Galveston Unscripted | VisitGalveston.com
Galveston Unscripted is your podcast and audio tour for Galveston Island! Galveston Unscripted is transforming Galveston into the worlds largest free museum! Galveston, Texas is home some of Texas' most significant people, places, and historical events, and hundreds of Texas historical markers and locations!Join Galveston Unscripted and VisitGalveston.com in exploring Galveston Island's history and culture to discover what makes Galveston Island one of a kind!
Galveston Unscripted | VisitGalveston.com
Seaweed, Sunburns, and Safety: Hurricane Hal explains Galveston Beach
Dr. Hal Needham, known as Hurricane Hal, shares his expertise on coastal ecosystems, weather patterns, and beach safety for visitors to Galveston Island. From explaining the science behind changing water colors to offering practical safety advice, Dr. Needham provides valuable insights for enjoying Gulf Coast beaches safely and appreciating their natural dynamics.
• Natural sargassum seaweed plays crucial role in marine ecosystems and helps build beaches by capturing sand
• Galveston's water changes color due to suspended sediment from shallow sandy bottoms and nearby rivers
• Rip currents pose the deadliest coastal hazard—stay calm and don't fight against them if caught
• Sunburn risk depends on shadow length, not temperature—visit beaches before 10:30am and after 5pm to avoid burns
• Hurricane season typically begins around August 11th, after most summer vacations conclude
• Barrier islands are dynamic formations that constantly evolve and change with natural forces
Follow Hurricane Hal on social media for non-hype weather forecasts and coastal science insights.
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On today's episode, we're joined by Dr Hal Needham, known affectionately as Hurricane Hal. Climate scientist, storm surge expert. With more than 15 years of scientific fieldwork, 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.
Speaker 2: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 you know 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. You know I do a lot of tropical weather forecasting and education, so this time of the year everybody wants a hurricane talk or just to know what's up this upcoming season we do get a lot of questions about our coastline here in Galveston and kind of like what you see, sargassum, get all that stuff washing up on the shores.
Speaker 1:That's been a big question recently.
Speaker 2:Well, it's crazy. I mean you're actually living on the edge of a continent. I mean the saltwater goes forever right All the way out to the Gulf, the Caribbean, the Atlantic. You have no idea what's going to wash up here on any given day. It could be seashells, it could be coconuts. A lot of people talking about sar 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, 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.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to talk about, or ask you about, is our watercolor changing all the time. Some days we get this beautiful greenish, blue color water and other days it looks like a chocolate milkshake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the water is so dynamic here. I mean you can see it change two, 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 in 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, bluer 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. 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, like 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 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 like. No, there's a 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. It's teeming with life and that's just important. Remember the island's alive. This is not a swimming pool, this is mother nature. That's part of the fun the discovery of coming down here and you don't know quite what you're going to find. Right, right, yeah, it is really important.
Speaker 2:The seaweed can help build the beaches for a couple different reasons. When the wind's blowing. If you've ever been on the beach on a windy day, blow away. The seaweed will help kind of capture some of that sand. It'll actually help build out the beach, and so 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 want to hold on to our beach. It's our most valuable resource here. So having the seaweed around 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, right?
Speaker 1:What are some hidden risks that people may not think about when they come to the beach? You?
Speaker 2:know it's interesting. So folks come down from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin, and they're used to being at a swimming pool where everything's 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.
Speaker 2:Where a current hits a rock jetty or rock groin, those, those strips of rocks that go out, it can produce a rip current. This 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.
Speaker 2:If you ever get caught in a rip, the best thing you can do is just relax and it's not even gonna take you out that far. Maybe 50, 100 yards, something like that. If you're just relaxed, you're floating. When it lets you go, just basically look for where waves are breaking. Waves break in shallow water. There'll probably be waves breaking within 50 yards of you. You get over to 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.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, a lot of times people come down in a big group and their kids are, you know, their seven-year-old, their nine-year-old is in waist deep water. If you get over to where a rip's been pulling out, it can actually scour out the sand. So all of a sudden that waist deep water goes overhead. 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. You know 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 what seven, eight million people come down a year and we hear about, you know, a handful of these that have bad outcomes. So again, it's not this major danger for every person, but you just want to keep your head on your shoulders and make sure you're keeping an eye out for your kids and grandkids, right?
Speaker 2:Well, there's some other risks. Yeah, are there some other risks? Yeah, you know something else, something 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 burnt when the sun is high. So let me explain this.
Speaker 2: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 6, 7 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. You know it's very low on the horizon. You want to 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 know you get in April, 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 going to burn if you have fair skin. So especially between 1030 am 430 pm, those high sun angles, you want to stay in the shade, keep sunscreen, or what I tell some families?
Speaker 2:Some families have actually told me we don't come to the beach anymore because our daughter always burns. You know, come out, the sunrise is spectacular here, especially in the summer, just where it's coming up. You know, come out early, play with the kids for a few hours, seven to 10 o'clock, no one's going to get sunburned and the kids get that energy out. And then, you know, check out a restaurant, check out an art gallery, a museum, spend that early afternoon indoors and then, when everyone's leaving the beach at four or 5 pm, come on back down. I mean, we're filming this right now in the evening. Right, it's spectacular and the beach is empty. But I love, like five, six, seven 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. Right, you avoid the hot part of the day too, you do.
Speaker 2:You avoid the hot part of the day. So early afternoon I always tell people enjoy downtown, you know, and come back out here late afternoon.
Speaker 1:Well, you're kind of famous for being known as Hurricane Hal, so let's talk about hurricanes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know 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 want to be on the island, but they 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, you know, 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 going to pop up in the middle of the night, they're not just going to surprise you. We can see them coming, usually from the Caribbean or at least somewhere else in the Gulf. So you're going to have some time as long as you're tuned into a credible forecaster like the National Hurricane Center, national Weather Service. You can follow me on social media as Hurricane Hal.
Speaker 2:I do non-hype no hype weather forecasts. Just what can we realistically expect that will keep you from being blindsided? And then the other thing just if you need to get out, as long as you leave early, it's going to be fine. If a hurricane hits on a Wednesday, most people want to evacuate. Tuesday at dawn, it's like the day before, everyone wants to leave. If you're keeping up with the forecast, if you see what's realistic, if you can leave even a few hours before that, you're going to have open roads and there's really no risk to being here. So I always tell people come down to the coast, but 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. Right, right.
Speaker 1:Unless it's your social media right, Because you're posting non-hype weather.
Speaker 2:I've told people like, just shut off your TV, shut off your social media, take a nap, read a book. Because I don't make any money off of commercialization and there's a reason why mainstream TV they often hold the weather hostage for the end of the broadcast. I mean, they know people are on edge and sometimes they'll say there might be a storm in the Gulf. People get worried. They're going to stay tuned to the news. I don't like making people more 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 that to people. You know, take a nap, read a book, don't worry about the weather. If there's something to worry about, I'll let you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, I just want to talk a little bit about a barrier island, what it is, what that means, and let's chat about this. So you know people ask well, what is a barrier island? They're 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. You know it's a great place to be with kids and grandkids. You walk the beach, you see shells, you little fish and and who knows what's going to wash in. But 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 is the same everyday shorts and t-shirts but when you look around it's actually a place that's very dynamic and changing a lot.
Speaker 1:It's dynamic, historically, culturally, naturally and actually to the dichotomy here.
Speaker 2: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 summer we get locked into this warm, humid wind from the southeast every day. I mean, 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, dude that was awesome.
Speaker 1:Good stuff, man Bro. I think that's it.
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