Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast, brought to you by Mitre Brands University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sheri Conner and I am your host.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: But it actually, most of our errors that we make are not with direction, they're with timing. So, for example, if we say the storm's gonna make landfall, let's say in Venice, Florida, and we might be pretty close to right in that landfall location, but we might be off in the timing of when it's going to make landfall. So we're actually changing the math to include both timing and the directional component of arrow. So this is a really, really nice improvements to be better aligned with how people interpret the cone over the years.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: All right, so good morning. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast, and we're honored today to welcome John Cangelosi, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Cent.
Welcome, John.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for being here. And so, with years of experience in tracking and forecasting and communicating about some of the world's most powerful storms, you and your team have played a critical role in keeping the public informed and safe during hurricane season.
And it actually is right around the corner June 1st. And so, as we kick off this season, I'm thrilled that you're able to join us to share your expertise on storm preparedness, latest advancements in hurricane forecasting, and what residents can expect as we head into this critical time of year, and mainly what we can do to be safe. And so, John, thank you again for being here today. Before we dive in, can you start just by sharing a little bit about yourself? We'd like to hear about your background, your journey to the National Hurricane center, and any experiences or education that have maybe shaped your career along the way in meteorology.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. So, again, really happy to be here. And I have wanted to become a meteorologist since as long as I can remember. I mean, I grew up in New York City, so not in the hurricane belt, so to speak. But I remember at maybe the age of eight or nine, just being fascinated by the weather. And I kind of just chased that dream. You know, I come from an immigrant family, so that was looked at as like, well, that's kind of a weird choice. But I kind of kept rolling with it and then into college, learned more and more about it. And halfway through my college career, I transferred to the University of Miami. I spent all that time in New York, otherwise. And we got nearby hurricane threats. There was nothing that really affected the South Florida area, but there were a lot of threats. And Scares. And I became fascinated by it. And I was like, nope, I want to do hurricanes. This is definitely what I want to do. Because before that I was more into winter weather. But I went to graduate school, continued on with my studies, had a chance to fly with the hurricane hunters, which was amazing. Realized got this crazy appreciation for hurricanes. And though I'm not the brave men and women that are in the hurricane hunters, my stomach could not handle that kind of activity. However, after that, I got some really cool opportunities. My very first job was, believe it or not, still here at the National Hurricane center in a small branch, drawing weather maps. So just like surface analysis, meaning like what's going on today? Just sort of general weather across the tropics. And then I got promoted to a marine forecaster.
And then after that, a few years later I got promoted to a hurricane specialist. And then several years after that I got promoted to a senior hurricane specialist. And I've been doing that. So in combination, NHC has honestly been my home. I just hit my 20th year here. I've done just about every operational job here in the facility. And honestly, I just feel like I found my dream job. The combination of still doing meteorology, specifically high impact weather, but then also having the opportunity to communicate with the public and provide real things that can help save people's lives both during the event and also before storms like now, to help educate people prior to these.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Wow, that's amazing. People that go up into those storms that's, you know, borderline brave, borderline crazy, right?
I can't imagine. I mean, normal flights are enough to give me the jitters from time to time. Just a little turbulence. I can't imagine directly flying into a hurricane.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Well, if you ever get to talk to any of those hurricane hunters, I'll just say it's just another day on the job. But I could tell you as someone who's only done it casually that that's far from the truth for most of us.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm glad that they do it though. I'm glad that we have those tools and technologies to give us an idea of what's happening out there. And so as we launch into hurricane season, 2026 and 2025 was pretty quiet for us in the States. We didn't have any landfalls, just, you know, Jamaica got hit. But as we launch into 2026, what are the most important steps that residents in the coastal regions should be taking now to prepare themselves, their families and their homes?
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that is the number one question that we need to answer. As Florida residents. Right. I mean, I'm. First of all, I'm right here with you in this. Living in South Florida. So there's a few things we need to do. And I would say the first order thing is to figure out if you live in an evacuation zone. You know, a lot of Floridians and people elsewhere in the hurricane belt don't actually know if they live in an evacuation zone. They're not sure. Or if they think they do, they don't know what zone it is. So this is really easy to find out today. You could just Google your county and say evacuation zones. You can use an AI tool to say, hey, I live in this county.
Do I live in an evacuation zone? They'll pull up a map and you can figure out what letter you live in. Or maybe if you're lucky, you. You don't live in any of those evacuation zones. If you do live in an evacuation zone, this is super important.
