be, may be revealed. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. On the subject of God's just on, on the power of some of these storms, I wanted to show one of my favorites.
Uh, this is typhoon tip. Um, so if it's in the Pacific, it's called a typhoon. Okay. Uh, and hurricanes are in the Atlantic. Typhoon tip holds the record for the largest hurricane on record in terms of how much land or surface area of the world was it affecting in this picture?
It looks like a big, scary storm, but you have no frame of reference. You have no land masses or anything around here. This is an idea to give you an idea of how big typhoon tip was at its largest size.
Wow.
Yeah, that's, that's amazing.
So listener, if you can't see this, just Google typhoon tip and scroll through the Wikipedia article. There's a diagram that shows that the, the Western most portion of typhoon tip, if it was placed at California's coast, basically the Eastern portion would reach all the way to Iowa.
It would cover about half of the continental United States. That's how big of a storm typhoon tip was. Um, praise God, it never made landfall at that size or strength. That did do some damage, but, um, that's one of the records, uh, uh, of hurricanes.
Now, um, we wanted to talk a bit about wind field, uh, because this sort of bringing it back down to a practical level, part of the problem, when you see a picture like this, this is hurricane Irma, um, when you see a picture like this, you tend, when people hear this is hurricane Irma, it has 160 mile an hour winds.
People hear that and they think out here in this band or out here over here, or like somewhere down here, or even as close as this, that there's 160 mile an hour winds that are going to destroy your house.
It's not true. One of the best, uh, antidotes against media panic I can give you is the National Hurricane Center's wind field map. And the wind field map is answering a very specific question. It's saying, you know where the eye is, how far from the eye do you have hurricane force winds?
That's 74 miles an hour or higher. And the wind field plot can tell you that. So here is a hurricane Irma's wind field plot. The brown area is hurricane force and the orange area is tropical storm force.
Now tropical storm force winds means 39 miles an hour, one minute average. So it means for one minute, the average wind speed was 39 miles an hour. For some perspective, there is no structure that is legally allowed to to be built in Florida that is, uh, or rather the minimum for like North Florida, way outside of the hurricane zone is 110 miles an hour.
So every structure, not including mobile homes or manufacturing homes, but every, every constructed building in Florida, so I want to ask about that.
I want to circle back. I'm going to pull that, you know, pull the Joe Biden lady, uh, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to circle back. Cause I do live in a mobile home. So, so continue, but we're going to come back to that.
We'll come back. Yeah. I want to know when I need to leave, but go ahead. That's right. That's right.
Uh, so, uh, in South Florida, in fact, hospitals and they call it critical infrastructures, power plants, hospitals, police stations have to be built to withstand 200 mile an hour sustained winds. No storm has ever made landfall at that speed.
It's never happened before. In fact, this stuff, and, and this is the surf side towers collapses, of course, a huge tragedy and all that they've been calls for tougher building codes. No, Miami Dade County has the toughest building codes in the entire country and arguably the world.
There is no place in the world where we build buildings tougher than South Florida. And in fact, the building codes are tough in North Florida and they get stronger and stronger as you go South. There's actually a map I could show you where they have to get stronger.
Um, to build a house in the keys, it must withstand 180 mile an hour sustained winds. That's tornado, easily tornado range. Um, but here's the thing. When you have a storm that has 180 mile an hour sustained winds, that's in the eye wall.
That's a comparatively tiny, tiny little fraction of the storm. In fact, when you look at this picture here, no, not that one. Hurricane Irma. This was the national hurricane center's wind field diagram for when Irma was right about here.
So this area right here had hurricane force winds. That's 74 miles an hour or greater. That means that the 120, 130, 150 mile an hour winds were concentrated in a tiny, tiny area, smaller than the size of an average Florida County.
And so when you hear things like a hurricane is coming, the hurricane has a 50 chance of hitting you. And the hurricane has 150 mile an hour winds. That's not true. It's simply not true. The hurricane does have 150 mile an hour winds in this hypothetical, but the chance of those 150 mile an hour winds specifically hitting your house is usually absolutely tiny because it's almost a pinpoint moving across the plot.
Um, and this wind field diagram can help tell you that a hurricane force, the hurricane force plot, the Brown area, um, those winds you want to be inside. You don't want to be driving, but no structure in Florida is going to be threatened by hurricane force winds.
