‘I am in my peak.’ Meet a top storm chaser living on the MS Coast for hurricane season.
As Hurricane Laura strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico, Josh Morgerman watched models and radars closely from his Bay St. Louis rental home.
At 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 25, two days before the hurricane would make landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, Morgerman made a decision to head west.
“The chase is on,” he tweeted.
Morgerman is an acclaimed storm chaser. Known as iCyclone by his thousands of Twitter followers, the Los Angeles resident has been chasing powerful hurricanes and typhoons across the world for nearly 30 years. He’s penetrated 52 eyewalls so far in his career.
But Laura proved to be a challenge for the 50-year-old found a challenge in Louisiana. He had to travel through swamps at night in deteriorating conditions, checking out multiple locations before riding out Laura north of the Louisiana coast. He would experience Laura’s unusual eye in Sulphur on Aug. 27.
“It takes planning, exploring, scouting, & obsessing to hit (the) perfect spot,” he told his Twitter followers.
With an active Atlantic season and a new home on the Coast, 2020 will provide new challenges and opportunities for Morgerman in a Mississippi Coast city with an iconic weather history known as “Ground Zero” for life-changing hurricanes.
Chasing hurricanes from the Gulf Coast
Days after trekking through the swamp to record Laura, Morgerman was back on the front porch of his temporary home in Bay St. Louis, listening to frogs and crickets in the night sky.
His Twitter followers know his rental cottage as the “Hurricane House.” The home survived two major hurricanes.
“The big benchmark storm when I was growing up was Camille,” he said. “I would read about it (as a child in New York), and the two places that were always mentioned were Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis.”
With travel restrictions ordered across the world due the coronavirus pandemic, Morgerman set up shop on the Coast for the 2020 season because it’s a middle ground for chasing Atlantic hurricanes. He can easily get to Louisiana, Texas, Florida or the Carolinas.
“If you would have told me as a 15-year-old nerd that I would be in 50 hurricanes or that I would be spending a summer at ground zero of Hurricane Camille and great hurricanes after, I would have been like, ‘No way, man,’” he said.
Morgerman has learned Coast residents know a lot about storms and are willing to talk shop with him.
“I’m like a kid in a candy shop because I can just talk to anyone here and hear their cool stories, and they’re knowledgeable about it,” he said. “I almost feel like less of a weirdo here, you can talk to people about this stuff.”
From Harvard to hurricane chasing
Morgerman’s path to chasing hurricanes started at Harvard University.
He wanted to go into the sciences, but Morgerman chose to pursue a liberal arts degree at his father’s insistence. He would later graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in American history in 1988.
During a summer internship in Washington D.C., Morgerman embarked on his first chase in 1991, taking trains to intercept Hurricane Bob.
Morgerman worked in the film industry before starting a web design company as the Internet took off. In the early 2000s, he left the US and storm chasing behind when his company took him to Europe.
But the weather came calling in 2005. After missing Hurricane Katrina, Morgerman came back stateside for Wilma and would permanently move back to the US in 2007.
It took time for Morgerman’s parents, who at first got “super upset” about the chasing, to accept his new career, he said.
In the beginning, they’d worry as he put himself in harm’s way to document storms. But that’s changed over the years.
Morgermen was listed as missing in 2019 after going silent for two days while chasing Hurricane Dorian in the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas.
While his social media followers feared the worst, Morgerman said his mother was not fazed.
He said his mother would tell people, “He’s fine” and was not surprised when he made contact.
What does iCyclone bring on a chase?
Morgerman chases primarily to record data in the most violent parts of hurricanes. His emphasis on data makes it paramount that he reaches the eye of the storm, and he said it takes “serious” planning and adapting.
Morgerman starts to pay attention to models when disturbances are present, usually around 10 days before impact.
The decision to chase a major storm or hurricane can come as late as one or two days before landfall.
Most of his necessities fit inside a piece of carry-on luggage.
There are some items that Morgerman always brings to a chase, along with a few rituals and self-imposed dress code.
He wears all-black clothing.
He brings four or five Kestrel Weather Meters, small devices that measure atmospheric aspects and changes.
Before he leaves, he always cleans his house. “When I return from the chaos and hell of a chase, it’s important I come back to a mellow, orderly, pleasing home.”
When chasing in rural areas, he packs extra gas.
Morgerman also wears four rings on his fingers, adding that some may think he looks like a heavy-metal guitarist.
“Each ring has a different meaning to me, and I have it in my head now that I can’t chase without them—that all four must be on my hands at all times,” he said.
As decision day looms closer, Morgerman’s adrenaline begins to rise, and he gets what he refers to as “tunnel-vision.” He can’t sleep or eat.
Once he decides to chase, he is locked in, only paying attention to weather models and radar. He follows the storm along on radar as it makes landfall and adjusts his position accordingly. A complete chase can last anywhere from three days to a week. Along the way, he films his adventures, first sharing them quickly on social media and then releasing longer, more curated films on Youtube.
This process started purely as a passion, but Morgerman has parlayed it into a business. When covering hurricanes, media outlets will often license Morgerman’s footage from within the eye. He also does in-person interviews and appearances after storms and stars in a TV series.
Will he chase hurricanes forever?
Morgerman knows what he does often confuses the public. He said he tiptoes around certain words and descriptions, careful to respect storms’ human impact and devastation with his respect for their strength.
It is a tough balancing act, and Super Typhoon Haiyan, a storm that hit the Phillipines in 2013, exacerbated the conflict.
“It was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane,” he said. This city of 200,000 people took a direct hit.”
The destruction was the worst Morgerman had ever seen. The typhoon caused almost $3 billion in damage and killed 6,300 people.
“I kind of didn’t want to chase for a while after that. That one threw me off,” he said.
Morgerman loves what he does, and he said he isn’t sure when iCyclone will retire.
“You have a period where you really peak, and you can’t sustain it forever,” he said. “It is too physically and emotionally demanding. Right now, I feel like I am in my peak.”
But walking away from doing what he loves will be no easy task.
“It never gets old for me,” he said. “I feel like I’m kind of like a drug addict in a sense. It’s like I’m just constantly hunting down that feeling. ... The drug never gets old.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
