Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a exactly twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice get people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, which I often forget to say. And then I hear that I forgot to say it. So this time, I'm remembering to say it Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is sea grant.org That's me. Well, that's why I work for I'm me. I'm Stuart. I'm joined by my good friend hope charters hope. Are you off to a good start? already? It's it's going well this morning, I think. So we haven't been on it forever. What have you been up to hope charters.

Hope Charters 0:42
Um, I just moved into a new house, which is weird during a pandemic because nobody can help me do things, right. And I've been buying lots of plants. Pretty much my life right now. Okay, plants.

Stuart Carlton 0:55
All plants and Pandemic hopes got the old double P action. That is good. Well, I'm actually excited. So what's going on my life right now is as longtime listeners know, I'm from New Orleans. And so this has been a very intense week in terms of hurricanes and tropical storms and stuff like this. We're recording this just after Hurricane Laura hit Southwest Louisiana. And so forecast and weather have been on my mind. And you know, a couple of weeks before that, of course, we had the data we had in Iowa. And so we wanted to understand some of these kind of extreme storms and in the Midwest and in the Great Lakes area. So we call up our good friend, Meg Dotson, and we're going to talk to her about it about Rachel's extreme weather. And then since it's Labor Day, you know about water safety and stuff like that. So let's go ahead and pick some transitional music and then we will go ahead and talk to mag let's see, we got this one. Let's see what it is.

Okay, our guest today is Meg Dotson. She's a meteorologist with the Marine Program at the National Weather Service, Northern Indiana Weather Forecast Office or weather forecasting office. Either one, Meg, how are you today?

Meg Dodson 2:23
I am glorious. How are you?

Stuart Carlton 2:24
I am exceptionally glorious, but I'm doing just fine.

Hope Charters 2:29
I love it. Well, I'm

Stuart Carlton 2:30
really glad to have you on. It's so it's interesting, a little behind the scenes for the viewers out there whereby viewers I mean listeners. So Meg emailed us late last night saying if the weather's really bad, I can't do the podcast because I have to go do some weather forecasting or something like that. And so So that's great. So we got our own private hint. She was like the chances of it or you know, blah, blah, blah, that should be the afternoon and it was like we got our own private are we going to be able to record forecast, which I really loved. But so what do you do like when weather's bad? What do you in your office even doing?

Meg Dodson 3:01
Depends on what shift you're on. For me. I'm a just a general forecaster. There's different levels of forecasters as lead forecasters and generals. And so depends on what desk I'm on. There's during severe weather like storms and things. Usually there's a warning forecaster who's doing like, for example, tornado warnings or severe thunderstorm warnings. And then there's a person that's dedicated to doing the typical day to day forecasting, which is called the grids because we use a program that's kind of like, I don't know, if you maybe this is showing my age, but the paint program, you know, I'm more you know, Microsoft really love it. It's sort of like that you're like drawing a picture you like paint the forecast, and you have each variables like temperature, dew point, wind speed, wind direction, wave heights, whatever it is that you're forecasting, and you paint it on a grid, and then you save it, and it generates the text and we look over the text, make sure it's what we want to say, because sometimes it can get a little weird, because this technology is not perfect. But so we have a person who's doing that, and then sending out the general forecast information that you see, like if you type in, you know, weather.gov, and you look at a forecast point, that's the text you'll see like chance of, you know, rain today, partly cloudy. And then we have another person who's dedicated to communication, so social media, and taking in severe weather reports and sending them out to the media and other people that are impacted in the public. And then we have another person that's dedicated to supporting our partners like emergency managers, or perhaps like the DNR and beach situations, and just letting them know about the hazardous conditions. So we'll create briefing packets and basically call them if, for example, like there's a fare going on or something like that. We have a person that calls them says hey, there's a big storm headed to your area. You know, it should be here at this time. There's lightning wind gusts to 50 miles an hour or whatever and then they have time to make their important decisions like evacuate or maybe just put people shelter in place or something like that. So. So it's kind of a chaotic scene, a lot of the prep work is like you're ramping up for the event, and then it kind of peaks at the event. And then you're ramping down with storm surveys and documenting everything and creating these little web pages that we make to summarize the events, like these

Stuart Carlton 5:21
mini kind of, I don't know if emergency is quite the right word. But yeah, but But how often is that happened? Is that like a monthly type thing? Or is it just

Meg Dodson 5:29
depends on what office it is, and what the weather is that year, this year, knock on wood very quickly, until this recent ratio, it's been pretty quiet. It's been a lot less of your weather than we normally deal with, especially earlier on in the year. But then it kind of gets busier. Usually we see these events, and we'll kind of have a little rush and then it goes quiet. And then COVID has also lowered our workload a little bit because there's not as many big fare events or things going on that we have to support. So

Stuart Carlton 5:57
all right, so normally, if they're gonna have a big event, you call the weather people to find out you know what it's going to be? Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah. So let's be in the COVID. So if y'all had to go in, I guess you're a central personnel. So you've been in the office?

