Live from the Chennault International Airport at our last stop of the Hurricane Awareness Tour.

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Afternoon everybody. Welcome to our last stop of the 2026 hurricane awareness tour. We're at Chanel International Airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Uh tours today are in the afternoon starting now until about 3:00. So if you're in the Lake Charles area, come on out uh to the airport to see the hurricane hunter aircraft. Uh this afternoon we want to talk a little bit about storm surge. And so first off here we have our storm surge specialist from the hurricane center, Cody Fritz. Uh and Cody, you know, we're in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We know Louisiana's very low lying. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the storm surge threat in the state of Louisiana in this particular area.

[00:00:34]>> Yeah, specifically when it comes to the storm surge along or the risk of storm surge in Louisiana coastline very very vulnerable to storm surge in this area and I think in recent years we've seen a lot of that uh play out with hurricanes like Laura, Hurricane Delta, all of those um in the last few years and you can see that it's very vulnerable, very lowlying, very flat, very easy to push water up and over land that would otherwise be dry um in this part of the country.

[00:00:57]>> Yeah. And whenever we do have a hurricane, it's always a lot of uh looking back at what the storm did, how much storm surge it produced. I know that's your team, one of your team's missions after the storm. One of the ways we do that is by actually flying aircraft over an area to see what kind of damage the hurricane caused. So uh here we have Lieutenant Nico Osborne uh with Noah's aircraft operations center, actually a pilot of the King Air here.

[00:01:20]King Air. Yes. Uh, and I think what's really cool is that you guys flew down to Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa last year to do just some of that surveying of both the storm surge and wind data. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

[00:01:29]>> Yeah, of course. Uh, so as you said, I am a pilot for uh our Noah King Air that we have back here. We have three of them. Uh, this one specifically is outfitted for doing that uh that imagery, that survey after the hurricane comes through. So, we're doing the damage assessment after it goes through.

[00:01:44]We're uh taking the coastal imaging and kind of stitching together a big photographic map of the damage that was done in the area. So, uh, in Jamaica specifically, that was a interesting case because we typically don't work internationally like that. But, uh, the state department, uh, gave us a call and requested us to go down there. So, we headed down to Jamaica and, uh, we were down there for about a week in total, just kind of flying all over western Jamaica specifically because that part was, uh, hit the hardest. And, uh, it was a very surreal flight. Uh I mean week really every single flight coming in and flying. At the altitude we were flying at it was between 1500 to 3500 feet. Uh so we have to be low enough to get you know clear the clouds for our imagery but uh still stay high enough to avoid terrain obviously but uh when you're that low you could see all the damage firsthand just looking out the window. And uh I've never seen destruction like that before. It was um I mean just absolute just almost complete destruction. And uh it was really really interesting actually as we were out there. The first day we got out there it was almost a dead airspace. There was nothing out there, nothing over the radios. Uh when we land that data is uploaded about two to three hours after uh after wheels down. Uh so that data gets pushed out and it's becomes available to people and they can actually get the first looks at hey what was the damage like in that area. And so the second day after that data was already pushed, we got out there and there were search and rescue helicopters and teams now that we were seeing out there with us that we were hearing over the radios who had been using our data. And if there were anyone that wasn't aware of what we were doing, they were hearing us on the radio saying, "Hey, we're doing survey area uh survey work in this area." And they would call us out. They say, "Hey, Noah 65, where can I get that data from? How do I see that?" because they're using the images that we're seeing to find out, hey, this town over here is completely shut off. All the roads got washed out. We need to send search and rescue teams out there. So, that was a really really uh significant impact and being able to see that and how it's used from uh uh international teams is is really really interesting.

[00:03:41]>> Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people appreciate the work you do. We appreciate the work you do. Uh that data also helps people like Cody actually go back and look at the storm surge models to see if they're pushing the storm surge far enough inland to see what actually happened.

[00:03:53]>> Yeah, I was going to say like it helps with response and recovery and it also helps us with our posttorm assessment of like how much storm surge actually impacted that area. So it's very very vital information.

[00:04:02]>> So yeah, so you know we wanted to showcase off the King Air because the other planes have gotten a lot of press this week on what they do flying into the storm, but this plane is also very valuable for us to see what happens after the storm. So, uh, again, last day of the hurricane awareness tour. Thank you to everybody who listened in this week, came out to see the planes. Uh, you have a little bit of time left to get out here to Lake Charles airport to see the planes this afternoon. Other than that, thanks for joining in this week and we will see you again next year on the next hurricane awareness tour.