learn more about these fascinating creatures students is shark week on discovery, which is also owned by cnn's parent company, wbd. >> it searched july seventh. thanks for watching the whole story. i'll see you next sunday you can hear the wind just howling. man 1: whoa! man 2: whoa! man 1: whoa! man: this is hundred-mile-an-hour-plus winds that we were experiencing for hours. we're seeing fort myers beach getting inundated. we're seeing all of these places that we love now underwater. welcome to violent earth. i'm liev schreiber. in the field of meteorology, there is no season more anticipated or feared than the atlantic hurricane season. every year, from june 1 to the end of november, millions find themselves in the crosshairs of these massive and often deadly storms. their strength and their direction hinge on complex ocean and atmospheric interactions. according to nasa, because of rising sea temperatures, we're seeing more hurricanes in the atlantic growing to category 3, category 4, or category 5 than compared to 40 years ago. in 2022, when hurricane ian slammed into florida, its power and its path took everyone by surprise. and it grew into one of the costliest disasters in us history. [music playing] [thunder crashes] derek van dam: ian was a strange one. terrifying. defied a lot of logic. tampa bay, for a very long period of time, was this ground zero for the worst impacts of the storm. eric jay dolin: the problem is hurricane science forecasting can't tell you exactly where the hurricane is going to hit. derek van dam: with any major hurricane, a track is far from certain. hurricane ian was no different. so i think a lot of people in fort myers thought that they were in the clear because so much focus and attention was on tampa bay. but what ended up happening was fort myers was going to get hit directly. [thunder crashes] this is bad. barbie waggoner: i was watching one of the different weather cameras that they had all over the island. and i knew that that camera was over 8 feet in the air. all of a sudden, i see that camera go underwater. [music playing] the water was rising so fast. my sister's house was across the street. i'm thinking, the houses aren't going to make it. and i said, you need to leave your house. mitch and mary came over about that time and said, we're scared. can we stay with you? mary wojciechowksi: mitch and i, we lived right across from the water. that morning i didn't know what to think. i said, come on, we're going to go by bob's, because at least we'll all be together. i honestly thought everything was going to be ok. it was just downhill from there. woman: tonight, the storm of a lifetime. those are the words from nasa, posting a video of hurricane ian from space as it intensifies. david mckinley: there is a large moon that is scheduled to be that night, which pulls a lot of the sea tides up and, of course, the gravitational pull of the storm itself. so it would bring storm surge with it. max olson: a storm surge is literally the storm pushing the ocean inland. man: it takes about a foot of moving water to knock somebody off their feet. it takes about two feet of water to float a car. derek van dam: and then when it's done pushing, it pulls everything back out into the ocean. and that's how people die. man: how many thousands and thousands and thousands of people are new and have never experienced anything like this? eric jay dolin: hurricanes reach all the way from the ocean's surface. up to about 50,000 feet. they're anywhere from 10 to 20 miles wide, up to a thousand miles wide, which is what was the case for hurricane sandy in 2012. this storm became enormous, and the bull's eye is new york. when sandy was coming up the coast and it was heading towards new jersey, sandy was pushing all of this water, creating a massive storm surge and waves just off shore of almost 32 to 33 feet high at some of the buoys. you've got these tons and tons of water, which is full of wreckage. it creates a battering ram of sorts that just plows away everything in its way. can you get out? can you get out? eric jay dolin: more than a million con edison customers lost electricity. and the tunnels in and around the city were flooded, causing damages on the order of $86 billion. and in this storm, they knew it was going to merge with a cold pressure system. shirley murillo: at the upper atmosphere. you could see indications of ice crystals, and those ice crystals are snow. eric jay dolin: hurricane sandy was the first time, and i think still the only time that a national hurricane forecast had both wind, waves, as well as snow. [thunder crashes] about 60% of the hurricanes start in the southern flanks of the sahara desert, where the hot air rising off the desert meets with the moist air coming from the indian ocean. they're called african easterly waves. jack parrish: