IN YOUR BACKYARD: Extreme Weather is Only Getting WORSE

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2:04Their Septimbers stock up event makes it easy to load your pantry and freezer with flavorful nourishing food. Even better, there are hundreds of sales. Get dinner going with canned soups and veggies. Lean on frozen pizzas, pastas and seafood everyone loves. They're build your own family meals feeds for for just $35. Stock up at Whole Foods Market. This is Brett Myceles with the Midest Touch Podcast and welcome to episode two of In Your Backyard. In case this is your first time catching the show, this is the latest show on the Midest Touch Network. And every two weeks, so every other Thursday, we're going to be unpacking how public policy and political failings are playing out in communities across the country as it relates to climate issues. And you know that these issues are near and dear to my art. Midest Touch host Lou Gradle chats with experts candidates, elected officials and the real people who are experiencing the very real consequences and fighting back. In episode one, which you could find on the Midest Touch Podcast feed and on our sub stack at Midest Plus.com, we took a deep dive into data centers on this episode.

3:06Local be chatting about extreme weather. It's a scientific fact that our weather is getting more extreme storms are getting stronger. Temperature swings are wilder this summer set records as the hottest in the history of the United States. But behind the statistics and scientific patterns are human stories about people whose lives have already been upended by extreme weather events and the turmoil that follows. Luke talk with the resident of Gary Indiana who lost power for half a month this summer. Then he connected with a man who lost his home and his sister in last year's devastating wildfires in Southern California. How do we recover rebuild or prepare what are people across the country and the world up against and most importantly what can we do about it? Luke sought answers from a meteorologist in South Florida who's been warning us about climate field extreme weather for years. We want to know what you think how have your communities been weathering the summer of extremes and let us know what you're seeing in your backyard that you'd like covered in upcoming episodes. Without further ado, here's episode two of In Your Backyard with Luke Radill.

4:08Hey everybody, welcome back to episode two of In Your Backyard. I'm your host Luke Radill and is it just me or does it feel like we're experiencing a lot more extreme weather events. From my background in local news, I felt like we'd often be talking more each and every week, each and every year about these thousand year, 500 year floods. Things are getting worse out there. The science has shown us that and we've seen the headlines just over the past few months, the flash floods ripping through the Grand Canyon and it's a rich storm that knocked out power in Gary Indiana for weeks. I know we've seen a lot of comments from you about that story and that's why we're going to focus on it today. We're going to focus on the extreme weather that we've been experiencing across the country. We have set records for the hottest summer in the history of the United States and communities across America are bracing for what kind of weather the El Nino could bring in the next few months.

5:14And then on top of all of that, on top of the scientific realities we have to deal with, there are also the political realities. We are living in a post doh era where cuts have been made to programs that were once considered a political and essential hurricane, a tornado and extreme weather event doesn't care whether you voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the last election. And yet all of those communities, whether you voted for the president or not are being impacted by the cuts that we've seen to the National Weather Service and to FEMA. People who need aid after disasters aren't getting what they would have normally gotten in the aftermath and it has many meteorologists flying blind in terms of providing warnings and delivering relief to folks in dire need. So today we're going to hear from those who've already experienced in their communities what that has meant for them, what living under this second Trump term in this post doh world has meant.

6:15And we're also going to hear from an expert meteorologist about why the weather seems to have been going so crazy and why it's even harder than usual thanks to the president and his administration to predict what's going to happen next. This is in your backyard. As I mentioned before, we have received a lot of feedback from you asking us to talk about what's been happening in Gary Indiana. There has been a lack of news coverage and attention by the national media and by our federal government on what's happening there and it speaks to so many of the divides and issues that we've been dealing with in this country for decades. Power was finally restored to that community just last month, but the freakish storm that ripped through Indiana and parts of Illinois revealed a lot about how fast extreme weather can get out of control and create nightmare scenarios for people in its path. And also the unfortunate but all to real disparities and how different communities are able to recover.

7:19I talked with Ajav Bridges who lives in Gary Indiana and scrambled not just to keep her family safe during the blackout but also to keep them fed here is some of my conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today on in your backyard. I think that you could share with folks watching where you're from and what you've been going through over the past month now. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Ajav. I am here in Gary Indiana. The past month to say the lease has been somewhat catastrophic around August 11. We were hit with a massive tornado that essentially knocked out all of our electricity and the issues surrounding infrastructure and nipsco and everything else has just been a handful and we have literally just been maintaining and getting by. I know a big issue is grocery support getting access to electricity was number one and we were in the dark for two weeks.

