>>NewsNight is going on the road.

You're invited to join us October 2nd for a live recordin of Newsnight Conversations: Election 2024 at the BE event Center in Kissimmee.

Registration is ope at wucf.org/newsnightelection.

This week on NewsNight a conversation about the science of hurricane prediction with one of the country's top tropical weather meteorologists.

>>I mean, it's kind of a nasty example of what can happen when you, when you put a storm, in a very conducive environment, such as it was, such as it was under when it was in the Gulf of Mexico.

>>Plus, I look at the resiliency work taking place in coastal and inland areas.

>>Being a resilient community for us means that we can survive that we can bounce back faster.

Because we know and we're prepared for what is coming.

>>NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, welcome to NewsNight where we take a deep dive into the stories and issue that matter to Central Florida and how they shap our community.

First, tonigh a reminder this week that we're still in the thick of hurricane season here in Florida with Hurricane Helene making landfall in the state.

Forecasts for this storm proved to be remarkably consistent for several days, showing a direct hi in the Panhandle and Big Bend.

Helene marked an abrupt end to an unexpectedly quiet season leading up to the current peak period.

That's in stark contrast to the predictions of a record setting year at the start of the season.

Of course, any tropical system that hits anywhere in Florida or elsewhere makes i a bad season for that location.

Well, to discuss the art and science of hurricane forecasting, I chatted with Phil Klotzbach part of a team of meteorologists at Colorado State University that puts together an annual forecast for hurricane season.

>>This actually is a pretty good example of what we see during the early and late season.

We have this phenomenon know as the Central American Gyre, which is basically this broa area of, that kind of spins up during the earl and late season.

And it doesn't.

This wasn't necessarily a pure gyre case, but definitely formed from a very broad circulation, which is why Helene has been such a big storm.

So this time of year that it's a kind of genesis that you expect.

And obviously, Helene is kind of a nasty example of what can happen when you, when you put a storm, in a very conducive environment, such as it was, such as it was under when it was in the Gulf of Mexico.

We had both very, very warm Gulf of Mexico, now the Gulf of Mexico was certainly warm enoug to support any nasty hurricane this time of year.

The waters are plenty warm right now.

They are actually running somewhat warmer than normal.

We had both, we have both very kind of weak winds blowing across the Gulf of Mexico the last few weeks.

You can basically kind of reduce the evaporation and led to, some anomalous warming, some of the warmth.

It's very warm there right now.

We also tend to have right now in the Gulf of Mexico, lo levels of vertical wind shear.

So, the basically the winds around the storm basically aren't really trying to tear the storm apart.

So that helped allow the storm to intensify, quite significantly as well, because there's certainly been cases where you've had storms in the Gulf that haven't strengthened.

They've even weakened just because, say, the shear too strong or is too dry.

So you get to a lot of dry air in the Gulf.

In the case of Helene we didn't have much dry air either.

>>Well I was going to ask you about that.

What is your projectio for the rest of the season now?

>>Yeah.

So things are actually looking a lot busier than they have, obviously.

You know we're comparing it with a period that was extremely quiet.

Helene seems to have kind of broken through.

And the period coming u does actually look quite busy.

There are several different areas, that look like they may go, in the next week or two.

If you look at some of the long range projections, both from the Climate Prediction Center's weekly outlooks they're forecasting potential, additional genesis, bot in the main developing region.

So east of, say, the Lesser Antilles as well as potentially additional development in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe western Caribbean.

So certainly, you know, this is this time of year, we still don't want to let our guard down.

You know, we'r just getting through September.

We still have October and November to go.

And certainly October can brew, very significant hurricanes.

So certainly, now's the time to just make sure you're, you have your plans in place and you're ready to go if storm seas right where you live.

>>But there is some nervousness, isn't there, about the modeling?

Even with the improved science behind hurricane prediction, there is still a lot of uncertainty, right?

>>So if we're looking kind of at bulk numbers, you know, obviously we're not done with the season yet.

But you know, it's be some sort of crazy thing to get the numbers up to exactly what we forecast, given just how long the season was below normal.

So but it's interesting to loo from a landfall perspective.

We've already had four, U.S. hurricane landfalls this year for the continental U.S. which is, the most since 2020.

The only other two years that we had four plus landfalls were '04 and '05.