these are waves in the atmosphere over central africa. they come out over the ocean, and then when they start to hit the warmer water, they get stronger. derek van dam: now, because our planet rotates, we have a spinning effect on our storms. it's called the coriolis effect. you start rotating faster and faster and faster until it's a perfect, perfect cylindrical eye, and then all of a sudden, you got yourself a monster. and that's the hurricane. robert campbell : i had my last conversation with my sister. you need to find something that floats, hold on to it, and don't let go. do not let go. and then we lost service. woman: almost the entire state of florida is bracing for the impact of hurricane ian, a monster storm stretching 700 miles across and getting stronger. derek van dam: miles matter in a storm. they can wobble back and forth. that means one town can be obliterated and one town can be saved. for anybody who decided to ride out this storm, it is time to be in your safe place. because right now, minutes matter, and this storm is coming. one of the things that we emphasize is that you can hide from the wind, but you really need to run from the water. about 90% of the deaths in a hurricane come from the water. there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that with the approach of hurricanes, animals who can sense that a hurricane is coming, by the winds, by the barometric pressure, they can take steps to protect themselves. there's some evidence that sharks and fish head to deeper water. so it's not surprising that animals, which are very sensitive to their environment, could pick up the cues that a hurricane or a bad storm was on the way and get out of the way. but that doesn't mean they're all successful. [thunder crashes] hurricanes are an organized mass of thunderstorms. it's an enormous release of heat. eric jay dolin: they generally form where the ocean's top layer reaches the trigger temperature of 80 degrees fahrenheit or higher, and that creates the massive amounts of heat energy. derek van dam: hurricane impacts are worsening with an increase in our ocean temperatures. a seemingly harmless tropical storm can erupt into a major category 5 hurricane. michael brennan: rapid intensification is exactly what it says. a storm intensifies, strengthens very quickly, a 30- to 35-mile-per-hour increase into sustained winds within about 24 hours. and that can result in some of the most dangerous storms that we've seen. allison chinchar: hurricane patricia, back in 2015, was the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the western hemisphere. it went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in just 24 hours. watch out. holy crap. [thunder crashes] we see that lightning activity tends to become frequent right before a storm is going to intensify. [thunder crashes] imagine a fireworks show and you see all of the fireworks popping, popping. and that has been something of an indicator that that storm may rapidly intensify. [thunder crashes] derek van dam: no, we're not necessarily getting an increase in the number of hurricanes, but the proportion of the most severe hurricanes is becoming more frequent. michael brennan: warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and storms are going to get worse as the climate continues to warm. paul flaherty: water temperature is the fuel for hurricane. but winds is what most people think about when it comes to hurricanes. max olson: the wind is the one you think of first because the wind damage is dramatic. derek van dam: the wind can make projectiles of the most simplest thing. think about if you've got a piece of wood from the side of a house, a coconut that had fallen off of a tree-- whoa! derek van dam: --and that thing's flying at a hundred miles an hour. that's going to be lethal. max olson: my least favorite thing in a hurricane are-- you know those stoplights that hang on like a cable? those things are, like, 300 pounds each. [music playing] eric jay dolin: hurricanes have an eye, which is a calm center, and then the eyewall, which has the strongest winds of all. max olson: that area directly surrounding the eye, the eyewall, is where those extremely catastrophic winds are. i've been storm-chasing since i was nine years old. i started with my father. ok, we have a big storm right over there that is tornado-warned. after years and years of being obsessed with primarily tornadoes, hurricane harvey was going to be my first hurricane chase. we decided that rockport, texas, was going to be ground zero. it looked like it was going to be a lower-end storm. and then it just went all downhill from there. man: oh, my god. harvey was insane. the winds start really picking up. we get our first hundred-mile-per-hour gust, and things start just whipping down the road. there's sheet metal flying down the