8:27Thank you. Thank you for sharing that talk a little bit about the needs that you guys still have now on the ground. There's been a lot of reporting about a shortage of food in Gary is that something that you've been experiencing. As a resident, yes, I know that we live in a food desert meaning we don't have any major grocery stores. We don't have a Walmart. We don't have a ton. We don't have any of that. We just have one local grocery store and you know it's not the best. It's not great. I do know that issues surrounding food is one of the biggest problems right now especially because our outage just haven't stopped right at any moment's notice. Our lights will go right back out and they'll be out for a day or two days. So I know keeping food in the refrigerator has been extremely hard and you know it's traumatic to say the least to not know when you're going to have to turn around and throw groceries you just purchased away. And we're trying our best to stay positive and to keep groceries and food on the table.

9:33Yeah, in terms of keeping everybody in your house fed you have two children. How has that been working for you guys as a family making sure that folks are getting enough food to eat? I know that like I have a specific circumstance because my daughter she's a picky eater. She's autistic so she has to have you know her normal foods her safe foods. It's been extremely difficult to get her back on track and I know during the blackout you know we depend a lot of fast food which is not you know my priority or my children's you know they're used to a home cook meal. So trying to get back into routine and I know we've had enough to eat but we have to travel pretty far to get good produce you know nutritious food and things that aren't accessible here in Gary. Yeah, my brother is a person with Down syndrome and so I know all too well what that is like use strictly chicken fingers and french fries all the time.

10:39So I know you know how difficult it can be sometimes to make that work especially in a situation like this. Talk a little bit about the disparity in the community between who got power turned on first who seems to be getting more of the attention what have you been seeing on the ground there in Gary in this response effort. So my hometown where I was raised is Valparaiso Indiana it is predominantly Caucasian they're just 45 minutes down the road but I've lived in Gary for over 15 years. And the surrounding communities that have a higher median household income you know we're 33% below the poverty line. We watched nips go prioritize other cities and you know places like drive was raised they weren't without power for more than a day. And then you look 45 minutes where we're at and it took us two weeks we were not prioritized nips go released multiple updates on the outages Gary was not on the list it took for us to make a lot of noise to even here you know maybe this day maybe that day.

11:50But there were a lot of stipulations and rumors surrounding things that never happened that stop progress and we were pretty much left behind by nips go for a long time. Yeah I want to talk a little bit about your home as well which I understand sustained some damage in the storm tell folks what you're experiencing on a day to day basis as a result of that damage. So I know I don't know you're aware but it was like it's called a drench so there was a lot a lot of water and I know my roof took on a lot of wind a couple of trees and a lot of water so I have carpet so our carpet is completely ruined my mattress was ruined because the roof right above completely like there's holes in it and there's holes in the closet there's holes everywhere in my room so a lot of our furniture a lot of our clothes a lot of our. Like beds and things we can't use them and we had to wait on FEMA to send people out to come and inspect every house one by one before they were able to give us anything towards anything and it's at their discretion it's what they feel like you should get so I know along with myself a lot of people have a lot of furniture on the curb I know I throw a lot of stuff away just trying to get back to normal see and rebuilding what we had but we're also still dealing with reality of things like that.

13:12So I know that's a really good reality of things like you mentioned groceries and our children going back to school things like that. Yeah I really appreciate your time thank you so much for for sharing your experiences and this extreme weather is impacting folks across the country whether you're in the Midwest or the southeast it so often gets hit by hurricanes or out west where we saw the devastation of the California wildfires most acutely and extremely in 2025. January fires destroyed entire communities across Los Angeles and I connect to is I hear Calvin who lost his home and his mother's home in Altonina about the things that he and his family are never going to get back as a result of extreme weather and why the recovery process remains so difficult for people who are fighting with the insurance companies and the federal government more than a year and a half later. Here is my emotional conversation with Syyear so thank you so much for joining me on in your backyard I really appreciate you taking the time.