So it's been very busy from a landfall perspective.

So from an impacts perspective, it's been busy.

But overall, basin wid has certainly been a lot quieter than ourselves and other groups were anticipating where right now we're sitting at five hurricanes.

We predicted 12.

So, you know, I mean, certainly we can see more, between now the end of the season, but it would be something really nuts to get, seven more hurricanes before the end of the year.

So, you know, it does go to show that, you know, we have this we have modeling, we have both statistical models, and we use numerical weather prediction models using, you know, have that's here based on supercomputers, all this data that we have available but still you know, at the end of the day, the best models and the, you know, the best data that we have can sometimes still lead to very surprising, results like we've seen so far this year.

You know, certainly how we've talked in July or early August, I would not have expected we'd be sitting at five hurricanes in the later part of September.

>>Phil Klotzbach there.

A reminder you can always find information on hurricane season on our website.

Be sure to visit wucf.org/storms for more.

All right.

Next tonight.

Hurricane season is always a concern for both coasta and inland areas of our state.

In recent years, resiliency has become a major priority for both the state and federal governments.

Earlier this year, NewsNight hosted a discussion on resiliency efforts in our state and the work being done to shore up our coastlin and vulnerable inland areas too.

Tonight we wanted to bring you a portion of that discussion from May.

Joining me in the studio now to talk about resiliency efforts here in Central Florida are Leesa Souto.

She's operations director for applied ecology.

Applied ecology works with cities, counties and the state on environmental resource management, ecological studies and more.

Doctor Souto has been working in the field of Florida's water resources for more than 30 years including shoreline restoration.

Darcie McGee, assistant director of Brevard County Natural Resources Management Department, Brevard's beach management program, administers several beach restoration projects to protect property and maintain healthy beaches.

Courtney Barker She's been city manager of Satellite Beach since 2013.

Satellite beach established a Green committee in 2015.

It's also published its first sustainability action plan in 2017.

And Jennifer Rupert, she' the regional resiliency officer for the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council.

The council, established in 1962, is an are wide association of governments.

Its members provide projec policy and planning assistance to governments and organizations within eight counties in the East Central Florida region.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Really appreciate your time today.

Let me start with a broad question for each of you.

How do you define coastal resilience?

I mean, if you had to explain it to somebody in the ride up an elevator, what does it mea to have a resilient coastline?

And I'll start with you, Leesa.

>>Well, I think resiliency is about planning and being adaptable.

So trying to understand what's coming at you so you can be prepared for it.

So it's really just a matter of, you know, being abl to collect the information that you need to know to predic what's about to happen to you in the next time frame, be it 50 years or 100 years.

So you can be prepared.

So with cities and counties and governments, it's a big deal.

We do a lot of installations with the military to prepare them.

They've got missions tha they need to get accomplished.

But even households, we're always planning, right, for maintenance for things that are coming at us.

So resiliency is really just a different kind of a planning mechanism.

>>Sure, what do you think Darcie?

>>We define that as the ability to bounce forward, to look at people, places and prosperity and plan for the futur so that we can bounce forward and now bounce bac from any kinds of structural shocks and stressors.

>>Yeah.

Courtney, how do you view resiliency?

>>I view it as, you know, the term came out really as a way to describ how cities and counties and local governmen are going to respond to the impacts of climate chang and, and sea level rise, and that includes everythin from the increased heat to the eroding shorelines to even water quality issues and storms.

I mean, flooding.

So being a resilient community for us means that we can survive that we can bounce back faster because we know and we're prepared for what is coming.

So and that really is i the face of a changing climate.

>>And you mentioned storms and of course, that's particularly relevant this year because it's predicted that we'll have a fairly busy season.

Hopefully we don't.

Of course, Jennifer, what do you think?

>>You know, we do use the ability to bounce forward, respond to and recover from I think shocks and stressors is the kind of common theme.

So those short term shocks, hurricanes, infrastructure failures, those kinds of things and those longer term stressors, that does include climate change.

It does include affordable housing.

And it includes, shifting economic trends.

So kind of looking at i holistically, from that people, place and prosperity perspective is, I think, what all local governments and people are challenged to.

And I think for late, in layman's terms, it's really, you know, how are we setting ourselves up for success?

You know, when you're walking out the door in the morning, what do you do to set your family and yourself up for success?