road. there's branches falling. man: oh, my god. max olson: and it's just pure chaos outside. man 1: whoa, whoa, whoa! man 2: what was that? where'd that come from? man 3: i have no clue. and then at one point, we hear this really loud boom. [violent rattling] the whole building just completely shook. [rattling continues] oh, my god. the whole [bleep] wall is gone. the storm had completely ripped the wall off from the fourth floor all the way down to the first floor. and we basically just look out and all you see is blackness. we can see there's absolutely nothing left. this is incredible. that was shocking, and that was kind of my first taste to-- ok, these things are legit, and you have to take these things seriously. allison chinchar: these storms can cause such force within the ocean that they can uncover long-buried shipwrecks, like this ship from the 1800s, found off the coast of florida after the 2022 hurricanes ian and nicole. shirley murillo: we categorize hurricanes based on the saffir-simpson scale. it looks at damage caused by wind. eric jay dolin: and that's how we have category 1 through 5, which starts at 74 miles per hour for a category 1 hurricane. up to anything above 157 miles per hour is a category 5. category 5, it'll seem apocalyptic because the power is just intense. man: oh, man. shirley murillo: the first storm i weathered as a child was hurricane andrew in south florida. was a powerful category 5 storm. derek van dam: hurricane andrew, in 1992, was one of the most intense category 5 hurricanes to ever strike the united states. it started out as this little incipient whirl. but with every day the hurricane got stronger. and then when it finally hit the florida coast, it was a category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 165. man (on phone): it's just-- just all hell is breaking loose right now. i didn't realize this thing was going to be as bad as it is. jack parrish: hurricane andrew did hit at night. you can't see much even in the daylight. but at night, you can't see anything, and all you can do is hear. and what you hear is that horrible screaming of the wind. [wind whistling] extremely scary night. scary enough in the day. max olson: andrew changed south florida forever. eric jay dolin: 160,000 people were made homeless overnight. you can take a look at before the hurricane struck, with all the houses. and then after the hurricane struck, half of the houses or maybe 3/4 or all of the houses have been totally wiped away. reporter: the pictures of buildings splintered and cracked open by the storm convey more than words can ever tell. when we're young, we're told anything is possible... ...but only a few of us go out and prove it. witness the greatness of anna hall on a connection worthy of gold: xfinity mobile. only xfinity gives you the most powerful mobile wifi network, with speeds up to a gig in millions of locations. and right now, xfinity internet customers can buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. get the fastest connection to paris with xfinity. [music playing] john cangialosi: hurricane ian, category 3 hurricane, starting to pull away from western cuba. maximum winds near 115 miles an hour. [music playing] rebecca van fossen: and dave had gotten a heads-up from the dock master that the marina would have to be evacuated. the intention was to get the boat out of harm's way. [music playing] kevin trueblood: and everybody in southwest florida got a wake-up call at 5:00 am, with their phones going off. and it was that the hurricane warnings had shifted further south. we think the worst area is going to be in this red hatched area. so we're talking more or less the fort myers area. the angle of approach put them dead square in the center of the worst possible impacts from hurricane ian. it really, really strengthened this monster. [music playing] rebecca van fossen: the storm was turning east, and it was heading towards fort myers, which is where dave was headed. it was so scary. allison chinchar: many people think of hurricanes and tornadoes as separate entities, but, actually, many tornadoes can form inside of a hurricane. jack parrish: normally, the kind of tornadoes that a hurricane will spawn are in the outer rain bands. so probably some hundred, hundred-twenty miles from the center, the outer periphery of the storm. allison chinchar: and hurricanes are not exclusive to the planet earth. jupiter actually has a hurricane, which has been going on for over 300 years. it can be seen as the red spot on the planet. an average hurricane season in the atlantic ocean produces a total of 14 named storms. eric jay dolin: centuries ago, they just called hurricanes after the year that they hit or the location they hit. like, there was the 1900 hurricane in galveston, which is the deadliest natural disaster in american history. it