Meg Dodson 6:08
Yeah, we have had reduced staffing. We, what we've done is sort of if you can work, we do work research shifts, where we can work on special program areas for me that like that's a shift for me to work on my drowning database, or different things like that the special projects we do. locally in the office, we have dedicated shifts for those. So when we're on one of those shifts, we're able to work from home. If there's not active weather, one person who is normally the social media communicator can sign on from home and work from home. And they will do PowerPoint and things like that from their own computer or an office designated laptop. So we've been able to wing it, we just got moved to the next status of where we're allowed to be in the office, Monday through Friday, full staffing as far as the operational staff, so that's like three or four people usually, unless it's severe weather, then it's more like six or seven. But we were masked, do the social distancing, over sanitize everything perfect. And

Stuart Carlton 7:07
if you're out there listening, wear masks, do the social distancing. It's all good. Yeah, it's a good thing, or it's hope likes to say wash your hands. Maybe she just tells me.

Hope Charters 7:21
So what's been the most interesting weather related thing that's happened lately?

Meg Dodson 7:27
lately? Well, probably the August event was the was the more interesting recent event. But there's probably a lot that had been, like more interesting over my 10 years, but that's probably the most recent one.

Hope Charters 7:40
And that was the duration. Yes. What exactly is a tradeshow?

Meg Dodson 7:45
Well, technically, if you want to go by the nerdy definition, the exact definition we love nerdy deputation is the, the wind damage swath from that storm, that line of storms has to extend more than 240 miles, and includes wind gusts of at least 58 miles an hour or greater along most of its length. And the event, then can be classified as at a ratio.

Stuart Carlton 8:08
Let's see, is this something that kind of know when it's going on? Or is it you do? Do you look later and say, Oh, that was a ratio right there.

Meg Dodson 8:17
Yeah, it's usually after the fact. I mean, you can usually tell as it starts developing, and once it, you know, once it starts getting, you know, I think at this point, like, by the time I got to like Illinois, everybody's like, Oh, this is gonna be a Deray show, probably like, but you know, obviously, you don't know how far it's gonna keep going. You can make a guess, based on the conditions ahead of the storms, whether it's going to die or not.

Hope Charters 8:39
Yeah, so Stuart, you said earlier that it started Iowa. I have no idea about any of this. I know that it happened. Like I saw the effects of it at my house. But I didn't know where it started or what was happening.

Meg Dodson 8:50
I believe it did start in Nebraska, technically, I think it did. And then it went into Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and also hit with parts of Wisconsin and Michigan as well. But the more heavily hit places were like in Iowa and I think Illinois and then it kind of petered out as it came into our area, which is like Northern Indiana, Michigan, we did have some severe damage and and we had three tornadoes in our forecast area. But which includes Southern Michigan, Northwest Ohio, and Northern Indiana.

Stuart Carlton 9:22
So what kind of everything about the forecasting aspect of it a lot. And, you know, especially because of the hurricanes. And so with the hurricane, you get like, you know, lead up, right? It's like a week before, you know, whatever, you'd be like, Oh, this could be a thing. And then with each successive day, the models get better and better and better. But this just crops up quickly. Now I follow Tom Coombs, our friend on on Twitter and you should too you should go listen to his episode at teach me about the great lakes.com/fox He's a good egg. Yeah. And but like all of a sudden, like I was just sitting there, you know, he's sending out pictures of like his tomatoes or whatever. And then and the next thing you know, he's like, I'm telling everybody to pull out of like that area, you know? looking. So it seems like it happened really quickly and all sudden was gonna get bad fast is this kind of thing where you don't have a lot of lead up or what

Meg Dodson 10:08
it's, it's a little bit trickier with us the because of the scale of the events and this kind of goes into, you know, a lot of people have been calling this like, you know, the, like an inland hurricane or whatever like because it was so big and dramatic and it had so many impacts. But the ratios are a little bit different in the sense that obviously, they're not tropical. And they have similar damage impacts, but they're not quite as big in scope. And they're a smaller scale feature. So like in meteorology, we have different scales of motion. So there's the, the synoptic scale, which is like your fronts and your high and low pressure systems. And then you have the mezzo scale, which is like thunderstorms. So it's a little bit smaller scale. And then you have microscale, which is like maybe like a dust devil or something like that, that forms are like some near to the ground circulations or things like that, that are basically impossible to predict. So as you have like the bigger scale, it's a little bit easier to predict. And obviously hurricanes in a much bigger scale than the thunderstorms that developed even though they eventually became more widespread and larger in size. So long story short is we can predict that there will be severe weather. And that we know from past ratios, because we've been extensively studied that, you know, the certain conditions are right for them to form, but we don't know if they will form because small scale things can go wrong really quickly. And modeling is really just not as good in the mezzo scale in that smaller scale than it is in the large

Stuart Carlton 11:49
scale. It's not a smaller one. Okay.

Meg Dodson 11:51
Yeah. So it's like, you're gonna have a lot of, I know, it's a lot of words and terminology. But you know, it's kind of hard to describe, it's just the bigger it is a little bit easier it is to kind of forecast where it might go. And the less impacted is by those tiny little things. But thunderstorms are very sensitive to the surrounding environment, things that are hard to pick up, like, for example, like the humidity from corn can impact the storm movement and development. So fun fact. So you know, small things that you can't really account for in modeling and things very well are going to impact it. And that makes it very unpredictable. So as so you know, it can go from Hey, we might have severe weather, hey, we have a high, high risk of severe weather today. But then all sudden, it's Oh, wow, this big storm is coming. And it's causing, you know, it's so far it's causes damage. And now we got to do is make sure everybody downstream knows it's coming.