14:17Yes glad to be here so talk to me a little bit about your experience out in California in the Eaton fire we saw so much devastation happen in Altonina past dinner and so many other places in and around Los Angeles and I understand that your home was among those claimed in the fires I'm so glad to be here. I'm so sorry to hear that which tells a little more about your experience over a year ago now. Yes my experience we we lost five homes on two properties my sister actually died in the fire she was one of the first victims of the fire we actually literally found her so that's all we were the first case that happened. When it comes to all the tragedy and how much that you know we've lost our community is devastated we never thought our community was going to burn down our fire was so unexpected because the fire actually never came down off the hill and never came off the mountain we actually got burned down by the winds and and and in burst that with the size of the fire.

15:36I want to pause for a moment before we keep talking about the extreme weather and could you share with me a little bit about your sister and tell me about who she was. She was a bus driver she wanted to be a simple woman she was a college graduate graduated from Loyola Marymount you know went right into corporate America corporate America was hard on her so she was like I just want more of a basic life so she became a bus driver and wanted to just be there for kids and and be part of community that way. And she was a God fearing person she she definitely you know Jesus was everything to her so her whole life was about following rules during the right thing the biggest thing she ever did bad in life she would say was running the stop sign and she's still arguing with that share I can see her from her great arguing with that share of to this day.

16:59She was taking her take it for running the stop sign because she she believed in in in following rules that's probably the worst offense she's had in life and she was just a loving person who wanted you know who been through a lot in life and wanted a quiet life at this point in life because she went through a lot. Thank you for sharing about her I understand it was your home and your mother's home that were lost in the fires in addition to to many more what has it been like working with the insurance companies in the aftermath of this devastation. Working with the insurance companies has been hell on earth as we can just to put it blatantly we've been fighting as a community and leading the charge against all of the ill practices of insurance companies all the denied delay. I'm going to say get you to repeat my whole community is under insured I'm talking about even down to our water company so these aren't even just the individuals we're talking about the whole community is under insured when it comes to insurance and the predatory practices that have happened when it comes to payouts and trying to make sure that our community is stabilized it's been absolutely horrendous because our fight.

18:27You lost everything then you're fighting against the people who you paid your whole life for they drop policies they're not honoring policies is just been such a tremendous fight like you said it's been a year and a half for us it feels like it just happened we're still fighting that hard. Could you offer some of the specific names of these insurance companies just because I want to reach out to them as a reporter and try and press as much as we can to put a spotlight on what they're doing here. Yeah one of the biggest ones the biggest contributor has been state farm state farm has been the biggest bad actor in this whole ordeal i've been leading the fight with all of my whole community and. Farmers just got sued also so we the county just follow follow suit with lawsuits to do investigative reports into state farm farmers all state it's been a lot of a lot of insurance but state farm has been the leading the leading.

19:41The entity in the in the bad. When it comes to victimize in the community and then also the California fair plan has been absolutely horrendous so what they've offered people which is pennies on the dollars that that has been a huge problem for our community also. So interesting to hear you say that because I know this is the time of year when many people are sitting down to watch football on Sundays and I feel like you oftentimes can't go a commercial break without seeing a commercial. From one of those names of those companies that you just mentioned one of them has the slogan you're in good hands. I wonder if you felt that you've been in good hands as a result of what you've experienced. It's so ironic that you say that because I coach and I have kids that actually play because I'm a coach also they call me coach Z. I have kids that actually are in the NFL and then these different arenas and play so when they say are you in good hands it's the total opposite.

20:47So watching the commercials are triggering to a community now which is very hurtful. There are individual claims that have been okay I always like to state that people have had some amazing old policies that paid out but we have not been in good hands as a community. It has been very hurtful, stressful and it is start stagnated our recovery. Talk to me a little bit about the makeup of the community in Elstena. I believe at one point you had described some of these folks as pen and paper people which I know in an increasingly digital world makes all the processes of filling out forms that much harder. Talk a little bit about what you guys are experiencing in the community. Yeah, we have 50 to 60% of the home ownership where our elders and our elders are pen and paper people so when it came to being discriminated against and them finding resources and being able to navigate the systems.

21:52It has been absolutely horrendous for them. It has been such a trying time and then the ones who have kind of gotten through is because they have kids that are taking care of them. We are trying to walk them through the processes and they are still having problems. So you are talking about and these aren't people who don't have understanding to give you an idea of where we are. We are in Pasadena. You talk about JPL, mass, you talk about Caltech. You talk about people that are capable and still having problems, navigate in the systems because the systems are so bad. I think one of my earliest memories as a child were watching Mr. Rogers and what he has said that stuck with me throughout is whenever something is bad whenever there's trouble you look for the helpers and we've spent a lot of time talking about the folks that have made things a lot harder for you and for your neighbors.