killed as many as 10,000 people. but then there was the change. in 1979, the world meteorological organization had hurricanes named after men and women in an alternating basis. michael brennan: when a storm has done enough damage or caused enough fatalities that could be traumatic for the area being affected, the name needs to be retired. storms going back to andrew or hugo or katrina. derek van dam: when hurricane katrina came ashore in florida, it was a relatively minor storm. all of that changed in the blink of an eye. michael brennan: every 20 or 30 years, you'll have a significant storm surge event that can kill hundreds or thousands of people, and katrina turned into one of those. we knew all the pieces were there for-- for katrina to become an incredibly strong storm. i had that gut feeling that this was going to be really bad. jack parrish: katrina intensified to a cat 5. and then it started to spread out and it increased in size. very, very large. allison chinchar: what's interesting about katrina specifically is that it had a rare double eyewall. and that is significant because the eyewall is known for being the part of the storm that causes the most damage. so having a second, larger eyewall meant more places sustained that catastrophic damage. jack parrish: it was a cat 3 when it made landfall. it wasn't a cat 5. but it didn't matter because it built up this huge, huge storm surge and wiped out that whole coast. and then, of all things, it flooded lake pontchartrain, and those barriers in the city of new orleans failed. man: i started taking videos of the water coming up and told my wife that things are not looking real good. the next thing, the water was pouring into the house. woman: i didn't want to go into that water alone and not ever see him again. when i called 911, i was thinking that they would just come and find our bodies. man: when the levees were breached, 80% of the entire city was under water. the new orleans we have been seeing scenes of just incredible rescues of people literally-- their lives hanging in the balance, being plucked from the roofs of their homes. rescuer: can you all get to that flat roof? man: which one? rescuer: this one right here. [helicopter whirring] officer: as old as i get, the emotions become stronger when you see what you see, you know. ultimately, 1,800 people gave their lives during that storm. and you see that kind of devastation, it is just amazing. [music playing] laying] max olson: with a hurricane, the storm is very slow to approach. you know it's coming. you might not know exactly how intense it's going to be when it makes landfall, winds start really picking up and getting worse. man: whoa. max olson: it's just dumping all this rain. you then may get trapped trying to escape. man 1: here we go. man 2: uh-oh. oh. whoa. goodness gracious. [music playing] rebecca van fossen: fans of rain were coming through. [residents exclaiming] and we were getting weather alerts, tornado alerts on our phones. the whole family's like, have you heard from dave? have you heard from dave? no one-- oh, i haven't heard from dave. but i don't-- i've called him probably a hundred times, but it's not answering. [thunder crashes] allison chinchar: we use the term the "cone of uncertainty." it's sort of a big-picture overview of where the center of the storm is expected to go or is likely to go. but those forecasts are not perfect. jack parrish: the cone can give you such a bad sense of impending doom or "i'm safe." and in both cases, you can be dead wrong. david littlefield: i'm alone on the boat. i'm approaching fort myers. boat's rocking and rolling, and the wind's howling. and all of a sudden, wind and waves, hurricane force, blow the boat over on its starboard side, rolled it 90 degrees. [music playing] i couldn't believe it. i couldn't believe that even hurricane-force winds could roll a 22-ton boat. i look in the engine room, and there's a big hole in the side of the boat. and water starts coming in. and i'm like, this is not good. i got on the radio, and i sent out a mayday. hopefully someone heard me. [thunder crashes] the only two doors were both underwater. [waves crashing] and i was like, god, i wonder if i can do this. [waves crashing] we have 120-mile-per-hour winds with gusts of 150, winds that are going to be relentless for hours on end. robert campbell: i was worried more about the wind damage than i was water, not knowing that the surge was going to be 14 feet tall. man: surge is coming in. let's hope for the best. mitch was a prolific user of facebook. and every now and then, he would get up and go to the window, and he would post something. man: 16 years, never seeing a river on our street. michelle schuline: i was watching my dad post on facebook. i knew it was getting pretty bad when some of the bar and such underneath their