Hope Charters 12:44
Basically, that's why the weather in Indiana is always crazy, because we have so much corn.

Meg Dodson 12:51
We have Lake Michigan, right. And so a lot of times the weather's coming from the west, that's just the way the system is usually move. And that lake can either if it survives the lake, it's usually a really, really good storm. Yeah. And depending on the season, the air over that lake can modify things. It's not so much on like rivers and things like that. But it's more about like big lakes can modify the environment so that they're either conducive or not conducive to storms.

Stuart Carlton 13:17
And that actually brings up a good point. Well, first of all, if you want to learn more about Lake Effect, you should go listen to the coons episode that is teach me about the Great Lakes Icom slash five. But that brings up a question or from listener Jean, who asks, using the hashtag Ask Great Lakes. So does the intensity or direction of a duration change when it passes over a large body of water? You know, like Lake Michigan, or maybe even something like rivers? Who knows but and so if they do Did, did you see any effect of that for the August 10 Storm?

Meg Dodson 13:47
I don't I have never really heard of and I could be wrong, but I have never heard of any kind of like I believe in that question I'd seen on Twitter was, you know, like the Mississippi River or something. I have never heard of a river impacting anything as far as storms go, but I know that from my experience, just the Great Lakes like Lake Michigan can impact things. And it's mostly what I've seen is like the intensity maybe if if the water over the lake is very cold, it there's a little dome that kind of forms over the lake and that can actually hurt the storms because they start ingesting more that like colder air and so it can weaken it. Other times it's not so bad and the temperature differences aren't that big of a deal. So they kind of just come blasting through and in this case I didn't really look specifically at the storm as across the lake so I'd have to go back and look at radar data on how it impacted it but I know like generally as it was coming into our area it was it was weakening so I and I know that near the shoreline they did have a lot of damage. So I don't know that it really played a big impact on it. From what I saw, at least in the damage reports. I know right along the shoreline they had extensive wind damage

Hope Charters 14:59
and I saw I know you said earlier that when it's a smaller scale storm, there's not as much lead time and warning people about it. But I did get a text message from our university system because we both work at Purdue that sent out like a severe thunderstorm. Thank you, Governor. I think I did. And it was crazy because it was seriously within like half an hour. Like that was the only lead time we had, it went from like, fine skies to like super dark. We even got a little bit of hail. I was actually picking up plants from my friend. My life was revolving around plants. I have a plan to just shove them all in my car. And it was just it was wild. It was crazy. But it was just like, no morning, really. So I can't even imagine if we were getting the tail end of it. I can't imagine what they were like what was happening in Nebraska and Iowa.

Meg Dodson 15:58
Yeah, you look up some of the videos. And it's pretty bad. Some of the videos like people had their their webcams on their porch, like for the doorbell ring thing. And you could see like when the storm came through, and all their trees just get blown down and just big blast straight line winds. And I think I wrote down it was it had the whole duration had a path length of 770 miles. And the damage path with was about 50 to 100 miles wide.

Stuart Carlton 16:27
So what does that mean? So so so like, roughly north to south it was 750 miles.

Meg Dodson 16:33
Is that east or west?

Stuart Carlton 16:36
West east. Okay, and then what is the

Meg Dodson 16:38
like 550 to 100?

Stuart Carlton 16:40
Got it? Got it? Wow. So that's tremendous amount of damage. So with these, so I, my whole adult life or kid child at most much of my life is defined by hurricanes. You know, I there was time in Florida where we got hit every weekend by hurricane around Hurricane Charley. I was no longer there for Hurricane Katrina, but my family still was and we got 50 inches of rain at our house during Hurricane Harvey while he's in Texas. Wow. And so I have a good, comfortable, I understand what they're like in terms of like the winds and the gusts and everything with these two ratios? Is the wind like constant like you might see in kind of a tornado or is it gusting? What is what is the actual experience like,

Meg Dodson 17:15
it's a little bit different with than, like a hurricane, because in the sense that, you know, a hurricane, like you're gonna see the the depth of the bottom what like when criteria for a hurricane is 74 miles an hour sustained, which means it has to be for like averaged over a, I think it's like a two minute period or something, the winds averaged over a certain time period, and then you have gusts that are higher than that. So like, you know, you might have 70 miles an hour sustained, where it's just blasting at 70 miles an hour with gusto 120. You know, that's a big deal. In this case, I did, I couldn't find the sustained winds from this event. And it was kind of hard, they don't really talk about that as much because the damage a lot of the times the gusts. But you know, we had gusts up to I think the highest one now was estimated at 140 miles an hour with this duration. So the wind speeds like kind of rival the hurricanes. But a lot like you sort of said, you know, it kind of blast through. And then it's done. This was actually a little bit of a strange event in Iowa because there was instead of it being the traditional, you're gonna get the for the worst first big blast when the storm line comes in, and then maybe some rain and some gusty winds after for about, you know, 1520 minutes, and then it's done. There was a video that I found that the you know, like the winds were gusting pretty high, like I would say probably about 40 to 50 miles an hour. And then they were having guesses, you know, 80 miles an hour or something like that. So it was about a good 30 minute video. So that was kind of unusual, usually don't see that. And they did mention that on their on the Davenport Weather Service webpage. And I did send you guys a couple a bunch of resources at the end of the Google document. And those links are all there. So you can share those with them. You will

Stuart Carlton 18:56
we'll put those in the show notes, which I encourage you to. I say viewers too, because I'm telling you, you're viewing me, but they're listening to us. But we don't care about them. We're here for us

Meg Dodson 19:06
to listen, yeah, I did send them a list of all these these links that I will possibly.

