Science and technology being applied to deal with them today. After that, Prime Ministers questions from the british house of commons. Then a campaign profile of joe biden. Host eric jay dolin, in your new book about hurricane history i , thought it would be interesting to start our discussion with one of the stories you tell because its the deadliest hurricane in American History and also the 120th anniversary. Eric in early september, a hurricane was fully making its way across the atlantic going inbetween cuba and florida, but the local meterologists in galveston, texas, isaac kline, based on his understanding of how hurricanes operated, he had told residents of galveston that the odds of a hurricane hitting galveston are virtually nil. The laws of hurricanes indicate that hurricanes would rarely hit texas. They were lulled into a false sense of complacency. As the hurricane got closer and closer. Isaac kline became more and more alarmed. It was really up to the Headquarters Office of the Weather Bureau in washington, d. C. To decide whether or not a hurricane was coming and whether or not you needed to put up hurricanes warning flags. The local meterologists such as isaac kline had left latitude in calling the shots. So on the morning of september 8, a saturday morning, he started to notice that the water and the waves and the winds coming off the gulf of mexico were getting stronger and stronger and he got quite concerned. There was no calling for a hurricane. The Weather Bureau hadnt indicated a hurricane was coming, but isaac was quite concerned and he relayed his concerns to the Weather Bureau, but by the time that he did so, the storm was so bad, that the telephone lines had been knocked out, so by that time, galveston was becoming inundated with an enormous storm surge and part of the problem that isaac klines view is that he and other meterologists didnt understand the importance of storm surge. He thought that if the hurricane ever came near galveston, the waters are very shallow offshore, the waves would break and most of the water would travel around galveston into the lands and bay behind it. Because he didnt understand storm surge and as this massive category 4 hurricane was coming into galveston, it was pushing an enormous wave, an enormous mound of water and that mound of water with the waves crashing and tumbling on top of it had slammed into galveston that day and essentially turned galveston into a lake, massive destruction, houses were torn apart. At least 6,000 people died on that day, but because it was tourist season and people were visiting from other parts of the United States and the world, well never know the exact number and some estimates have it as high as 10,000 or 12,000 people dying on that day. As you noted, it is the worst Natural Disaster ever to hit the United States by far and its a hurricane that every year, when we have Hurricane Season, there are always stories on the great galveston hurricane of 1900 because it was so horrific and the story behind it and the failure to warn the residents of galveston in advance of the hurricane makes for tragic and dramatic reading. Prior to the hurricane, it was quite the community, you described it as the wall street of the southwest. What was its recovery like . Eric well, it was really levelled and part of the problem was that a few years after the hurricane of 1900, galveston, before the hurricane struck was to be the leading port in the United States. It was already the second or third and it wanted to be the leading port. They just dredged the harbor so larger ships could come in, but the hurricane basically knocked them back to square one and worse for them, houston soon thereafter became the leading port of texas because of the discovery of black gold or oil in texas and so development passed galveston by to a certain extent. It was an important port, but it was knocked on its heels. The people of galveston decided it was necessary to rebuild and to fortify their city against hurricanes that they knew would come in the future. So they unshelved a project that had been razed years before and that was for building a sea wall around galveston. Not only did they build an enormous sea wall around galveston, they jacked up all of the buildings in galveston by quite a few feet and then they took sand from offshore and filled in the area under these buildings, so essentially the profile of galveston was much higher than it was on the eve of the hurricane in 1900 and not only that, they had an enormous sea wall to keep them from being buffetted by the storm surge and waves that worked quite well because in 1915, another major hurricane struck galveston, but the death toll was far, far less, it was in the 10s and 20s and the destruction of housing was much less than what had kurd what had occurred in 1900. So their investment was a wise one. Throughout the book, there are stories of both economic and Racial Discrimination on populations and the preparation and aftermath of hurricanes. Tell me a story from galveston that illustrates that. Eric galveston has black residents and white residents, an affluent community and middle class and poor people as well. After the hurricane, they had to collect the dead bodies and many black men at gunpoint were forced to do this horrific deed. Also, there were a lot of people wandering around shellshocked essentially and although there was probably a little bit of looting that took place, it was not widespread. Nevertheless, the National Media started to run with numerous stories of ghouls wandering around galveston, cutting off peoples fingers and ears and many of them being shot. One report has these ghoulish individuals who are almost always identified as black men wandering around. One indicated that 75 of them had been shot dead. However, more sober observers including the editors of some of the local newspapers said that that was all extremely exaggerated, maybe a few people were shot dead because they were