22:54But who have been the helpers in all of this? Who have been the people there helping to put the community back together? I would say the first helpers always give God the glory. But after that I would say the community people have helped each other in this process of getting your neighbor helping even in evacuation. It was neighbors that were coming to each other's rescues. It was neighbors that were saving. I have a friend that you know it was a black neighbor and it was a white neighbor whose feet were on fire literally and he picked him up and literally carried him and put him in his car and drove him to safety. So when we talk about community and who the people who were the first responders to everything was the community was first. Then I would say after that philanthropy has been a great support. So philanthropy has actually carried us to where we are now to be able to even be in the position that we are to even start to build philanthropy philanthropic organizations have actually given.

24:08And the people around the nation who have given have really been the first ones again who helped and we are able to help our recovery. And I have been on the front line fighting every part. So to get the county and the our senators senators, Sasha's parade. Perez has been amazing. She's been front line with us. But to organize all of them from here be the end to Perez to our county supervisor to get where we are today has been a collective fight as a community. Yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much again for sharing your story and for all the work that you're doing there on the ground. We really appreciate it. Yes, thank you for having me. And as scary and sad as these personal stories are there's also a broader trend that we need to look at. It's tough to say this out loud, but these types of stories are going to be happening more often in your community to people that you know and care about even to you.

25:17And that's what I talked about with John Morales. He's a meteorologist who has served communities in South Florida for decades. And he talked with me about the science behind extreme weather events and what has been worrying him about what's to come take a lesson in my conversation with John Morales. John, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today on in your backyard. Now happy to be here. So I want you to give folks a sense of your background and how you got involved in the work that you're doing now. Yeah, listen, I've been a meteorologist for 42 years greatly as an operational meteorologist. We're the people that write the forecast, but also warn for impending and life threatening weather, right? And whether it was with the National Weather Service or as a broadcast meteorologist, I served in that fashion for a vast majority of those 42 years. Recently, I do some other things more in the realm of climate communications, but that is because if you go back 25 years or so within my broadcast meteorology career, I am proud to say that I was a pioneer in that area, broadcast meteorologist, you know, weather casters were not providing climate context in their weather segments.

26:38And I made every effort to do so and it was an upstream battle, still wager today in an era in which there seems to be more climate hushing than ever, but still out there trying to make people aware of what's going on and what's coming. Before I had this job, I was a local news reporter in my hometown of Utica, New York, and some of my favorite people at the station were the meteorologists because I just respect so much the work that you guys do. I know that I can never do it mainly because I'm really bad at math and science, but I really respect the work that you do so much. And I've seen with the meteorologists that I work within the past and in the work that I've seen just out of clips from you in South Florida, how much you really care about the community. That you serve talk a little bit about the role, the service that you perform for the people in South Florida and now have across the country with with the work that you're doing on climate.

27:39Yeah, no, listen, you know, as a South Florida weather casters since 1991 and especially in the late 90s and the early part of this new century as extreme weather events started to become more severe and multiply. And with the added threat of Florida being in the crosshairs of many of the symptoms of the changing climate, I just took it upon me to make sure that the audience realized how important it was to to well clamor for action on climate so that we could try to slow this down or somehow reverse it. In other words, think of the threats, right, sea level rise, extreme humid heat that's impacting everybody down there. Stronger hurricanes as well of being driven by climate change. When it rains, it rains harder because the air mass can sustain more moisture in it and we're seeing rain induced floods in Miami and other South Florida communities much more often.

28:44So these were all things that were really important to me. It's my job to expand what I was doing for South Floridians to the entire country so that all Americans realize how the changing climate is impacting us in so many ways from from the pocket book, right, to even existential issues with the communities that we live in. Yeah, you talk about those stronger hurricanes and one of the first clips that I saw of your work was during hurricane Milton when you learned that it was a category five hurricane. It's just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped. It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific. When the maximum sustain winds are 160 miles per hour and you are emotional on the air talking about the impacts of this and the broader impacts of climate change on the community that you serve.