Stuart Carlton 19:10
And you can find those links and teach me about the great lakes.com/seventeen One, seven, because this is episode number 17. Unless we release it later, but I don't think we will. And or you can just look down at your podcast player right now. If it's on your phone or whatever, and I bet you see them. So that's wonderful. When our guests send us the links, it makes our job much much

Meg Dodson 19:31
better. Yes, I always like I'm a visual person. So I like pictures and data to go and nerd out on and there's a bunch of links from the Storm Prediction Center. That is just the ratio climatology when they normally happen, things like that, like the normal questions we get a lot about storms are all in one spot.

Stuart Carlton 19:50
So are they are they seasonal? It's it only like a summary type thing or

Meg Dodson 19:53
I did find the graph of the climatology and it turns out they can occur in any time. I'm here because they're just basically going to form where the right conditions are. And so you know, some places don't really have the miserable winters like we do. So they might have conditions longer and the gear or sometimes you know, we get our little February warm ups and conditions just happening right and you have a strong system come through. So

Stuart Carlton 20:16
we need to worry about like, am I used to reach or snow day ratio? Please no. No.

Meg Dodson 20:21
Ratio, movie for Sharpe ratio. I'm always I just can't help. It's just a disaster movie obsession. I can't help it. But But yeah, like so. But most of the time, you're gonna see him like, you know, May to August timeframe is the most common

Hope Charters 20:43
to people nationally hear about this type of event? Because I know, this was like one of the craziest things that I've seen in the Midwest only because I haven't lived through a tornado. But like, how, how big of an event is this?

Meg Dodson 20:55
Well, like I think, you know, a lot of times people don't really talk about it a lot, because it's not something that happens frequently. I guess it's just not usually as big of news as say, like the hurricane. You know, usually you hear like, the the hurricanes have names, you know, that's a big deal. A lot of times like these things might happen. And the public may not go, you know, oh, yeah, I remember the great duration of that. They might remember this one because it got more public publicity. But like, usually the weather nerds are the ones that know the list of all the great durations, which also is in your links, if you're interested in reading about it. So there's a whole list of durations that most weather weenies will probably remember and be able to tell you about. But most people just go oh, there's just really bad windstorm and it doesn't really have a specific name. So it is talked about and I think the more we have videos, and the more we have social media and things like this, where people can actually see it and there's footage and stuff and they see how bad the impacts are. I think we'll probably see more of that. But you know, in the past, it hasn't really been I at least from my perception of as big of a deal as maybe people blow up hurricanes or tornadoes, which is kind of funny, because a lot of people are like, I swear it was a tornado because the winds were really bad. And, you know, this damage couldn't have been caused by just wind and I'm like, does it really matter? Like if you look at like, you know, when I looked up the the wind speeds, you know, and I included a link to the EF scale for the tornadoes just so you know, you know, the wind speeds that they had, what was it the the highest was 140 of a gust. That's the strength of like an EF three tornado.

Hope Charters 22:27
Wow, that's crazy measure

Meg Dodson 22:29
one I think was 126. I think it was by an equipment and that's an EF EF one II arms are EF two high end. So like, you're gonna have a torn it's tornado strength winds. The only difference is that the tornado was a funnel and the straight line winds are not a funnel. And the scary part is the cold the ratio spawned numerous tornado tornadoes on top of that. Yeah, so they can they can spin up tornadoes on the leading edge and certain points where you get these little notches that develop on radar, and they can create little quick spin ups that, you know, are technically tornadoes. But you know, the overall wind damage from just the straight line winds is just as bad and actually more widespread, especially in the case of a duration. A tornado is typically a more narrow path. But people are scared of tornadoes, because they look scarier than a big, you know.

Hope Charters 23:20
This might be a really, really stupid question, what happens when a Deray show goes over like a great lake? Like what does that because

Stuart Carlton 23:32
it ties form

Hope Charters 23:35
Well, or does it Oregon, the lake

Meg Dodson 23:40
the lake and the lake can cause it to depending on how the environment is over the lake and the strength of the system and the strength of the storm going over it. It can it can either hurt it and make it weaker because there's not as much like instability or like it usually in like, like for example, if it went over the lake in like May, there's usually very cold water. And so that's going to create like a little bit of a temperature change. So instead of you know getting the nice, juicy, moist hot air that the durational storm likes to eat to survive, it goes over the lake and it's like, Oh, gross, what is this this is nasty, cold air and it's not very unstable. This is not cool for me, I'm done, I quit and it collapses and dies. Other times the the air might not be so bad, the marine layer might not be so bad or maybe the storms become elevated and they may not bring a strong winds down to the surface but they still maintain their strength and then pick up the pace as they get back on land and get that moisture and surface instability that they need. So it really can depend. It does cause some in Lake has hurricane like effects on the lake including medio tsunamis and rip currents and high waves. So in stages. So that's kind of a, that goes into the water safety realm. We actually had seven people drown in a five hour period in Marion County in 2003, after a very strong score wasn't even a duration. It was just a stress, severe thunderstorm. 60 mile an hour winds went through on July 4, and then everything clear the sun came out and everybody went in the water and all sudden everybody started getting pulled out and rip currents. Because water basically sloshes back and forth kind of like a bathtub like, like the storm pushes all the water to one side. And then it as it goes on land, the water just goes boop and slaps back and forth. So that's like a stage motion and that can enhance records.