You have to figure out where you're going to go ahead of time. I really would not wait until your evacuation zone being called to then say, well, where do I go? Here's the biggest problem. We have so many people when there's a hurricane threat to the state, they think they need to leave the whole state. And that is so far from the truth. All you need to do is find a friend, a family member, or a place to go outside of those evacuation zones. The reason those evacuation zones are there is that is the zone that we think that the storm surge flooding could get to. And that is really how we want to protect your life and your property. So the reality is you don't have to leave the state. You don't have to leave the region. You just need to get outside of those evacuation areas. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you got to take care of your property and your family. Right? And this is probably the biggest concern for the regular person, including myself, right? Because when there's a hurricane coming here, I have to work and I have my family left behind, and it scares me so deeply. So what I've done personally is I have impact windows and doors, and it gives me so much peace. My first home that I had here in South Florida did not have those. So I would be like, trying to put up those shutters or plywood before that, and this was just stressful and honestly, faulty.
Now that I have impact windows and doors, I feel like I'm prepared. I just clean up my patio, get everything indoors, and I feel like, all right, my home is safe. And that just gives me so much peace. The other thing we can do, too, is insurance is tough. I know how expensive it is. Again, I'm a Florida resident, too. But it is important for that extra layer of protection. You never know if you're going to need it. So make sure you have your insurance plan up to date and then take a look at your property. I tell my neighbors this all the time, and I live outside an evacuation zone, which is why I purchased there. Right. And I tell my neighbors, look at your property before hurricane season. Just take a look. Do you need trim some trees? Do you have some weak spots in your home or your roof? This is like an individual thing. If you do, it's really great to try to take care of those things before hurricane season, certainly before we get to the middle of hurricane season when we're likely going to have some threats around. So please kind of consider what your property needs. And then the other thing, Sherry, is that we also need to think about how to protect our family. Right. So protect your home and now protect your family. So what does that mean? That means, well, if you're not going to be evacuating, right, if you're outside an evacuation zone, then you want to make sure you have plenty of food and water on hand. Right? And the best and easiest way to explain it is imagine you're going camping for a week in a remote place. What would you need?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Right?
[00:08:30] Speaker A: That's kind of what you need here. You might be out of power for a week. You might not have your standard water for a week. Make sure you have enough medicine. Don't forget your great pets. Like, I love my pets. Don't forget them. Don't neglect them. Imagine you, you're all going camping for a week. Think about what you're going to need, and you'll likely be sufficiently prepared for the event. So that's kind of what I tell my neighbors, my friends and family to do. And they've been in all this. You know, my parents live in southwest Florida, been through Hurricane Ian a few years ago and Hurricane Milton right after that. So us Floridians, we have to be the strongest people here when it comes to hurricane season.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Yes. Excellent. I love all of those points. And I was ready with my list in case you forgot anything. And you didn't forget anything. That's amazing.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Look at. Thank you.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: I've been a floridian for almost 30 years now myself, and so been through many, many storms. And you always hope they don't come to you, but sometimes they do. And it is better to have a plan and to be ready and not to be caught off guard. Like what, you didn't know it was going to be a hurricane? This is where you live now, so exactly.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: There's a good side and a bad side to living here. That is the bad side. But we can take out some of that uncertainty.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Sure.
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And so here's a question, and this is probably more in your wheelhouse. When a hurricane is forecasted to approach, what should people be watching for or listening to in terms of official warnings and then what actions should they take as the situation develops?
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Okay, such a great question. And you know, I'm actually going to take like a sidestep to it first.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Because today it feels crazy with all of the noise. Right. Like a lot of people more and more today, as compared to 5, 10, 15 years ago, are using social media to get information.
And when you get on social media, it's really hard to know what's a good or a bad source. Like, graphics look pretty awesome. You have all these AI tools that can make things look scary. It's hard to know what's current on social media because the algorithm pushes it to the user at different times.
So it's really, really crazy. So the first thing I'll say, and this is an important one, is know the source that you're using. Not all sources are equal. You know, social media is great of how it kind of gets communication out to you quickly and kind of tailors it a little bit for your interests. But keep in mind, for every good source out there, there's probably two or three bad sources. So the first layer is use the good sources. And there's a couple of recommendations I have. So first, of course, I work for the National Hurricane Center, Sherry said. So I'm going to recommend the National Hurricane Center. Our job is to actually forecast tropical storms and hurricanes across the whole Atlantic and guess what? Across a bunch of the portion of the Pacific. This is all we do here at the center is forecast storms. So the knowledge base here is off the charts. We are the experts on this side of the world in forecasting these tropical storms and hurricanes. So please do use these forecasts. Yes. But we're sort of big picture meteorologists. We're kind of telling you where it's going to go and how strong it's going to be. But most people, of course, want to know, well, what does that mean for me? What's going to happen? Let's say if I live in Sarasota, what's going to happen in Sarasota, or I live in Miami, what's going to happen here? So the way the National Weather Service works is we have local forecast offices, 123 of them across the country, to break that information down for your local area.