If it's not a manufacturer or mobile home. And now let's, let's go to manufacture to mobile homes for a minute.
Uh, but, but, well, before we do, I do want to, I want to clarify for the listener, we're not saying that this, these, these winds don't hit anyone. They do. We're just saying that it's, this is not the whole storm.
We're not saying that no one has to be concerned. You need to be concerned if the eye is coming directly at you. If you're, if you're going to be receiving these 100 and 150, you know, force winds, we have to consider that.
And we have to consider things like trees and other things too. Right. Or if your house, if your house is surrounded by, uh, you know, oak trees that, that, that tend to fall over in storms like this, then you have to consider that too, but, uh, but yeah, I live in a, I live in a double wide home, uh, which, uh, some people consider as subpar.
And I realized that there, there, there, there are people, you live in a trailer. It's not a trailer, man. It's not like I live in the back of a, you know, uh, uh, you know, a box truck that's been drugged down the road.
I live in a mobile home that was built, uh, in 2003, which I understand is after many of the standards changed. Uh, and so it has things like hurricane clips, you know, on the roof and, and things like that.
But what, what are the, um, what are the differences for a mobile home? Live a person who lives in a mobile home and a person who lives. Cause I'll tell you where, what I do, my wife and I've already decided that if we think a storm is going to hit that we don't think our house can stand, we would go to the church.
Our church is a steel building. It's rated for 120 mile an hour winds at minimum. So, you know, and, um, you know, we kind of have a plan, uh, and thankfully we have that ability, we have somewhere to go and we have had church members who've come and stayed at the church.
Uh, but, but what, what makes the mobile home more susceptible other than the fact that it's up off the ground? Is that what it is? Or is it.
It's that, and they tend to be lighter. So, um, than a traditional construction, that's why they can be mobile. That's why they can be moved. Um, and so if wind can get up under that mobile home, it has a chance of being able to, to rock it around and mobile homes do not do very well with being rocked back and forth frequently.
Uh, when they're moved, they're placed on a flat bed, they're anchored in place very securely. They get bumped around a little bit like that, but actually swaying back and forth or anything like that is very, very problematic for a mobile home.
Second, they're just thinner. The walls on a mobile home are simply not as thick as a normal house. They're not typically built on a slab though they can be. Sometimes you pour a slab, place the home on it and anchor it to the slab.
That's certainly better. Uh, but not all people have that as, as, you know, as their situation, every mobile home has a wind rating. And code now requires that they be installed to a certain, uh, specification.
And so you, what you have to do is you have to, you have to do risk analysis. And this is where we get a little bit of math. Um, you have to say, does the storm have winds that are capable of, of damaging my home and hurting me?
Because if your home takes, your home is going to take damage. There's nothing you can do about that, but whether you're in it, when that happens, that is something you have control over. So, uh, is this house going to take damage beyond a blown shingle?
If it is going to take damage, what is the likelihood of that damage harming me or my family? Yeah. Uh, um, and then once you know that, then you can begin to make some preparation. So a storm like Irma with its wind field being the size that it was, and you're five days out and you know, the average error is 200 miles and that can be left or right.
So if you're in the dead center of the cone, there's still a pretty good shot that it's going to end up 200 miles over here or 200 miles over there. And you're basically going to, a hurricane is a regional weather event.
Sure. But to get the winds that could actually harm your house, you're basically going to need to be hit like a bullet. I mean, it is a, it is a very tiny area. It's about the size of, like I said, an average Florida County is the wind field.
Now every storm is very different and you need to take that into account, but, but that's what you're looking at. And if you're inside of that wind field of hurricane force wind field, then you might need to, to, to make some decisions about whether or not you're going to leave, plus the inconvenience of living without power or if water is disrupted, which if you're on a well, then that is a, that is an issue if you don't have electricity, but if you're on city water and sewer, again, it's never been disrupted, they have backup generators for those things and it's never usually been much of a problem.
So that's what I would say to that.
Yeah. And you may or may not know this. Uh, I live on a well. Do you know if wells are compromised by like flooding and things like that? Or is it because it's so deep? It shouldn't matter.