29:54I think the weeds for us a little bit here because I think there is a lot of commentary on the internet. We'll just go with that about the causes of these hurricanes and whether they're getting worse as a result of climate change or not get very specific and granular with us. How do we know that climate change is responsible for these hurricanes and these weather events continuing to get worse? In physics, listen, it's science. In the case of hurricane specifically, the warmer ocean temperatures record setting temperatures that we've seen in 2026 and we'll continue to see going forward. That allows for easier evaporation of water off the surface of the ocean. The water vapor then goes into the circulation of the hurricane. The air rises. Eventually it cools. It condenses out. The vapor becomes liquid again, in other words. And that process of condensation releases energy into the fledgling hurricane and allows it to grow stronger.

31:02The very specific getting into the weeds of how it works in a hurricane. Now we're not necessarily seeing a larger count. There's no more tropical storms and hurricanes around the planet than there were before human induced climate change. But what is happening is that the ones that form are becoming stronger. There is a greater propensity for tropical cyclones to reach category four and five. Those intensities on the Safrored Simpson scale are the catastrophic ones, the hurricanes that truly conflatten communities and take lives. When you're laying the science out and talking very directly about the reasoning for these hurricanes continuing to get worse in a community like South Florida community that has shifted in a more rightward leaning direction politically in recent years has voted for people like the president who have cast doubt on a lot of the science that you're talking about.

32:06Have you received any pushback from folks in your community about the forecast that you're giving about the context that you're providing or is it reaching people to hear it from a trusted voice in their community like you. It's the latter. I mean, the general reaction that I get from folks when I run into them at the post office at the bank at the grocery store folks are thanking me for two things my hurricane acumen I guess over many, many years of providing hurricane forecasts and second thing is climate communications folks are grateful that there is indeed somebody on the air on TV into their living rooms and bedrooms every night because they watch right they watch our newscasts talking about the kinds of things that are threatening South Florida and are threatening them and their families and their communities how can it be that you know when broadcast meteorologists are asked to talk about shooting stars and beautiful sunsets and even earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because we are the

33:18stations scientists. If we're asked to talk about all those things, how can we not include this crisis that we're in right now which requires action to provide people to empower people with education so that they know why it is so urgent to call for action on climate and so again the reaction has been very positive. I don't get pushed back generally speaking obviously there are some digital platforms where trolling is more of a sport than it is in others, but you know I have a thick enough skin to deal with that. The other clip that people may have seen of your work came last year in the first year of the president's second term where you spoke about your ability to forecast hurricanes accurately and how it's been impacted by the actions of this administration that cuts in funding to the National Weather Service and other tools that you rely on in order to make accurate forecast.

34:22Confidently I went on TV and I told you it's going to turn you don't need to worry it is going to turn and I am here to tell you that I'm not sure I can do that this year because of the cuts the gutting the sledgehammer attack on science in general and I could talk about that for a long long time. There's also a chance because of some of these cuts that no hurricane hunter aircraft will not be able to fly this year and with less reconnaissance missions we may be flying blind and we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline like happened a couple of years ago in hurricane Otis in Acapulco Mexico. So I was asked to talk about this today I'm glad I was I just want you to know that what you need to do is call your representatives and make sure that these cuts are stopped. First what was your message to the folks watching in South Florida and and what are the what's the reality that you're facing as a meteorologist as someone trying to forecast the weather and it's these cuts.

35:33So that that happened what five months into the Trump regime the cuts from doge were just getting started and being felt and I was extremely alarmed because no other national shianic atmosphere administration and and many of its research labs and our own national weather service right which which the mission is to save life from property. Well they were targeted in hundreds of scientists lost their jobs through the doge cuts in addition we were seeing the degradation of our forecast skill because data that was regularly available in the past no longer was so for example whether balloon releases by the way these things are still still pervasive today 15 months later we're still not getting the the weather balloon data that we need to be able to provide accurate forecasts and and we've seen the consequences right we saw you know surprise tornadoes in Michigan in the spring that led to the Michigan government asking for an investigation we saw surprise tornadoes in eastern Kansas also in the spring which caught people off guard we've seen the flip flopping.

