Podcast: Seaweed, Sunburns, and Safety: Hurricane Hal explains Galveston Beach

J.R.:
On today's episode, we're joined by Dr. Hal Needham, known affectionately as Hurricane Hal, a climate scientist and storm surge expert with more than 15 years of scientific field work. Dr. Hal Needham has been on the front lines of hurricane science from modeling flood risk in Galveston to advising global media and creating tools that help communities stay safer.

But Dr. Hal Needham isn't simply crunching numbers; you'll find him on local beaches, hat and shades firmly in place, breaking down the latest weather on social media, giving us the details on hurricanes, and coaching coastal residents on flood and extreme weather safety. In short, he's Galveston's. Go-to Expert for Weather and Climate Science.

Hurricane Hal and I decided to record this episode on the beach, as most of our discussion revolves around the sandy shores of the island. Without further ado, let's jump right into this episode with Dr. Hal Needham. Welcome to Galveston Unscripted.

Hal:
I'm Dr. Hal Needham. I'm an extreme weather and disaster scientist. I'm really passionate about weather, what's going on here along the upper Texas coast, and just getting out here on the beach and in the coastline and see what's happening, in the spring i'm doing a lot of prep for hurricane season, but I also go out in a lot of severe weather and all that stuff.

So I've been traveling a lot, but now I'm back on the island. I do a lot of tropical weather forecasting and education. This time of the year, everybody wants a hurricane talk or just to know what's up this upcoming season.

J.R.:
We do get a lot of questions about our coastline here in Galveston, and what sargassum gets a lot of stuff washing up on the shores. That's been a big question recently.

Hal:
It's crazy. You're actually living on the edge of a continent. The salt water goes forever, right? All the way out to the Gulf, the Caribbean, the Atlantic. You have no idea what's gonna wash up here on any given day.

It could be seashells. It could be coconuts. A lot of people are talking about sargassum this year, this is basically a form of seaweed. Pretty common in the Caribbean, in the Western Atlantic, and some of that does come up into the Gulf, and it's just really important to remember. It's just a natural part of the ecosystem.

A lot of little organisms and fish like to have breeding grounds there, a habitat there, they hide there. So it's really an important part of the ecosystem and part of Mother Nature that washes up on our shores.

J.R.:
The next thing I wanna talk about or ask you about is our watercolor changing all the time. Some days we get this beautiful greenish blue colored water, and other days it looks like a chocolate milkshake.

Hal:
Yeah. The water is so dynamic here. You could see it change two or three times in a day. Sometimes it's silver, sometimes it's green, sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's brown. It really has to do with the fact that we have a pretty shallow sandy bottom here on our shore. So you know how it is, you can walk out a long way on the sandy bottom, so when the winds pick up and those waves get bigger, a lot of times it's just suspending a lot of sediment that's locally produced.

Also, we have a lot of rivers in this region of the world, everywhere from the Mississippi, all the way east of us to the Brazos and the Trinity and other rivers in Texas. We have a lot of rivers in the region that dump sediment. So there's a bit of sediment out there that can find its way to the shore.

It can look brownish some days, but especially when we get calm conditions, that sediment drops out. That's when we start seeing the really clear blue water. But it's just good to remember the water is actually, by nature, clear. It just has suspended sediment that makes it look brown sometimes. A fun game that you can play with your kids or grandkids, come down here with a big bucket, so you could fill up a bucket with water, and you're like, oh, it's so brown. Within a few seconds, the sediment falls to the bottom, and you're actually looking at clear water. If you do it with an Oktoberfest beer stein, it's really cool too. I've done this on TV where we pick up a beer stein, fill it with water, it looks brown, and within seconds, the brown's down here, the rest is clear.

So it's just important to remember this is natural water. This is the way the water looked. Thousands of years ago. Sometimes people think it's polluted or whatever. It's no, there's sediment in it, but the sediment will fall to the bottom. And the same thing talking about playing with buckets with kids.