looting and the looting was divided equally if at all between blacks and whites. But that was just reflecting the racial stereotypes of the day, these reports that these black ghouls wandering around stripping people of their possessions. As a writer, how did you get interested about writing a book about hurricane history . Eric every book that i have written has been on a topic that i came up with except for two. The way i came up with topics is just whatever interests me. Its like brownie in motion. I write one book and i read something while researching that book that has an interest in another book. I have loved marine biology, but the two books that i didnt come up with the topic for are my white house book, that was proposed by my editor and this book. I had long thought about writing a book about a hurricane, a single hurricane and the most likely candidates were the galveston hurricane of 1900 and the great hurricane of 1938 which plowed into long island and then into new england where i happen to live. But there was a problem. Both of those hurricanes were very well known and both of them have had wonderful books written about them. So i decided that i didnt want to write yet another book on one of those two hurricanes and add to the literature, stuff that was already there essentially, so i criticized my hurricane i put aside my hurricane idea and wrote a book on pirates. After the season, the Hurricane Season of 2017 as you and your listeners will remember was the Hurricane Season from hell, thats when hurricanes harvey, irma and maria pummelled the United States and cumulatively caused 265 billion worth of damage. After that Hurricane Season came through, again, my editor and the head of sales thought, you know, a book on the history of americas hurricanes would be fascinating and they thought that i would be just the person to do it because a lot of my books span multiple centuries and require the synthesis of huge amounts of information into a popular narrative. So they reached out to my agent and my agent sent me an email saying, hey, would you like to write a book on the history of hurricanes. I didnt say yes right away. I took about a month to go off and read a bunch of books on hurricanes and to see if i could get a vision of what the overall book would look like. After doing that research, i was totally onboard. I said yes, and i wrote a proposal and the rest is history. Thats where the book came from. So in addition to the research that you did that you just described, did you travel for your experience, did you do any things such as visiting noaas Weather Center or going up in a hurricane with airplanes . Eric i did not. I wrote a book on whaling, never harpooned a whale, i wrote a book on the history of the fur trade, never trapped a beaver. I wrote a history on white on lighthouses, and i had only seen one lighthouse before working on that. I didnt go up in a plane nor did i ask to. I did not visit the National Hurricane center, but i had the benefit of being able to track down enormous quantities of information and documents and reports written by Hurricane Hunter pilots and people that were onboard, things that were written and visual accounts of National Hurricane center meterologists doing their jobs. So i dont feel that the book, you know, suffered at all from me not having experienced directly with going up in a Hurricane Hunter plane or visiting the National Hurricane center. Also, i have to add that i have never lived through a major hurricane or a niner hurricane. I have only lived through the tail end of hurricanes. When Hurricane Sandy came up and plowed into new jersey and new york, i certainly felt it up here in marblehead, massachusetts, and hurricane bob in 1991 and hurricane gloria, so i felt the outer effects of hurricanes, but i have never had an experience like which i talk about many times in the book. People who have suffered a direct strike of a hurricane. And although i have heard from many people already who read the book, who have lived through hurricanes and have that experience that so many people who have lived through hurricanes have of denoting life before the hurricane and after the hurricane and ive been very happily not surprised, but i have been very happy for me to hear from readers who have lived through hurricanes telling me they enjoyed the way that i described the hurricanes and have felt their memories flooding back. One tradition you note in the book is your daughter does illustrations for you, the palm trees being whipped. How did that get started . Eric that started with my book, brilliant beacons, the history of the american lighthouse. I work on these books for two years. My daughter was a teenager at the time and lived at home. She is a good painter and often painted with her grandmother who is a professional painter. I was getting near the end of brilliant beacons. I guess my daughter was tired of me spending so much time in my office which you see behind me, it is our converted garage. One weekend she had a painting class with her grandmother. She took a photograph of the edgartown lighthouse with her. During that day she painted an 18 by 20inch painting of the edgartown lighthouse and gave it to me later that day. She said, dad, this is an incentive to get you to finish this book faster. I framed it and put it up on the wall and i decided we should start a tradition. For black flag blue waters when i was getting near the end of the book, i said, lily, i need a painting. She went off and painted a small painting of a pirate ship looking for its next victim and that appeared in black flag, blue waters. For this book, a fewious sky, i was near the end of the book. She was living in new york city at the time. She came home for a weekend. Went over to her grandmothers studio and painted this weekend of palm trees being buffetted by Hurricane Force winds and that made it into the book. Its a nice tradition, a lot of meaning for me and actually when i give