Hurricane Opal

The stars came out and the birds were flying around.

I was in Hurricane Opal in Fort Walton Beach, Florida back in 95.

There was about four feet of storm surge.

It's just, it is exhilarating and it's an awesome experience to experience a hurricane.

That's, I believe, the first direct hit Destin's ever really had.

Hurricane Opal, 1995, was the closest, which I believe that one was way worse.

From my knowledge, I mean, I was a kid at the time living in Nebraska.

Clearly no hurricanes in Nebraska.

I'm gone.

Well, compared to Opal, I think Opal's the worst one.

I've been in a bunch of them.

I can't even name them all.

But Opal was the one that just destroyed us.

I mean, I can show you the water lines, how high it got.

That destroyed Dewey's Restaurant on the bay.

Right.

If you compare that to Hurricane Opal in 1995, which hit the exact same area, the resilience of our modern infrastructure is, is actually a massive win for us.

And that resilience is exactly what we need right now because this vulnerability in our Middle Eastern energy supply chains, it's the exact same dynamic making our tech sector so paranoid about our supply chains in the Indo-Pacific.

Oh, the paranoia is justified.

Here you've got dunes, established dunes that offer, uh, some protection.

They did break down in Hurricane Opal in '95, and then again in Hurricane Ivan in some areas.

Uh, expecting some areas here, mainly where there's crosswalks or, or human walkways to the beach, those areas tend to go fast because they don't have the grasses to hold the sand together.

The sand, the sand will wash down or, or blow around, and then the water will find it and erode away at it.

It was in late September, but we had Sally back in 2020, which caused some problems mainly south of here.

We also had, if you guys remember, back in 1995, we had Hurricane Opal.

which came on shore near Pensacola, lifted to the north.

We had a lot of issues across Alabama.