Hope Charters 25:38
Well, let's let's Yeah, I was gonna ask like what happened to our coastal communities with this last duration,

Meg Dodson 25:43
there was a stage and there was a video of that safe. Where the water level I believe, I'd have to go double check the numbers exactly. But I believe it was like a foot and a half fluctuation. So the water level went up when the storm was forcing the water over on shore. And then as it went on shore, the water was receded back.

Hope Charters 26:05
And you said he was like the bathtub effect that you're talking about? Yeah, kind of like a bathtub

Meg Dodson 26:08
effect. Yeah, like, if you were like shaking a bathtub back and forth, the water's gonna slosh back and forth, because it's a closed basin, not like the ocean is open and has all that you know, where the, you know, in a hurricane or something, that water just keeps going like over that long distance. And the waves can continue, you know, until they go on shore. And you get that coastal flooding and things it's kind of similar, but we don't usually have it on that big of a scale. But this year, the water levels are a lot higher. So when that water comes in, we actually did issue a beach hazard statement for dangerous currents after the storm went through. And the waves and then also Lakeshore flood advisory because some of the local areas see inland flooding from the water coming in off the lake. So it is sort of like a hurricane in that sense, but a smaller scale. And it's obviously not tropical. So

Hope Charters 26:53
I feel like that's a big part of your job dealing with water safety in Northwest Indiana.

Meg Dodson 26:58
Yeah, for me it is especially it's a passion of mine that I've had since I gotten the weather service, I sort of accidentally fell into it. I got put on the rip current program up in Marquette, Michigan when I first got in, and they had me start working on a research project where we were collecting drowning incidents across the Great Lakes, and gathering the weather and wind and wave conditions for the time of those instance. So we could see if there's a pattern so we can forecast and better. And so just kind of reading all the case studies and stuff I just in working with the people that are involved with a lot of the drownings, like it just sort of became a passion. So it's a big part of any of the Great Lakes forecasts offices in the sense that, you know, they do the forecast and the warnings, but it's probably a little bit more of a passion, I guess, for some of the folks that are more impacted by like, like the Chicago office, Milwaukee office and even Mark had up there like we've had in the Grand Rapids office, we all are very like, motivated to kind of end the problem because there's so many lives, they get lost every year. It's just a really frustrating experience. This

Stuart Carlton 28:01
does feel the feels like it's been kind of a bad year for water safety. You heard a lot about drownings, and there we see some terrifying video of like kids out on the pier and Michigan City or wherever that is, yes, my

Meg Dodson 28:09
anxiety goes up just thinking about that. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 28:14
I don't know if we'll link to that or not, I'm hesitant to even spread it in all honesty, but there were two kids, I don't know teenagers or tweens or something like that, who are out on the pier, and it's just that they make it out, but it's terrifying to see. And I think they must have had to walk around the chain to get out, you know, to get out on the thing. And it's just,

Meg Dodson 28:29
yeah, it's really scary. I mean, like, that's all you just tell people like, you know, we look at all the data that we've collected, you know, over, over about half of our incidents are occur near peers and brake walls. So a lot of the times it's like, about making smart decisions on when you're going to walk out there, you know, because it's not totally dangerous to walk out there, you know, when there's not a lot of waves, or there's nothing really going on, and you know, they have safety rails or something. Obviously, if there's ice there, that's a whole nother story. But you know, assuming normal conditions during the summer, the flat Lake is probably not going to be that big of a deal. But, you know, if you're out there swimming near it at any time, there can be currents that are right along that break wall. And those are the ones that we have the most drownings from. So a lot of times people go out there, they jump off the brake while they jump right into the current. And then there's obviously when there's waves, there's a whole new set of hazards that are there, which including, you know, being smashed against the rocks or the wall by the waves. And then you also have the current strength. And

Stuart Carlton 29:26
that's really terrible. And so so the work you do with that is mainly predicting rip currents and large currents and things like that, and then offering or putting out warnings.

Meg Dodson 29:33
So look, yeah, the goal is we kind of just look at the conditions. So we look at the wave direction, the wave height and the wave periods. So it's like the time in between each wave, the longer that is like so if it's usually in the Great Lakes, it's three to four seconds between each wave. So if you're standing in the water, a wave hits you, three seconds go by another wave will hit you. That's the period. So how frequently come in. Usually the Great Lakes is like three to four seconds. That's our average, but on a lot of these days where you have these really strong rip currents in the sand In bars, and strong structural currency appears the wait periods are more like five to six seconds. And that's more conducive, because dangerous currents will form when you have a lot of water piling up near the beach. So big waves will cause water to pile up shoreline structures, river outlets, those kinds of things are what's going to cause that water to pile up. So if you get bigger waves coming in at a direct angle, with a longer period, that's going to cause really strong rip currents and sandbars and strong currents along the brake walls and peers.