So, for example, where your Sherry's in the Tampa Bay area, and they'll paint a picture about what's going to happen county by county, and that's really, really helpful. So I recommend, of course, the hurricane center and then the local National Weather Service offices. However, a lot of people have some sort of relationships with broadcast meteorologists or individuals. And if it's a trusted source to you and you feel like you've vetted them and followed them for a while, go ahead and follow them as well. But I don't want you to just follow random people and take advice from random people because it' going to steer you incorrectly and in the wrong way. I sort of want you to view this like if it was health advice or financial advice, I mean, you wouldn't be taking advice from people who aren't qualified there, right? And I want you to look at this the same way because this is really life and death situations in many occurrences. And Sherry, the part that bothers me the most too is if you sort of follow people that just generate too much hype, it causes a layer of fatigue. And then when there's something that's actually suppose, you know, you should be preparing for. You should be concerned for. You might be just so exhausted and saying, well, I prepared two or three times and nothing happened. I'm not going to do it this time. And that's the critical mistake, you know. So the best things to do is follow the hurricane center or the weather service or anyone else you trust. Keep in mind there's a few checkpoints here, right? So when the storm's five, six, seven days away, I want you to realize that there's not a lot of confidence in the exact details yet.
The average error at that range is still about 200 miles from where the center might be. The average intensity or strength there is still about a category off. So you don't want to be zoomed in on that's what's going to happen because there's going to be unknowns. But as we get closer and closer to the actual landfall, the confidence increases a lot. And that's where we start issuing watches and warnings. And when we get in those time periods, this watch period, this warning period that is meant for action. So we don't want you to go crazy and go off the long term hype. You can wait, do everything you can now ahead of season and then sort of wait for the watch period to really start to respond and go into action mode.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Such great advice. I love all of that.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: And you know, for a lot of new residents that have come to Florida since the last hurricane, or maybe they've only been here a year or two, it gets crazy with the hype. I mean, like almost every day you're going to hear it during the middle of hurricane season. So just stay calm, stick to the official sources, and I promise you, the hype is just not there. We don't get paid to do any hype. Neither does the local weather service offices. So we're just trying to go for accuracy and go for quality communication.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I have one more question and this is where I'm really curious. And I love how technology evolves and develops. I read recently that the National Hurricane center has made some significant investments to improve the forecasting. So, like, that cone of uncertainty has been improved. And then also we have customers and sales team members out in Hawaii. And so there are some storm surge warning improvements that have been implemented out there. And so I would love for you to share more about those improvements that help us all stay safe.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So, yeah, the Hurricane center is expanding out into the central Pacific. So I'll start with the Hawaii part first.
So we're working with our colleagues that are in the Hawaii Weather forecast office. And we're going to be issuing, if needed, storm surge watches and warnings this year for the first time ever for the island of Hawaii. And you know, Sherry, I should tell you that this year is likely going to be a pretty strong El Nino year. And what that means for interest in Hawaii is that the risk for tropical storms and hurricanes there goes up actually quite significantly. So we need to be very on guard for potential threats there this year. Good news for the people listening in Florida. The risk goes down here in Florida during those stronger El Nino years. Of course, you never know exactly where they're going to be ahead of time. But we thought this was definitely a good time to continue to expand efforts in Hawaii, especially given the El Nino approaching. So that's the one thing that's happening with the cone we've made Some really nice improvements. So we know the forecast cone is the most used product here at the hurricane center. Whether you get it directly from us or you get it repackaged on TV or you just see it somewhere else, every single time you see that cone, it actually comes from right here at the National Hurricane Center. They may just be plotting it with a different graphics package, but all of the information comes from NHC. Now in 2026, we're doing a couple of changes and I think these are really, really good ones. One is all of the watches and warnings that we issue are going to be actually shown on the cone graphic. And this is super important for anybody who doesn't live right on the coast. So, for example, let's say you live in the Orlando area. You would never be able to look at that cone, the previous cone, and know if you were in a hurricane or a tropical storm warning. We have it all colored in for warning areas, which kind of brings you right to the first hazard, which is, what impact am I likely to see with this particular event? So that's the first layer of change. The second layer of change has to do with how we're changing the math a little bit. And we actually have two different cones. So the second cone, the experimental one we're working on, has actually done the math differently than how we did the standard cone. So the standard cone uses the 67th percentile of errors. And here's how you can interpret this. This means two thirds of the time the actual storm center is going to fall in the cone, which means one third of the time it's going to miss the cone.