And I think local governments are applying that same type of mantra and things that we do and plan for.

>>You guy mentioned there about the causes of the resiliency issues that we face, and I wonder whether we can pinpoint everything.

I mean, there's there' climate change, sea level rise, but there's also other things, right?

I mean, the development that we've done on dunes over the years, stronger storms.

What do you see as the the main causes for the resiliency issues that we face today Leesa?

>>We're really struggling with what to do with our floodplain areas in Florida.

We've got an awful lot of low lying wetland areas and flood plain areas.

That is where everybody wants to live.

And so historically, that has been compromised.

And now they're about to be taken back.

Right.

So with sea level ris and groundwater rise, there are there are just low lying areas are going to fill in.

And that's not just on the coast.

So the rivers are going to fill up the low lyin wetlands are going to fill up.

Everything is going to fill up very slowly, gradually.

So that's that's a big issue where we're still seeing, you know, developers going in and getting variances today to build right in those flood areas.

So that's a big change that needs to happen.

And that's a sentiment, a political change, a political win that needs to change entirely.

We need to stop building in the area where we have potential storage for all this water that's coming.

>>As Leesa said the flooding is a big one and, you know, Brevar County's got Saint Johns River, banana River, Indian River lagoon, Sikes Creek and the Atlantic coast and that's a lot of coastline.

So there there's different shocks and stressors and all those areas.

But, you know, I think a common theme is certainly flooding.

>>I mean, as somebody who runs a city, or was involved in running a city, Courtney, I mean, there's got to be a lot of other factors.

And I wonder whether there is an economic imperative to this as well.

I mean when you took over in that job, what was it that caused you to focus so much on that particular issue?

Does this go beyon just the environmental impacts?

Do you have to be concerned about other things that can be affected by that?

>>Yeah.

So we really good example is our fire statio and our public works building.

Both of those buildings were in a flood zone.

We wanted to the Public work building was in total bad shape.

And then with the fire station they were running out of room.

And do we put a second story on a fire station that's in a flood zone that w might have to move in 30 years?

You can make a very costly mistake by not doing that forward planning.

So it's definitely an economic decision.

>>I mean, there are of course economic decisions for individuals as well.

Right?

And we we talk about property insurance and the crisis in that market in our state all the time.

And I just want to whether any of yo are concerned about this issue that sometimes we see after major storms, which is called climate gentrification, where basically people can't afford to live in their communitie that they may have grown up in for generation because of the climate impacts.

What do you think, Leesa?

>>I thought it was an interesting word, climate gentrification.

And I've been watching it happen, regardless of climate my entire life here in Florida.

Something that's simila is what we describe in academia as the managed retreat.

>>Yes.

>>There's the the the potential that cities and counties could somehow plan to remove people from dangers way and it's in theory, it's in the literature.

And for and I'd love to to see the mechanisms like you were talking about to make that happen because we're trying t visualize this managed retreat.

And what the big picture do you guys ever do that what this is going to look lik for the beachfront properties, for those propertie that you know, when they get the when we get the 22ft storm surge or something horrible, that they're just completely annihilated.

Who's going to pick up that rubble and put it all back together?

The insurance companies, I think are pulling out of the the coastal areas already.

>>And we've lost eigh in the state of Florida.

Right.

Have become insuranc companies have become insolvent and I think there's there's, examples across the country.

Norfolk, Virginia has already kind of carved out an area where they're no longer going to be investing in their infrastructure and rebuilding it.

So they're saying there' they've hit the tipping point.

We can't hold the water back anymore.

Therefore we are no longer going to maintain, manage and reinvest in this particular area because the water is going to be there.

So and therefore we need t move people away from that area.

So that is there are examples of that happening.

>>We haven't had a structure lost to erosion since we've started our beach renourishment project.

However, we've had some undermining where a portion of the home.

Our codes require you to move back.

Right.

That's the smart thing to do.

But the insurance companies have been either not have insurance or the especially this last storm.

Nicole treated the owners terribly, and they're only recourse was to sell their property.

And there is no lack of people that have cash.

They don't need insurance, and they now are building to a new standards, which is that the homes on pilings on stilts go way down into the ground.

So they're undermined.

They're still sitting there.

That is the gentrification that we're seeing is that the people that grew up there can no longer afford to redo their house, move it back.