You can bring a bucket down and take some of the seaweed and shake it out, and all of a sudden, you see these little creatures, organisms, fish in it. It's teeming with life, and that's just important to remember; the island's alive. This is not a swimming pool; this is Mother Nature. And that's part of the fun, the discovery of coming down here, and you don't know quite what you're gonna find.

It is really important. The seaweed can help build the beaches for a couple of different reasons. When the wind's blowing, if you've ever been on the beach on a windy day, the sand can want to low away. The seaweed will help capture some of that sand. It'll actually help build out the beach, and that's why it's important that the seaweed stays on the beach. It helps build out our beaches. We're always concerned about the coastline eroding, and we wanna hold onto our beach. It's our most valuable resource here. So having the seaweed around it, again, it's a natural thing and I've noticed too, it'll accumulate slowly on the beach, but a lot of it'll dry out.

And even on days when I see the seaweed on the beach, I go in the water, and there isn't really much there, so it's not going to impede your fun time at the beach. Right. What are some hidden risks that people may not think about when they come to the beach? You know what's interesting? So folks come down from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin, and they're used to being at a swimming pool where everything is very controlled.

You come down here, it's a little bit different. We're not in a swimming pool anymore. If you've been out there swimming, you'll notice there are currents sometimes that run up and down the coast. Where a current hits a rock jetty or rock groin. Those strips of rocks that go out can produce a rip current, which is a thin channel of water that wants to pull you offshore. It's actually the deadliest hazard along the Gulf Coast. It's more deadly even than hurricanes. So what happens is that if you get caught in a rip current, it wants to drag you offshore. There's nothing out here that wants to pull you under. If you ever get caught in a rip current, the best thing you can do is just relax, and it's not even gonna take you out that far. Maybe 50, a hundred yards, something like that. If you're just relaxed, you're floating. When it lets you go, just basically look for where the waves are breaking; they break in shallow water.

There'll probably be waves breaking within 50 yards of you. When you get over there, you'll be able to stand up easily. It's not a problem. You just don't want to try to fight against that rip current. Even an Olympic swimmer could not swim strong enough to fight against it. So the best thing is to relax or try to swim out of it, but don't try to fight it.

The other thing is that a lot of times, people come down in a big group, and their kids are their 7-year-old, their 9-year-old is in waist-deep water. If you get over to where a rip current has been pulling out, it can actually scour out the sand. So all of a sudden, that waist-deep water goes over your head.

So I always tell people, if you're coming down with a big group, just assign one person in the group just to watch the kids they're not on their phone, they're not distracted, they're just keeping an eye on the kids because and again, in general, we have, you know what, seven, 8 million people come down a year. And we hear about a handful of these that have bad outcomes. So again, it's not this major danger for every person, but you just wanna keep your head on your shoulders and make sure you're keeping an eye out for your kids and grandkids. There are some other risks. Something else that blindsides so many people is sunburn, and the big thing is that people think that you get burnt when the sun is hot, and that's actually not true. You get burned when the sun is high. Let me explain this. You come down to the beach in the
evening when your shadow is 40 feet long and the weather is hot. You'll see people down here, six or seven o'clock at night, putting on sunscreen. They could not possibly burn. I don't care how fair their skin is. It's like a Christmas sun. It's very low on the horizon. You wanna look for those times where your shadow is really short, when your shadow is a lot shorter than you are tall. Even if it's a cool day, you get in April and May, you'll get 65 degrees. But if that sun is really high in the sky and you don't have a pretty big shadow, you are absolutely gonna burn if you have fair skin.

So, especially between 10:30 AM and 4:30 PM, with those high sun angles, you wanna stay in the shade, keep sunscreen. I tell some families that have actually told me, "We don't come to the beach anymore because our daughter always burns". The sunrise is spectacular here, especially in the summer, just where it's coming up. Come out early, play with the kids for a few hours, from seven to 10 o'clock (AM). No one's gonna get sunburned, and the kids get that energy out. And then check out a restaurant, check out an art gallery, or a museum, and spend that early afternoon indoors. And then when everyone's leaving the beach at four or 5:00 PM, come on back down, we're filming this right now in the evening, right? Perfect. Its spectacular. And the beach is empty, but I love 5, 6, 7 o'clock at night. Again, that sun is on the horizon. You cannot get a sunburn if you do that plan. You can get three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. You've been on the beach for six hours. Zero chance of sunburn. You don't even have to put on sunscreen. You avoid the hot part of the day, too. So you do, you avoid the hot part of the day. You're checking out some of these museums, art galleries, and restaurants when they're empty. So, in the early afternoon, I always tell people to enjoy downtown and come back out here late afternoon.