house started floating away. i knew he was going to be devastated. allison chinchar: a major hurricane can unleash up to 2 trillion gallons of rain a day and release the energy of 10 atomic bombs every second. max olson: there's two types of water that you have to contend with. you have the fresh water flooding that can happen after the storm makes landfall, and it's just dumping all this rain. with hurricane harvey, for example, more than 50 inches of rain fell within the span of about a day and a half. it was so heavy, the rain in just the houston area, that the crust of the earth in that area sank by about an inch. 20 trillion gallons of water will fall on the southeastern portions of texas and into louisiana over the next couple of days. [waves crashing] max olson: storm surge is probably the scariest, though. storm surge is literally the ocean being pushed inland, and it can happen very quickly, especially with those intense hurricanes. michael brennan: storm surge is getting worse because sea level is rising. it's not just this slow, steady rise of water. it's a violent push of water with catastrophic wave action on top that can destroy houses. storm surge has the potential to kill the largest number of people of any of the hurricane hazards in a single day. [music playing] i had been texting back and forth with marty and bob. marty was still in her house, and she sent me a text. my house is collapsing around me. and within probably a very few minutes of my last text with marty, her house collapses. derek van dam: fort myers beach, in particular, was in a very unfortunate position. max olson: fort myers beach, it's flat. there's no seawall. there's little to no elevation. there's nothing protecting that whole community from the water. it was going to receive the full effects of hurricane ian. derek van dam: all the water pushed up from the gulf of mexico into fort myers and just getting deeper and deeper and deeper. mary wojciechowski: and once that water started, it was all over with. it just kept coming and coming. man: it gets a little higher, and i have to go on the roof. the water was coming up, and the roof was coming off. and everything was gone. i mean, the [sniffles] balcony and the stairs and everything. we knew that house was going to sink. and i knew we were in trouble because there was no help. man: this could be the storm that we've hoped would never come to our shores. air station clearwater is the primary air station that responds to hurricanes in the gulf. david mckinley: the thing the coast guard's most known for is our search-and-rescue mission. around midnight, we got the call for an epirb activation near the fort myers area. megan howard: epirb is the emergency device that broadcasts your position. jethro hauser: it transmits a signal over the radio that we can locate and then hone in on. david mckinley: we knew it would be bad. thunderstorms, high winds, turbulence, and complete darkness. jethro hauser: you just start seeing explosions, and it was the electrical transformers blowing up. it was like-- it was crazy. never seen anything like it. we had the location. epirb was going off, so we were trying to find it. the vessel was a 44-foot boat. so it's a fairly decent-sized vessel, and it was completely on its side. and you could clearly see someone crawling around it. he was pretty much laying on the side of his boat. jethro hauser: so that was our first glimpse of mr. littlefield. and all of a sudden, i hear helicopter rotors. and sure enough, here comes a coast guard helicopter. out jumps jethro, and he's making his way towards the boat. jethro climbs on board, and he did a real quick triage. are you ok? can you walk? are you injured? and i said, no. let's get the hell out of here. i can't begin to imagine what he had gone through that night. david littlefield: the wind was blowing so hard, and the waves were so high. rolled the boat 90 degrees. and i got my two life jackets, my personal locator beacon. so i squeezed out the window. i clip on my epirb, and now it's transmitted. i'm outside, and i'm exposed to the full force of the hurricane. the sun goes down, and, of course, the temperature goes down, too. [helicopter whirring] david mckinley: jethro had to actually fashion a little rappelling system out of some dark lines to safely get david down off the boat and into the water. megan howard: and once he got him in the water, i sent the basket down, and mr. littlefield climbed in the basket. and i hoisted him up to the cabin. and i could hear him, you know, yelling out to me, thank you. thank you. david littlefield: mother nature, she is a force to be reckoned with. she took 150 people's lives. by the grace of god, i wasn't one of them. by the grace of god and the coast guard. derek van dam: the coast guard saved over 300 people, a hundred pets. sadly, not