Not usually, no. Um, wells typically, even if it's a shallow rock, well, 60, 70 feet or so is, is usually more than enough. Um, the, the, in fact, ironically enough, people with wells can be safer if a treatment plant is flooded and you have all kinds of nasty water flowing into the, whatever, and they put you under a boil water advisory.
Well, water is normally actually, ironically enough, safer. Yeah. Yeah. You just have to have electricity to drive the well.
Yeah. And that's what a generator, that's why we do have a generator. Yep. Uh, I had a, had a funny story. Uh, I'll make a quick, quick story. I had a, had a lady come recently, uh, to talk about solar panels, because I was thinking that solar panels would actually be a benefit in a storm because when other people lose power, you'd have solar and be able to have your power.
But then what she told me, and I didn't know this, and this is another thing for the listener. Your solar power actually doesn't power your house. It powers the grid and you still get your power from the grid.
Uh, and, and I said, so wait a minute. So if the power goes out to everybody else and I have solar panels, I lose power too. And she said, yes, I said, that's not what I want. And she says, well, then you don't really want solar.
You want a whole house generator. And I said, yeah, I said, okay, thank you. You just lost a sale, but thank you. And, and cause that's really what I, what I, and that's what a lot of people, you know, we can't have many people can't afford that, but having a good generator is a, is a, you know, a few years ago, one of the hurricanes came through while Jennifer was pregnant with, um, I think she was pregnant with faith and, um, I was worried about us losing power and being without power for a few days and her being, she was great with child.
If I could say yes, understood. And that could be a problem. Yeah. And, and I didn't want to have no ability to have power. So going and getting a generator was, uh, and the good people at home depot in St. Mary's Georgia held us one because my wife was pregnant and they would, they had sold, they had sold out in Jacksonville and we called the St. Mary's and the, my wife was, the lady was so sweet.
My wife said, I'm pregnant and I have this, you know, I want, you know, I want to be safe. And the lady said, well, we'll hold you one. And they put our name on it. And so the shout out to the good people at home depot and there we go in St. Mary's Georgia.
All right. So I, I know we've been talking for a while. I hope we've, I know we've given some great information to folks, but I want to, um, I want to ask you, was there anything else you wanted to mention before we begin to draw to a close?
Was there something else you thought that you wanted to say, maybe like a lightning round here at the S at the end?
Uh, sure. I think the other, one of the other things, and again, most of the, or almost all the information I've been pulling is from NHC .noaa .gov, which is the national hurricane centers website. There's one other graphic I wanted to show, um, very briefly before we, before we sign out, and that is this one.
This is the graphic. If you want to plan, should I leave or not? The hurricane force wind speed probability. So this is the national hurricane center saying, what is the likelihood of you having a one minute average of greater than, than 75 mile an hour winds at your location?
My advice to you is that if that is going to be the case where you are, probably a good idea to have, not probably, it is a very good idea to have a plan on where to go and you may want to execute it just for, for down trees and power outages.
This is the archive from Irma. And so this was on September the 10th. And you can actually go here into the archive and, and bump it ahead a couple at a time. So you can see that the storm by this point had no hurricane force winds, so the probability was zero.
There was no chance of hurricane force winds. But as you're planning out, and Irma was say here at five days out, you're saying, all right, 10 to 20 chance in Jacksonville, that's where we are. And so you're saying, okay, this is a 10 to 20 chance in the next five days, I'm going to see hurricane force winds.
And then as it went forward, it started going to the West. But if these colors where you live, start getting darker and darker, you know, that there's a higher and higher chance. The reason I like this graphic is because unlike the cone, this takes into account the size of the storm, how far out from the eye, the dangerous winds are, and this is the graphic I would use to help predict, okay, should we stay or should we go, should we prep, should we buy extra fuel, that sort of.
Dude, that's money right there. That, I mean, that, that right there is I'm, I've never seen something so specific like that. I mean, everything you see, like I said, this big red blob, oh, it's going to cover the state.
But this is like, this is like drawing a line with a marker saying here. And of course this is looking back in time, right? Yes. But it does show you that one that you got to, if you don't mind, click through it again, get to where it went, went away.
That was amazing. It was like, okay, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane, hurricane. And nope, no more, no hurricane. Yeah. But the storm is still there, but it's not a hurricane anymore.
