Well that was fun, I will say I missed being in the field and it is time to get back out in the field more next season!!!
So here is the recap
Monday night I got the green light to chase and in short I already said, I was not going but I was told by Neva that if I DID NOT chase this storm, she would not want to be around me for a month since I missed out last year and with Florence.
I flew into the area and already had pre positioned survival supplies and a SUV waiting for me and surprisingly after I said meh, not going to chase, the flights and rental dropped in price so the cost was actually less then if I drove my own vehicle. It was a sign that everything was getting in line for an epic chase.
Once on the ground in Florida, I base camped outside of the target area and I spent the night in Destin, FL. The night before I flew out I did a detailed topographical forecasts with elevations and escape routes along with a detailed forecast for the storm and the turn. I followed up with more forecasting the night before and the morning of and saw it was going to the perfect position for the point of landfall, the Tyndall, AFB. I say perfect spot since this was mostly open areas with just forests and trees for the most violent part of the right front quadrant as it came on shore.
So I worked my way down from Destin, FL that morning since the eye still had not made the turn, I was starting to wonder, was the forecast off and was it really going to hit Panama City with the right front quadrant and the eye come over Panama City Beach or worse, come straight north towards the Destin, FL area? That would be a worst case scenario for the surge and the wind field.
Around 9:00 A.M. I started to notice the turn and the wobble and talking to a couple friends nowcasting, I made the decision to head towards Mexico Beach. I also talked to Simon and Juston when I was in Panama City and the decision was final, off to Mexico Beach.
The drive through Tyndall on Highway 98 was "Sketchy" since the tall pine tree's were all along the road and really did not want to stuck by the tree's down on the road and miss the eye.
Once in Mexico Beach it was strangely eerie as the town was pretty much a ghost town. I only saw one other vehicle while there and it was some people that at the last minute must have said nope, not staying here. That was at the El Governors while the building was starting to fall apart with only Cat 1 wind gusts.
I spent a little time there documenting the storm while live streaming. And Live Streaming is still the biggest pain in the... while chasing.
As the winds and the debris started to pick up, I ventured out of the wind shelter of the hotel and drove southeast towards highway 98 to explore. I found a bank that could be a decent wind break if the surge was not going to be a factor but I did not want to venture too far away from the area I spotted as where the clear eye of the storm was going to come in which was over the base.
Seeing the surge had not yet started to come in and was still large waves off shore but they were not crashing on shore, YET, I was just hoping nobody would get a false sense of security about the surge not being that bad since the worst was not even there yet.
After checking out the area around the bank, I worked my way back up to the northwest on 98 to the gas station that was starting to take a beating from the winds.
I then decided to keep checking out the escape route to the NW since the eye was only about 5 miles away from me and was going to make landfall within the hour.
I drove up 98 and just as I had hoped, the angle of the roadway to the angle of the winds made the winds going directly parallel to the road. This meant that all of the pine trees on this side of the eye were going to take a massive beating but they were going to fall parallel with the road so the road would be open for the most part to get into the center of the eye. This was the key that I saw that you can see on the map below, the coast line over out about a mile from the road so the surge was not going to be a factor here if everything lined up as I was planning and hoping.
It was at that time that I got a call to do an interview. Bad timing but I it was doable so I headed back into Mexico Beach and that was when the eye wall started coming on shore. Some of the most insane winds and debris flying past, over and all around the vehicle. See the raw video link.
By the grace of god, nothing hit the vehicle. I did run over some debris but I did have a mini air compressor with me to fill the tires if needed but otherwise the vehicle was untouched and the fix-a-flat sealed up the tires after the storm so I was good to go.
So driving in the insanity of the eye wall. How, why, WTF was I thinking. Knowing that this was a straight line wind event and the wind was going to parallel the road, I was not worried about flipping the SUV. I was driving in some Cat4 and Cat5 winds and wind gusts head on with debris flying all around me. I was worried about the surge and in the video link below, you can see when the surge started to move in, that was when I said it was time to move inland.
As I turned around on Highway 98 and headed back towards the northwest up 98 and to the edge of town, I saw the spot I picked out for the gas station as a shelter was already filling up with storm surge and that was all I needed to say F This, go for the eye. Knowing that there was no real place I could find to take shelter along the coast to see the storm and get into the eye itself, I opted for the eye, the holy grail of chasing, The High Noon Blue Sky Eye!!! Yes I was surfing the surge up 98 to get out of town.
I did turn around at the bridge on the west side of town on 98 and thought maybe, just maybe and take a look at what was happening all around but another glance at the radar and it showed the eye was now coming on shore and I was still just over 3 miles from the edge of the eye. I was in the hell on earth of the right front eye wall of a 155mph storm, in a rental SUV.
With the glance at the radar and a quick prayer I threw the Hail Mary pass to drive down what I was hoping was going to be the unobstructed highway 98 to the point of the wind shift where the trees would be blocking on the west side of the storm with the off shore winds.
In the map image below, I marked my spot where I stopped and documented what I could in the limited time I had of the high noon blue sky eye of Hurricane Michael. Another image below is what I saw of the eye and all I could think of was to call it "Stadium Of The Gods". Such a rare calm peacefulness in the eye of the hurricane but you could still hear the rumble of the roar of the storm as the right front quadrant eye wall was only about a mile away from me. Here I stood at the Nexus, the center core of the eye and had to force myself to take photos and video since I just wanted to look at the stadium with the sun at my back and seeing something so rare and so incredibly deadly and destructive but yet so beautiful and peaceful. It was not long before the eye started to move off towards the northeast and it was SNAP back to reality as the right side and right rear quadrants of Hurricane Michael were still to come and I had to ride them out, out side, in the SUV.






Here is the insane video I shot un cut