Stuart Carlton 30:30
So let's try this then. So do you have like a top three water safety tips or top five?

Meg Dodson 30:36
I have seven. Okay. Three top ones I would say are they always

Stuart Carlton 30:43
your number three water safety tip.

Meg Dodson 30:47
Backwards, I was gonna do the first and most important line I think it's stay dry. When waves are high,

Stuart Carlton 30:52
they dry. I know leaves are high.

Meg Dodson 30:54
We have corny slogans for every single thing. The weather, it's easy to remember though, it's good. Thunder Roars go indoors, you know, those kinds of things. But stay.

Stuart Carlton 31:05
There's lots of lightning. Yeah, exactly.

Meg Dodson 31:11
Turn Around, Don't Drown. But stay dry and waves are high is number one,

Hope Charters 31:16
because so just basically stay out of the water if the waves are really high.

Meg Dodson 31:21
Okay, so and by really high mean like three to four feet or higher. And that doesn't very high. For a lot of people I people are cool. I'm six feet tall, that's only up to my waist. But that's when you're when you get to that three foot range is when you're really going to have stronger rip currents, assuming all the other factors are engaged. And so for the public, a simple thing to remember is if you see white caps you see like those high like rolling waves, and if they have red flag that the beach and the lifeguards are saying don't go in the water, don't go in the water. Just stay, stay stay dry.

Stuart Carlton 31:52
Always think about, like, when I'm in a river or something is is waterways like seven pounds a gallon, right. And so you're thinking about, it's only up to your waist, but that's hundreds of pounds of water surrounding maybe 1000s. I'm not going to do the math, but there's plenty. Alright, number two,

Meg Dodson 32:07
if you have a short period, and you get knocked down by one of those waves, you have three seconds to get back up before the next one hits you. Yeah. And that's a hazard that's not really on the ocean as much. Usually there are periods are like, you know, six seconds or longer, maybe up to 1520 seconds. So if you get knocked down by a wave, you have three to four seconds maybe to get back up and regain your breath.

Hope Charters 32:25
And to remember to breathe.

Stuart Carlton 32:28
Remember to breathe. That's number one. Number two, hold on hold on.

Meg Dodson 32:36
Fear clear of the pier, and any other shoreline structure. So all wings are only when waves are high. When waves are high, don't go swimming near it, don't jump off of it. Just stay away from them if you can, and make sure you listen to officials that have signs up and things because if you're there even during flat conditions or like relatively calm where there's not a lot of waves, you can still have those strong structural currents. So if you're planning on going into the water by jumping, or swimming near the pier, don't even think about just forget it just don't. So

Hope Charters 33:08
I know that you've mentioned shoreline structures a couple times and obviously up here is an example. But what are other examples that people would be familiar with a break

Meg Dodson 33:16
well, walls that a lot of times it's a synonym for like, a lot of people come up break water break wall pier, like what you see at St. Joseph in Michigan City, it could be a rock wall, in more complicated situations is a little bit more difficult. But it can be a peninsula. So a lot of times the water will funnel out what it does is it'll it'll hit that structure. And then as it hits the structure, it moves out along that structure. So if it's like a peninsula sticking out, it can kind of force water out along that structure at certain wind direction. So rock walls or anything that kind of is like a little corner can be where you're going to have more dangerous. Yeah, and so that's the second message of staying away from those kinds of structures, right.

Stuart Carlton 33:57
And so then your your number three message.

Meg Dodson 34:04
Flip, flow and follow. That is how to escape a dangerous current, or generally, any drowning situation you're having flip on your back, you float and relax, because the main thing that kills people is panic, when you're panicking, you're you're not breathing and you're sinking. So the more air you have in your lungs, the more you're going to flow and the more you flow and relax on your Back Flip over flow on your back. It's gonna be a little hard and waves but you can do it, it calms you down, it gives you time to assess what's going on, the next thing is follow. So that means follow the current don't fight it, the currents are not going to take you to the middle of the lake. Now the only time that's a concerning thing is when you're near a structure because you will go out to the end of the structure and there are very big waves at the end of the structure. So my goal is to say don't swim near the structure. When you're flipped over you float you follow the current out it'll take you out a little way and then all sudden it'll slow down and you can probably swim back in so you You can either swim parallel to shore, so you follow the safest path out of water, whether that's swimming parallel to shore, or at an angle back to the beach, because then you don't get caught and other rip currents that are coming out. But if you're too afraid to swim or you're too exhausted to swim, which most people are just keep floating, and try to signal the people. Hey, I'm out here. So I was just a flip flop fall. It's like, Stop, drop and roll, flip on your back float and follow the current.

Hope Charters 35:24
I love that. We're on a whitewater rafting trip last summer. And it was really scary because I got caught in just like this weird section of currents. And it was like I was in a total panic. So I can't imagine being in a huge deal. I was just in a river. So I can't imagine being in one of the great lakes and just like feeling like you're gonna die, right? Yeah, definitely calming down is key. Yeah,

Meg Dodson 35:46
and a lot of people just panic. And they can't, they can't even think straight. So just if that's the only thing you remember, for this, like flip flow, follow, and you're in the middle of that situation and it pops in your head. It's a good response, just to kind of cool you down. So you can at least have the hope of someone rescuing you.