36:59Of on air broadcasters meteorologists that you know see weather models going going from one extreme to the other because they can't home in on a result on a on a proper likely scenario of what the weather is going to be so at the end of the day and we can verify this through statistics. We've seen the degradation of the forecast skill of the American weather enterprise to the detriment and and and a threat to all of us in the country. Yeah and I want to be super specific about what the government was doing previously because I think for a lot of people they see the numbers on their TV screen on those green screen maps or on their phones now increasingly that's where they're getting this information but they're not entirely sure where it's actually coming from so talk about the weather balloons and all these things that the government used to be providing used to be doing to help you and to help your fellow meteorologist make these forecast that now it's happening less and less.

38:08Yeah listen this is one of the greatest tragedies of of the Trump administration is that the American weather enterprise was the gold standard around the world. Every other country looked to how in the US we had the partnerships the data the scientific skill to be able to provide the best lead time for potential life threatening and impactful events. The most exact warnings to populations in that entire assembly has been slowly dismantled by by the Trump administration in other words Noah the parent agency serves as the scaffolding of what we all do as meteorologists in this country and the taxpayers have supported Noah obviously. It's a federal agency just like we support you know national institutes of health and US Department of Agriculture and all these other important agencies right to to societies well being well through taxpayer money Noah and the national weather service have this as I said great scaffolding that allows us to provide the forecasts and warnings that save life and property.

39:33Now that's been torn apart enough so that I when I went on the year with that video in June of 2025 that indeed went by world where I was challenging the cuts from the administration and I was asking folks to contact their elected representatives to make sure that they urged the executive branch to stop doing this right when I did that is because. I knew that my own ability as a well known hurricane forecast or for over 40 years was being impacted and that I would no longer have the confidence that I used to have in providing life saving hurricane forecast to an audience because of Trump and the Trump cuts yeah let's basically like a very obvious question but just to make it very practical for people about the impacts are here what does it mean when you don't have the lead time when you're not able to make as accurate a forecast as you used to be able to insure weather events like a hurricane.

40:45Yeah I mean one of the ways of looking at that is you know the costs of evacuation when a hurricane is threatening if you're unsure of where hurricane is going or if you're unsure of how strong it might be when it's approaching a population center and you have to overwarn across a larger swath of the coast so that people have to you know pick up and leave and go to a shelter in. And figure out what to do with their medicines and figure out what to do with their dog or cat or more importantly you know maybe a parent that lives at the house these are all crucial decisions which by the way I mean not everybody can even afford to evacuate a region due to some of the challenges that we have in this country right so when when you think of a more in exact hurricane forecast we're talking about many more people having to

41:45expand to spend money on something that they wouldn't have to have done otherwise in which by the way in the end those folks that evacuated or that took action for a hurricane that never saw a raindrop or a puff of wind are going to be suffering from this false alarm syndrome right the cry wolf syndrome going forward and perhaps not take action in a future storm so that's I mean that's just one example of many of how these type of cuts. It's impact is all. Yeah when you talked about the uncertainty in the path of a storm it reminded me of actually one of the most telling images of the president's first term in office when there was a hurricane making its way up the coast and he had put out a message saying that it was one of the targeted states that it could hit was Alabama that when against with the national weather service it said and so when he was in the oval office presenting on it I'm sure I don't need to remind you of this. I'm sure that it's not the only example of where the president's communication is going to arrive but I wonder what impact that has on the work that you do if any to have that lack of clarity and communication coming from the very top of the government.

43:07I mean the president has the biggest bullhorn right and you know when you have the leader of a country providing a miss and disinformation you know it can only lead to trouble in that particular case we were talking about hurricane Dorian in the year 2019 it was in the Bahamas it was going to make a north turn as a matter of fact it's part of my example of when I used to be confident in providing hurricane forecasts which I no longer am as much right. So we knew we knew where the hurricane was going to head generally speaking we couldn't name the exact time it was going to hit if it was going to hit along the US coast but one thing we knew is that it wasn't going to Alabama right. So so and by the way I mean this led to an entire call it Sharpie gate right because part of the problem that we're living through right now is the whole fear because of the intimidation of the you know of the of the man that's in power in this country and and his entire team right I mean the

44:23folks even within the national service were fearful to speak up and correct the president when he drew this path you know that was going to take hurricane Dorian to Alabama and that's part of the problem that we're living through today I mean there's never been a time like today to be courageous we need more people being courageous and standing up to what's going on. Yeah in a similar vein relating to the Sharpies he's been taking a sharpie to a lot of other places on the map I'm from upstate New York so obviously he just recently changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America for American purposes Apple maps Google maps followed suit the same way they did early on in his term when he renamed the Gulf Mexico to the Gulf of America you're reporting on whether in South Florida how are you handling that on the air and how do you hope others will be able to do that. So we'll handle it does it create any sort of confusion or division among the people that you're trying to serve.