everybody was that fortunate. [music playing] robert campbell: the wind was quite strong. a section of the front roof detached, and i heard it crashing. but that's crazy. you know, that took a hundred-mile-an-hour gust to do that. our street was underwater, and there were cars floating out on the road. surge was still-- it was over my 6-foot privacy fence. i went in to the bathroom. the toilet lid popped open, and water gushed and nearly hit the ceiling. and that's when all hell broke loose. it went from seemed like-- that 6-foot, 7-foot mark to 10 feet within minutes. we're going to have to jump. we're going to have to get in the water. the plan was for mitch to go first. but mitch can't swim. when i opened the door, a wave came by, and it knocked him down. so mary and i helped him up, and i lowered myself into the water. and i was holding on to where the door was. i lost my grip, and i was gone. mary wojciechowski: i said, come on, mitch, we gotta go. and then i tried to get out, and part of the ceiling hit me. mitch was sitting at the couch, and me on the arm chair. i go, we gotta go. we gotta go. come on. and so then us, i and lulu-- i went into the water. i was already in there. and i went into the water, and lulu jumped out of my arms. and i thought, ok, well, she's gone. i turned around. i said, mitch, come on. and then the next thing i knew, the roof fell. i didn't see him. i called him. i didn't hear him, and so then i don't know what happened. [sniffles] but then the water took me. robert campbell: the street was like a whitewater rapid. and that's when i realized that i'm probably going to die. reporter: good evening from florida. a state under attack by mother nature. man: check it out. whoa, man. oh, man man: oh! oh, my god. eric jay dolin: it used to be, you know, centuries ago, nobody knew a hurricane was coming unless there was maybe a red sky in the morning or there were long swells or you saw massive clouds in the distance. then there was a massive breakthrough in the early 1900s. radio came into being. and this was great because ships could be sending reports back to meteorologists on land, telling them where hurricanes or disturbances were at sea. then in the 1940s, we started with our hurricane-hunting plane. [music playing] paul flaherty: we actually hunt in that very center of the storm, and that helps us draw a full picture of the storm. michael brennan: we detect storms now that we didn't detect 20 or 30 years ago. brett copare: flying in the storms, you go through, you know, a hundred-plus-mile-an-hour winds, going through the eyewall. and then you get to the center, and it's just this calm, eerie moment. [wind gushing] [music playing] i went down once into the water underneath. i crawled up on what happened to be our floating balcony. i just held onto the railing. [sniffles] and i just told myself, there's no way i'm letting this kill me. robert campbell: i grabbed on to a tree. it was just an amazing stroke of luck that this tree was there. i looked around and saw no sign of mitch at that point, and her house was gone. it was just not visible. oh, my god. [music playing] max olson: there's boats on top of houses. there's cars flipped over. it's crazy. it's so surreal to see a place for the first time, and then 24 hours later, see that exact same spot, and it's just gone. robert campbell: 6 o'clock, the first light, i went back where our house used to be. there was still a few pilings standing. and that's when we found lulu. lulu was in the bar, looking around like, where the hell is everyone? i ran back and got mary. mary, we have lulu. i just cried. robert campbell: that was amazing. we went on a search, you know, yelling for marty and mitch. for mitch, it was several days before they found his body. with my sister, it was 10 days. marty and i, we saw each other every day. we ate together. we drank wine together at sunset. we were buddies. marty loved florida. she lived there for 30 years, year round. and that's where she wanted to die. mary wojciechowski: i never thought i'd lose mitch that way. it was our dream to go there. and we made it our home. i still can't believe he's gone. oh, god, i miss him so much. robert campbell: not a day goes by i don't think about mitch and mary and my sister. and the storm. liev schreiber: hurricane ian caused a staggering $114 billion in damage and took more than 150 lives, including marty campbell and mitch pacyna. in april 2024, 18 months after his death, mitch was posthumously awarded the citizen of the year by the fort myers beach chamber of commerce for his dedication to the community. and the video of the storm surge flooding fort myers beach, captured by max olson, is now being used by the national hurricane center to educate the public about what happened, why it happened, and how we might be able to prevent