talks, especially here in new england, people always ask me, where is your daughters painting, those people have read multiple books of mine now are getting used to the fact that one of lilys paintings is going to be in there. I wanted to run through fairly quickly some basic facts about hurricanes with you that you detail in the book. First of all, what is the actual definition of a hurricane . Eric a hurricane is a violent swirling storm with winds of at least, sustained winds of at least 74 Miles Per Hour and there are five categories of hurricane and it gets stronger with each category as you go up. Essentially a hurricane forms, what it needs are three basic ingredients. It needs warm Ocean Temperatures of about 80 degrees fahrenheit down to 150 feet and that provides massive amounts of heat energy needed to fuel the storm. Two other conditions for a hurricane to form to keep being ripped apart are low vertical wind shear. You dont want winds at different heights going different directions, it will tilt the hurricane over or rip it apart. You also need an abundance of warm moist air coming off of the ocean. As that moist air rises, it schools and condenses into water and ice crystals. When it does that, it gives off what are called latent heat or condensation which is the heat that in turn powers the storm. They simply are the greatest storms on earth, the most powerful storms that we experience and as you know, hurricanes in different parts of the world are called different things. Here in the atlantic and eastern pacific, we call them hurricanes. In the indian ocean, they are called cyclones, in pacific ocean, typhoons, in australia, some people call them willie, willie. Theyre all the same mere logical phenomenon. You talk about the amount of energy that hurricanes actually create. Can you explain that . Eric there is wind energy and there is the energy that comes from latent heat condensation. In terms of wind energy, an average hurricane generates 200 times the annual electrical generating capacity of the world. You look at the latent heat of condensation which is what really drives the storm, an average hurricane generates 200 times the annual electrical generating capacity in the world, so these are absolutely enormous powerful and as we know often quite destructive storms. If there was only a way to capture all of that energy. Eric yes. What exactly is the eye of the hurricane and what causes it . Eric the eye of a hurricane is basically when there is a low pressure area, the moisture air rises off of the oceans surface and essentially, it doesnt create a vacuum, it creates a low pressure area. Wherever you have a low pressure area, wind or air wants to go and fill that low pressure area. As the moist air is rising in the center of the hurricane, there is wind and stuff coming in from the side. The effect sort of causes that wind to be shifted a little bit to the right. Thats where you get the swirling nature of the hurricane and the center becomes this clear, sometimes you can even see the sky above with gentle winds because what you have there, you have all of this air going up and then exiting at the top of the hurricane, but around it is this swirling mass of extremely active wind. So its just, the center of the hurricane. One small but surprising fact to me in this part of the book is that most hurricanes dont originate over water. Eric yes, most of them, about 85 or so, they start over the Sahara Desert where there is very hot air, but also there is moist air coming in from the guinea coast and from the indian ocean. And when those mix, they create very unstable areas or african easterly waves, the thunderstorms that travel towards the west and when they exit the edge of the african continent and then head over to the cape verdy islands, a certain percentage of them, a small percentage organizes to the point that it becomes a Tropical Storm which has winds of at least the same winds of at least 39 Miles Per Hour. And then a smaller percentage of those will elevate, sort of evolve to become hurricanes with winds of at least 74 Miles Per Hour. Then those cape verdy type hurricanes travel across the atlantic. Some of them dont hit land. Some of them go into the gulf of mexico or the caribbean, others go up the east coast. There are also hurricanes that originate in the gulf coast area or a low off of the Northern Edge of south america and then there are some hurricanes that originate in the middle of the atlantic ocean, but most of them are cape verdian hurricanes, most of our major hurricanes tend to be these cape verdetype hurricanes. One thing i want to mention that is really important, my book is the history of the hurricanes over 500 years. I am not a meteorologist. There is a lot of science in the book, but its described in a fairly simple way. And one of the things that this book did for me, i always had respect for meteorologists and weather forecasters, i knew their job was difficult. After reading what meteorologists have to do and the complexity of their jobs and these computer prediction models and just what goes into just making a hurricane forecast and understanding the dynamics of hurricanes, i have even more respect for meteorologists. But dont read this book if you want a detailed science lesson on meteorology of hurricanes, if you want to understand the basis, this will do a good job for you. To that end, were talking as the 2020 Hurricane Season are in full swing. In fact, there are two named storms that are heading towards the u. S. Gulf coast, what did you learn about what contributes to years like this one where there is a higher prediction, higher forecast of named storms . Eric a lot of things go into it. The most important is having warmer temperatures in the ocean. We talked about it before, the main fuel source for hurricanes is the warm water in the ocean. And we have above average temperatures in almost all of the atlantic. There are very positive conditions over africa, monsoon c