They've got to sell out, and you've got people coming from out of our county that just think they want to live there.

They want to get as close as they can to the beach.

And it's not maybe the best decision.

>>Where do you come down on this, Courtney?

>>I agree with Darcie that that's what we're seeing is, people who grew up in the area can no longer afford to live there, and insurance has price many people out.

I mean, personally, I' on the third insurance company in three years.

So it's it's, and it's my insurance has tripled in three years, so it's very expensive.

And we're going to see a lot more of that occurring.

>>Do we need to be concerned, Leesa, abou about critical infrastructure, the things that keep our state going?

>>Oh yeah.

I mean, we have a Space Force base very vulnerable in Brevard County.

And a lot of, you know, when we've got a power plant on our course.

So.

Yeah, yes of course we need to be aware.

And fortunately I think that those big federal facilitie are doing resiliency planning.

They are they they've got, you know, orders and, and federal requirements to do so.

So fortunately, they are acting, you know, we're doing a tremendous amount of work for the federal government to assist them with that planning.

And, and in strategies to address and where to move buildings.

I mean, just the conversation that we just had, you know, where the City of Satellite Beach says we don't want to rebuild our fire station where it's going to flood in 30 years.

I mean, that's the same conversation, except the facilities are much, much bigger and they're even they're billions of dollars, but they're they're doing the same thought process.

Oh, we need to move it.

We need to move it.

>>You know, we're just kicked off a program, called the Militar Installation Resilience Review.

And where DoD has done a fantastic job looking inside the fence line and building u and strengthening and hardening their infrastructure internally.

They have an office called the Office of Local Defens and Community Cooperation who helps local governments that support the installations, look outside the fence line and build and strengthen and harden the infrastructur on the outside the fence line.

That program just got kicked off in our region, which we're very fortunate to work with them.

I think Space Force and, and even NSA Orlando, which is an internal installation, their presence in this region is very important to, as an economic drive and having the ability to look at those issues and examine, infrastructure that supports, those installations is really something that we're looking forward to moving, moving in that direction.

>>Does the way we tackle zoning, construction incentives have to be tailore specifically for our region, because I've covered the resiliency effort that have taken place.

For example, in Miami Beach, where they've kind of jacked buildings up.

I mean, the whole city is essentially higher.

The streets are higher.

Businesses have been raised up, pumping stations, walls and so on.

I wonder whether there are unique challenges to doing resiliency where we are in Central Florida, Leesa.

>>There is a proces that, called the vulnerability assessment that cities and counties and regions can participate in, and that gets funded by the state of Florida, where they can go into their community and understand very specifically what their issues are.

Each communit has their own unique situation in the inland here in Central Florida, temperature might be more of an issue than water.

Or it could be tha because they have purged aquifers, their stormwate doesn't have enough, anywhere for it to drain down.

So when it rains, i sits on the surface for longer.

So everything is going to pond different different than mayb farther south or farther north.

So each community kind of has to look at their vulnerability themselves.

What do they think is vulnerable?

So trying to redesign the entire stormwater infrastructure to deal with what is probably going to be th 500 year storm, that's coming, you know, every couple of years it is is going to be unique for each for each community.

>>Yeah, absolutely.

And those vulnerability assessment really focus in on an asset.

And, what's happening to that asset, the amount of exposur it has to any type of element.

And we've really tried to take it a step further.

Within the collaborative itself or the regional Planning Council, we've identified the driver of vulnerability in this region.

And that really allows us to guess we're going to respond, we're going to get better at response and build things back bette and do everything in that way.

But we're also going to lean into some transformative change in this region.

So to take those vulnerability assessments and really look at a particular asset and who it serves and how some might b prioritized in different ways, higher than others because of the people that they serv and the populations they serve.

It's really a way that we are uniquely addressing vulnerability assessments.

As we're moving forwar in east central Florida anyway.

>>Darcie, what do you think?

>>So from a more from a Brevard County perspective, we're seeing a lot of residential development being driven by that all the space activity going on.

So what we're trying to do from our perspective in term of comprehensive plan and land development regulations is we're in the middle of doing our, what they call the EAR every seven years.

You look at your comprehensive plan and see where it needs to be tweaked.

Now we need to figure out how do we take these concepts we came up with that were adopted by the board of County commissioners.