Stuart Carlton 36:03
Super good. So think about panicking. So when you're in the when you're in the forecast office, sometimes I imagine y'all are doing stuff pretty quickly. Right? Yeah, does is that like ever an issue there where like you find yourself getting like scared or nervous or panicky? Because you're trying to get information out, it seems to me like there's the real potential for that high stress environment.

Meg Dodson 36:19
Yeah, it's it can be really stressful. And I think though I personally haven't had a lot of super intense situations compared to other forecasters. You know, like, for example, forecasters at like the Lake Charles office, down in Louisiana and stuff, like their houses are probably being destroyed, when this thing's coming in, they're working, despite knowing those things are happening is the same thing. Like if you're forecasting and a tornado warning, you have to issue that warning and you know, your family's at home, and it's going towards your house, that can be a really intense situation. And especially if you're a person who is like, you know, really cares about people is very impacted by people in relationship, like, you know, obviously everybody has to a certain extent. But if you're somebody that's like that, and I'm kind of one of those people, like when you're, you want to make sure you get it right, you want to make sure you get that warning out, you want to make sure you did everything you can and even when you know it doesn't work, like we put out these beach hazard statements. For example, like, for example, tomorrow is going to be a high swimmers day, there's going to be there's already a beach hazard statement out, I know that if somebody goes in that water tomorrow, which is a chance that they might because it might be sunny some of the day, they're probably going to be people that are going to die, and you always sit there and go, could I have done something different? You know, can I have done something else? What else could we have done to stop that person from making that decision? Were they just, you know, being willful and didn't care? Or was it that they just didn't know? And a lot of times we find that they just didn't realize? Or they didn't understand what the hazards were? Because they view it as it's just a lake? Yeah. So

Hope Charters 37:44
how does NOAA work with or any of the weather people work with? Like beaches and beach safety? What is your role in that? Do you just like give them all the information, I expect them to disseminate it through the community.

Meg Dodson 37:58
That's our old school model. We used to do that. Bottle updated model is more of the decision support services where, you know, for example, we work with the lifeguards. In the summer at Silver beach and St. Joseph. They we do an annual training for them. Where we talk about waves and currents, we talk about the forecast we issue. And we talk about giving them briefing packets on days where we expect dangerous conditions. So tomorrow, obviously, there's going to be high swim risk conditions, there's gonna be high waves, northerly winds, good, strong current development. And so we've sent them a briefing packet with images of what the waves are going to do through the day, when they're going to come down. When we expect the worst conditions, what types of currents we expect. So it's a little bit more detailed. And then they also in return will take observations for us. So tomorrow at 10am, they may call and say, hey, you know, we noticed that the waves are only three feet and he said they're gonna be five feet. So then we can adjust our forecast. So it's kind of a collaborative process. Yeah, it's nice, but it's a two way street, a two way street. And then we work both together to educate the public. We put out social media graphics about water safety and alerting the people that hey, you know, tomorrow is not a good day to go to Lake and they promote our webpage. They put up signage, they put up the flags, so it's kind of a group effort. And we try to establish those good relationships with them and the other community stakeholders and victims, families, survivors of recurrence and things. We work with a lot of nonprofits to really push the word out on those days things are going to be hazardous.

Stuart Carlton 39:35
Well, everybody stay safe out there and we will put some links to water safety resources in the show notes in addition to ones that Meghan has probably provided because that is something we do a lot of work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant primarily through Leslie door worth up in Northwest with Northwest Indiana who is the volunteer of the year. So

Meg Dodson 39:53
Leslie is my BFF and I love Sea Grant Sea Grant are my connectors Sea Grant helps me to talk with The people I need to talk with like I just had a call with them this week and Lesley and I have a call on Monday to talk about empty stuff. So you guys are awesome. We

Stuart Carlton 40:08
appreciate that. And that's all really interesting. And normally this transition is less awkward because we're talking about drowning. That said, awkward awkwardness acknowledged. This is really interesting mag but that's not why we invited you on to teach me about the Great Lakes today. The reason we invited you on to teach me about the Great Lakes is these two questions. First one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich or as my 18 month old daughter calls him Sandow, a great Sandow for lunch. Which would you choose?

Hope Charters 40:37
My husband actually calls them Santos. So that's interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's gonna

Meg Dodson 40:43
be my new word for it. But I would probably choose a donut because I'm kind of a sugar addict. It kind of comes with the territory of rotating shift work that we do at the weather service, we just

Stuart Carlton 40:52
naturally alright, but so that was a follow up in the follow up. So where are you? You're at? Where's the forecast office? I don't even know.

Meg Dodson 40:58
This forecast office is in a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere called Syracuse, Indiana, your q4. We're also close to North Webster, we're kind of in the middle. So a lot of people call us the North Webster office. Some people call it the Syracuse office. Some people just call us Northern Indiana. Alright.

Stuart Carlton 41:13
Well, when I'm in northern Indiana, we'll just go with that. Next, where should I go to get a really good doughnut?

