8 am EDT. Very warm & breezy.
10 am EDT. Just starting to rain. Windy.
11:30 am EDT. Raining hard. Very windy. Trees on front lawn bending way over. Branches coming off.
12 noon EDT. Violent, damaging gusts. House vibrating. Large tree on back lawn blown down.
12:30 pm EDT. Rain stopping, wind slowing. Sky getting brighter. Barometer: 28.51 in. The eye.

I was a bored, weather-obsessed teenager in the mid-‘80s waiting for something exciting to happen.

And in the fall of 1985, an evil genie granted my wish and sent Hurricane Gloria sweeping up the East Coast right toward my town on Long Island. By the time the eye arrived and the wind calmed, our property was ripped up badly, my mother was in tears, and I learned to be very careful what I wished for.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment—12 noon on September 27, 1985—when the storm hit its angry peak. That unnatural howl. Trees waving like mad, ripping out of the ground. Windows rattling. Normal life stopping—completely—as this tremendous force blasted through our world.

I got a strange rush from it. I felt guilty about this—I hated to see my mother cry. But I wanted to see it—hear it, feel it, be in it—again. And again.

Like a drug addiction, this need stayed with me.

29 December 2005

Prague, Czech Republic

Twenty years later, I’m a crazy-busy marketing executive living in Prague, Czech Republic, where I manage Symblaze, the interactive marketing agency I co-founded in L.A. in 1999. At Symblaze, we use cutting-edge digital media to promote major consumer brands in cool, exciting ways.

But I return to the USA once a year to chase hurricanes—to feed the addiction I never outgrew.

Armed with maps, instruments, video camera, knowledge, chutzpah, and the ever-present craving, I intercept hurricanes approaching the U.S. coastline. The goal is always the same: get in the right (stronger) side of the eyewall, close to the coastline, as it comes ashore; get in the most intense part of it—the radius of maximum winds. And record the experience.

In 2005, I had a new idea: to combine my passion for hurricanes with my expertise in digital media to create something new and different.

The result? iCyclone—the brand identity and the creative outlet for my hurricane fixation.

If I can’t cure it, I might as well do something useful with it. ;-)

Satellite imagery courtesy of NOAA.