I mean, it was a very successful activity.

How do we now implement those?

How do we get out of the way of innovation?

Because some of the stuff that we have, we recognize is not allowing people to be innovative if they want to be.

So that's what we're working o now, is to how do we get the parallel flood policies implemente for developers to use?

They have to have the tools to use them or they're not going to use them.

>>One thing that Hurricane Ian showed us was that resiliency is not just an issue in coastal areas, right?

I mean, there are resilience, resiliency issues being faced everywher and huge amounts of flooding in Seminole County and in Osceola County.

How do you tell people that they should be concerned about these issues if they live 50 miles away from the coast?

What do you think, Leesa?

>>Yeah, it's hard to.

So it is hard to get humans to get excited about something that might happen to them in the future.

Right.

We've seen that.

So I think once Ian goes through, then people are more likely to listen to you so you can wait for the emergency to happen.

And now you've got an active listening audience.

But unfortunately you know, we're very reactive.

We humans.

I'm a planner.

You're a planner.

We're probably all planners here.

So we like to we like to be more proactive.

We like to plan for things to happen.

But as a species, we tend to be reactive.

We do.

So, you know, once the storm goes through, that's the tim to make the political changes.

That's the time to make the move.

The state is investing, right.

The state is is coming to the table with force and money and ideas and technical capabilities.

And we need it.

So I'm more optimistic than I've been in my career ever, in Florid with what changes are being made with what, local governments bringing to the table with our governor and our state government is bringing to the table, in the federal government as well.

You know, we're doin a lot of federal work right now, but I'm really encouraged with the vision that we have in Florida and the momentum that we're beginning to, aspire to.

We're just getting rolling.

But I can feel the momentum coming.

>>Well, let's talk about whether you guys are optimistic.

What do you think, Darcie?

Are you optimistic fo the future of our coastal areas and our inland areas too of course.

>>Depends on what day you ask me.

But yes, in general, yes.

I mean, Brevard County, when you talk about differences of other areas, you look at Volusia County where their beaches are hardened.

They're already hardened wit giant, massive condos on there.

Miami, same thing.

Brevard County still has natural shorelines even where they're developed.

We do not allow hardening, seawalls on the beach.

And so seeing the benefits of engineering with nature and how do you use natural infrastructure to actually address these issues?

Living shorelines, West wetland restoration and preservation and trying to, use what we have left to to assist us in managing water and not just not just on the coast.

>>Whe I first started with the city, the first meeting that we had about climate change, and we put the words climate change meeting here, you know, on our marquee, and we we had a lot of people, why are you doing this?

This is not, necessary.

This is a waste of money.

And now we have the meetings.

Now we're talking about what is the city going to look like, you know, where are we going to go ahead and create codes to elevate structures?

What how is that going to happen?

And and they're great conversations.

So it's very exciting to see that.

And I think if we can continue on and marching forward and making some good land use policy statewide as well as statewide transportation changes, investing in our public transportation and start reducing emissions, I would be really happy.

>>Jennifer, last word to you.

You optimistic?

Do you agree with what you've heard here?

>>Yeah, absolutely.

And there is a lot of hope in this work.

There is nothing like a hazar to be the great unifier, right?

We all experience things, in the shared humanity the same way, whether it's flood, fire or whatever that impact is.

And I think when you talk about efficiency and effectiveness in government structures and really working from a whole of government perspective, you're seeing that at every level of government, whether it's federal, state, regional and local.

Even thinking about the women on this stage that I have, I find a lot of hope in the work that we're doing the relationships we've built, and the connections that we continue to, work together to for the greater good.

>>A portion of our NewsNight discussion on resiliency work in Florida that took place in May.

We'll return next Friday night at 8:30 with a regular episode of the program.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.

>>Knowledge is power, especially during hurricane season.

Make sure you're in the know with WUCF, your online source for emergency weather information from the latest storm track and projections to emergency information for where you live, plus resources to prepare your children for unexpected events and emergencies.

Keep your family safe.

Stay informed with wucf.org/StormCenter.

>>NewsNight is going o the road.

You're invited to join us October 2nd for a live recordin of NewsNight Conversations: Election 2024 at the BE Event Center in Kissimmee.

Registration is ope at wucf.org/NewsNightElection.