J.R.:
You're famous for being known as Hurricane Hal. So let's talk about hurricanes.

Hal:
Yeah. A lot of my research and professional life, I've done a lot of tropical work, so people get worried about it, right? They want to come down and enjoy the upper Texas coast, they wanna be on the island, but they're like, I don't know about these hurricanes.

Did you know that the Atlantic hurricane season is very peaked? Most of the action is like mid-August to early October. The average first date of a hurricane in the Atlantic is not until August 11th. So, most people have wrapped up their tourism in a typical season by the time we're starting to get hurricanes.

So, if you're worried about coming down to the beach, will a hurricane ruin your plans? Most likely not. I want to mention as well, hurricanes take a while to form, and they're typically tracking from long distances, so they're not just gonna pop up in the middle of the night. They're not just gonna surprise you.

We can see them coming, usually from the Caribbean or at least somewhere else in the Gulf. So you're gonna have some time as long as you're tuned into a credible forecaster like the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service. You can follow me on social media as Hurricane Hal. I do non hype weather forecasts, just what can we realistically expect that will keep you from being blindsided.

And then the other thing, if you need to get out, as long as you leave early, it's gonna be fine. If a hurricane hits on a Wednesday, most people want to evacuate on Tuesday at dawn. It's like the day before everyone wants to leave, right? If you're keeping it up with the forecast, if you see what's realistic, if you can leave even a few hours before that, you're gonna have open roads, and there's really no risk to being here.

So I always tell people, come down to the coast, keep an eye on the weather. Check in with a credible meteorologist and don't just. Stay glued to what's floating around on social media. There's so much hype out there, and it makes people afraid for no reason.

J.R.:
Unless it's your social media because you're posting non hype weather, right?

Hal:
J.R. I've told people like just. Shut off your TV, shut off your social media. Take a nap, read a book, 'cause I don't make any money off of commercialization. And there's a reason why mainstream TV often holds the weather hostage for the end of the broadcast. They know people are on edge, and sometimes they'll say there might be a storm in the Gulf.

People get worried. They're gonna stay tuned to the news. I don't like making people more right, anxious than they need to be. There's enough to worry about in this world. So if there's no credible threat, I just tell people, take a nap, read a book. Don't worry about the weather. If there's something to worry about, I'll let you know.

Oh, I just wanna talk a little bit about a barrier island, what it is, what that means, and let's chat about this. People ask, "What is a barrier island?" There are thin strips of sand that basically protect the coast. So Galveston Island is what, about 33 miles long, a mile and a half wide, but. It's just this thin strip of sand. But barrier islands are very dynamic. They always want to move. They're always changing shapes. The dune fields can change, and they're places with a lot of change. So I love to come down here. It's a great place to be with kids and grandkids. You walk the beach, shells, little fish, and who knows what's gonna wash in. It's just a place of great change. And that surprised me when I moved here because in the summer, sometimes it feels like every day's the same. Yeah. Every day. Shorts and t-shirts. But when you look around, it's
actually a place that's very dynamic and changing a lot.

J.R.:
It's dynamic historically, culturally, and naturally.

Hal:
Yeah, and actually to the dichotomy here that the contrast, it's this place where you can't walk down the beach and know what you're gonna find. But then in the. In summer, we get locked into this warm, humid wind from the southeast every day. It's just the weather itself can be very predictable for long stretches, but then you're in this environment that's always changing, so it's just this really interesting contrast.

J.R.:
Dude, that was awesome. Good stuff, man. Bro, I think that's it.