Meg Dodson 41:20
Oh, I'm terrible at the names because somebody always always brings in the doughnuts for me. I've never got early. It's perfect. So I'll show you how to look. I'd have to go and do an interview in the office and say, where's that place, we always get the really good doughnuts from because there's a place I just don't know

Stuart Carlton 41:36
you're better. I was just talking to somebody about this. If you have people to do it for you all the better. So I would just come and talk to your people. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Alright, question number two. So what is we'd like to leave our listeners with little bit of life advice, right? Just something to take with them. In addition, all this wonderful stuff they've learned but you know, just something a little to reflect on. It can be big or little serious or silly. It doesn't matter to us just something to think

Meg Dodson 42:00
about. Flip, float and follow. There you go. is applicable for the water safety world and for your life in general. Don't fight it, surrender, the moment to breathe

Hope Charters 42:17
and follow the flow of life be my therapist.

Meg Dodson 42:22
It's really disturbing how many like water safety analogies. There are two real life. And then when I saw that question, that was the first thing that popped in my head and I was like, a life saving strategy in and out of the water like really? Well that's guided my life. The donut shop I looked it up on Google is Oh, sweetness Bakery and Cafe sweetness. And ooh, sweet. Bakery. That was the

Stuart Carlton 42:51
NW bakery. Well, we will put links to those in our show notes as well. Meg Dotson, meteorologist with the Marine Program and the National Weather Service Northern Indiana Wolfeboro Weather Forecast Office? Where can people go to find out more about the work? Is there like a social media thing? Or where should people find you?

Meg Dodson 43:08
Which work the water safety work?

Stuart Carlton 43:10
Whatever work you would like to promote? At the end of the interview? I did all of the work? Yes,

Meg Dodson 43:15
I did send the links to our Great Lakes current Incident Database, the water safety consortium which is our big group, for people to get connected to water safety. I always joke around say if it's whether you love go to weather.gov and then slash so many sites tell Flash beach hazards and we say no before you go check the forecast before you leave to go to the beach. Those are probably the biggest links if you want weather information, whether you love go to weather.go

Stuart Carlton 43:47
Well, thank you so much for all our sakes for coming on and teaching us about the Great Lakes and fine.

Always great to learn about both water safety and ratios. It's covered a lot of ground in this this week. Hope

Hope Charters 44:13
you Yeah, and kind of sad to talking about all the deaths that happened in Lake Michigan. But it was really interesting to learn about the ratios and all the interesting things that come along with water safety in the Great Lakes, once

Stuart Carlton 44:28
you get started with these things you can't stop right I think is the thing and so you keep creating new ones. So I know that that's what I'm going to be I'll list some of them, the ones that I come up with while editing in the show notes. And we can you can tell me if you like any of them. So that's good. So what is uh, what is something you learned about the Great Lakes this week?

Hope Charters 44:45
Um, that is a great question. I think that my favorite thing that I learned about the Great Lakes is what happens when there are high waves like I didn't realize that because it's a basin it's Not an never ending ocean that they have the stage I think she called it like this bathtub effect that gets really dangerous when you're on the beach. And so I will be looking out for that next time I go to the Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 45:14
No, that's good. Yeah, I learned I learned a lot about the specific causes of water, safety and drownings, which I hadn't really thought about what it is that causes it. And so I think those three slogans are so important. Remember, right it's stay dry when the waves are high, flip, float and follow both when it comes to waves and when it comes to life, and steer clear the pier. As someone who does reporting indicee grants reporting thing, which is called peer, I agree, we should stay clear of the peer. That's really great. Well, I encourage people to go follow us on social media, they can check out the show, Twitter at Teach

Hope Charters 45:51
Great Lakes. Or you can follow Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant i

Stuart Carlton 45:58
and Sea Grant. Yep. And this was gonna be the week in which I actually created credits to read however, I failed to do that. So I encourage you to look down at your podcast player for all the credits. Thank you so much for listening and keep greyton those lakes

Hope Charters 46:13
and please be safe plus.

Stuart Carlton 46:21
So did you tell me how many plants you have? You say, Oh, I was looking at plants. What is the current plant count?

Hope Charters 46:26
97. And actually, it just got to more because I asked a friend to pick up fake plants from Ikea but they ended up being real so I have two more plants. Take care of them up to 9999

Stuart Carlton 46:37
so

Meg Dodson 46:38
in your house, or like outside in my house. Do you have like an AV like a like a planetarium kind of deal? I

Hope Charters 46:46
have a plant room my sunroom is my plant. Really pretty.

Meg Dodson 46:51
Like send me pictures that like I just made a Zen garden in my backyard.

Hope Charters 46:55
I'm like, Okay, I'll send you pictures. I play around with you send me pictures of those.

Stuart Carlton 46:59
And you just sit in your backyard saying flip load?

Hope Charters 47:03
I do. Yeah. She's like meditating.

Meg Dodson 47:06
peace of shit. And I don't give a schist and I just Okay, I'm sorry. I'm done with geology. No,

Stuart Carlton 47:13
that's all good. That's all good. Hey, do you mind if I include that in this way? At the end? We sometimes are goofy little things, but I don't want I don't want your shifts to be all over the podcast if you don't want it.

Meg Dodson 47:22
No, it's fine. It's geology joke that I'm more than proud of