But unfortunately, most Floridians or people that use the cone don't look at it that way. They look at the cone as kind of an impact based decision tool. Like if I'm in the cone, then this might be my problem, but if I'm not in the cone, then I'm probably good. Right? And the cone actually never communicates that. The good news is given that we have that knowledge base, we're trying to be more representative to something closer to that. So the new cone is going to use what we call the 90th percentile, which means now 90% of the time that storm is going to stay in the cone and only 10% of the time it's going to move outside the cone. And we change the math to actually look at components of our error. So it's getting kind of in the weeds. But it actually. Most of our errors that we make are not with direction. They're with timing. So, for example, if we say the storm's going to make landfall, let's say in Venice, Florida, we might be pretty close to right in that landfall location, but we might be off in the timing of when it's going to make landfall. So we're actually changing the math to include both timing and the directional component of error. So this is really, really nice improvements to be better aligned with how people interpret the cone over the years. And I will tell you too, the good news here is our tools keep getting better and better. You know, like a lot of people know a lot about artificial intelligence today and how it's kind of working its way into the work field. And it's true here, too. We've had a couple new models, particularly one from Google called the Google DeepMind that has really proven to be a pretty good model. And it's probably going to help us improve our forecast using this model more and more in 2026.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: That's amazing. You know, we do tend to hover over the TV over what's happening when there is something out there brewing.
And like I said, I've lived here a long time. So Hurricane Charlie was supposed to come to Tampa, then Sarasota, and than it nailed Port Charlotte.
And obviously everybody does their best to calculate things out. And just watching some of the information that you guys produce just in how you do your forecast is very complex. It's not like you just make a random guess.
So to know that you're constantly tweaking and improving and helping us all have a more accurate idea of what we can expect and when we need to be buttoned up and when we need to be out of town, those kinds of things are so helpful.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: I appreciate that and I agree with you that they are. And just to kind of tell your audience is that the folks that work here at the hurricane center are super passionate about their jobs. I mean, this is. We live here in the state of Florida with you. We are trying to protect not only Floridians, but the whole country. And we just strive to get better and better. The coolest thing I could say being here is that the passion amongst the staff is just so great. The eagerness to learn and advance is amazing.
Most people that get a chance to work at the hurricane center kind of never leave just because of how much they really enjoy their jobs. And I'm sort of proof of that, just entering my 20th year here.
So I'm very grateful to work here and I believe strongly in the mission
[00:20:45] Speaker B: and service that we provide that's amazing. And so I do have another question. This is totally off script, but what is it like when there is a major storm going on? Does everybody just go in lockdown and nobody goes home and Everybody's on duty 24 7? Or what is it like at the National Hurricane center when there is a storm happening?
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Such a good question too, actually. You know, believe it or not, my 20 years here, we've only had to lock down once. So if we do get a direct threat towards South Florida, we lock into this building here in Miami Dade county that happened during Hurricane Irma in 2017, and we don't have a big facility. So, yes, anybody who is scheduled to be on shift working the event over the next few days would be locked into the facility. But since 2017, we got smarter, realizing that that's not super sustainable, especially if this happens a lot.
So we have a backup facility now in Lakeland, which is actually where the NOAA hurricane hunters are. So we have a designated space to go work there. So what's likely to happen if this happens again is part of the staff would head up to Lakeland and be situated to work there. Part of the staff would stay here in the Miami area to work at this facility. And if both areas are impacted, both Lakeland and Miami, then we have another backup facility in the Washington, D.C. area. So we're likely to split up the staff to make sure operations continues, to make sure we can continue to do our service regardless of our local impact.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: That's so smart. I love that. Well, John, I can't think of any other questions. I appreciate your time so much. Is there anything else that we should mention?
[00:22:19] Speaker A: I think we're great and I just want to thank you for helping, doing your part to keep people safe and all this communication is great. So I appreciate it. And I'll just say, as I say every time I do one of these sherryas, stay safe this hurricane season. Florida is an amazing place to live. I love living here, but it comes with one catch and that's hurricanes. So do what you can to stay safe and protect yourself and your family.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Exactly. I appreciate that. Thank you, John. Have an amazing day.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Okay, Take care.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Okay, you too.
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