45:29Yeah I mean I don't know if it creates confusion because of course everybody knows that the you know so-called Gulf of America refers to the Gulf of Mexico but division for sure I've seen quite a few exchanges from folks that complain to broadcast meteorologists because they've named it Gulf of Mexico on the air they've said it's Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America and by the way I mean generally this is a one-sided thing it's it's the folks in the in the cult right that generally want to defend the so-called re-neaming of the Gulf of Mexico. I don't think you see much of that you know from the other side although if you know if I if I were to be on the air and call the Gulf of America I think people would probably be a little bit concerned too. Bottom line here is that you know these unilateral re-naming of international bodies water are not recognized anywhere except you know in in the White House and and those circles.

46:36I again talking about lack of courage we see a lot of companies capitulating to this and re-naming their maps at least for American audiences not sure what what those maps look like internationally when you access them from say Apple Maps or Google right but certainly for the US audience they've capitulated. But again that's not the way those bodies water are known to the world right it's it's only something that at the whim of of the man in power we've seen happen so I call it Gulf of Mexico you know I call it Lake Ontario I will call it New Mexico you know. And for now and so does map quest apparently so they've they've been the ones that have stood out on this front I want to pivot to more serious topics than then all of that and that is as you look ahead to the severe weather on the horizon what worries you the most about this upcoming storm season and storm seasons to come we've heard a lot of talk about El Nino especially for folks living on the west coast in southern California.

47:51What can you provide for folks in terms of what they should be preparing for in the next few weeks and months and years. Yeah so short term definitely the El Nino which is a record setting intense very very strong it is likely going to bring some very impactful weather. Well already is across the world but specifically in the United States there's going to be likely some very heavy precipitation in California and parts of the mountains out west there's going to be a very stormy south from Texas to Florida and the Carolinas a lot of powerful fronts with a lot of tornadic activity likely to happen during this winter spreading into the spring as well. And that could lead you know it could be so wet that we could see some floods etc by the way you know ahead of all that we've seen a pretty severe drought going on in the Caribbean we know it's going on in Puerto Rico and that's not the only place where it's happening many other Caribbean islands are suffering the drought because of the El Nino so you know that's just one example of many of impacts worldwide from that phenomena so people need to be aware and ready for that.

49:08And before I pivot to some of my bigger concerns of the era we're living in in terms of our ability to prepare people for these impactful events let me also state that beyond the El Nino everybody needs to be aware that we are warming the planet which is leading to more frequent and extreme weather events that can thrive. That can threaten life and property. This is not going to stop you never know when it's going to come for your neighborhood your neck of the woods and I would urge everybody to try to disassociate this associate yourself with your lived experience don't let the past be a guide for your actions potential life saving actions going forward because the events that we're seeing generally speaking nobody's ever seen right so the worst can happen and folks need to think that way so that when there is a you know all it is slight chance for an extreme event happening you know I wouldn't look at it as such a slight chance things are happening with great ease now that can threaten a lot of lives property.

50:34Now, combine all that with our degraded ability to monitor forecast and warn for severe weather events because of the Trump administration's indiscriminate cuts to science in general right and don't get me started on that but specifically right to America's weather enterprise which again used to be the world gold standard but may no longer be well you know if we can't even properly warn you like we used to then you know you need to be very concerned and be very alarmed and make sure again I urge everybody to continue to contact their elected representatives and let them know vociferously how important to your family safety it is that we keep these systems in place the systems that we are going to do is the systems that helped save American lives and property need to be upheld and and and everybody needs to be a part of of that calling.

51:43John, thanks so much for joining us and your backyard I really appreciate your time. I want to thank John for sharing his expertise and Ajahn's idea for sharing their personal stories with all of us even as they're going through so much in their communities and with their families I also want to keep this going keep this conversation going about extreme weather and all the issues that are impacting you in your communities so if there are stories you want to share with us about the things happening in your backyard topics issues that we should be covering here on this show we want to hear from you drop it in the comments section let me know reach out to me on social media I've really enjoyed talking to folks about what's been happening in their backyard we'll be back here in two weeks until then please continue to support the might as touch network thanks as always for watching.