Right. At this point, there was no, there was no place in the storm that had 74 mile an hour or higher winds. And so at that point, the probability is zero it's over land. It's not going to restrengthen.
That's the thing. If you want to do tropical storm force, you can do that too. Obviously it's a much bigger field because that's a lower standard. And let's just motor our way. You can see here, there was a time when Jacksonville had a 80 chance of tropical storm force winds.
Now, again, that's 39 miles an hour. That's gusty. I wouldn't want to drive in it. Jacksonville closes its bridges at 40. Um, so that that's good to know. There's an 80 chance that within the next five days, the bridges are going to be closed.
That was good to know. And then as the storm inched onwards and it was like, okay, 90 or higher, we're definitely going to get it. Um, and then you can see it. What it did was it blew up like this. The storm got way bigger, but way weaker.
So it became this huge regional weather event, but it wasn't particularly intense. Wow.
That is amazing. That's good information. That's very helpful. And for anybody who lives in that purple circle, which is all of us, I think this is, this is very beneficial.
Absolutely. And this, this last one is the actual history. So this is, this is not prediction. This is what actually happened. And so they know that inside of this tail, the yellow is tropical storm force again, 39 miles an hour, and the Brown is hurricane force 74 or above.
This is where those winds actually happen. So we can see how good their predictions were. And you can see as we go up and you're going to see that starting to get thinner and thinner, and then finally it comes to a point and stops right there.
At that point, there was no more hurricane force winds. So Jacksonville got a lot of tropical storm force winds from Irma. It never saw hurricane force winds though from Irma.
That is so wild. That's again, I had no idea that all this information was available and having somebody like you to guide me through it as a, as a real blessing, you're a blessing to the brethren.
Well, thank you. And here is a history of the cones. This is just the cones played every half second as time went on, you can see the time changing in the bottom left. And so this is showing you what their prediction was and the wind field at each moment.
And so, uh, long about, uh, September the sixth Jacksonville was quote in the 72 hour cone, and then long about September the eighth Jacksonville was in the 72 hour cone, um, and then the storm kept moving and anyway, you can see how their predictions fared.
It went up the West side of the, of the state and what ended up happening.
Where. At a certain point it was predicted to go up the, up the East side. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. So that's where I would, that's where I pull my data from. And when I'm making advisements to people, that's, that's really what I'm looking at is what is the, cause really you don't actually care where the hurricane goes.
You want to know where I live and where I work, what is the chances that there will be dangerous winds? And that graphic right there shows you how, how to find that.
That is so, so super helpful. And, uh, and I appreciate you going through that with us today. That was a lot of fun. Um, and I have a, I have an interesting question to sort of round out the show. Uh, if, if I know you probably don't want a bunch of people sending you friend requests who you don't know because you don't want to, but how, but is there, do you, didn't you said you made a page for Dorian?
Okay. Well, um, in the future, as I'll let my listeners know, cause many of you are, you know, you find us through our church page. You find us through, uh, through my personal page. Some, some of you find us through YouTube.
What I'll do in the future as, as Matthew posts, are they public pages that you make?
Are they? Yes. Okay. So the page is called Northeast Florida hurricane updates, and it is specific for Northeast Florida. So if there's one just hanging out in the ocean somewhere that is not predicted to affect us, I won't post there because I don't want to, I don't want to blow people's news feeds up.
It's like, if you get a newsletter from a company three times a day, you just route them to spam because you're tired of seeing them. So I only post when it has potential relevance to Northeast Florida within the next week.
Gotcha. Well, so, so there it is. So you can look for it on Facebook. It's Northeast Florida hurricane updates and it's updated by my friend and personal meteorologist, Matthew Henson, the not yet, not yet Calvinist, uh, not yet Calvinist meteorologist.
That's right. Calvinist meteorologist. And, uh, we're very grateful to have you on the show today. Always enjoy seeing you and talking to you and, and thank you for your friendship and for your time. And thank you.
Thank you. Listener for being with us today. Uh, hopefully this was educational for you as it was for me. And hopefully we will all be safe as we know the season of hurricanes is upon us. So we'll be praying that the Lord continue to watch over us in this season.
May God bless you. And thank you for listening to coffee or cow conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.
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May God be with you.