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It was September 1st, 2021, and Dominic Morellis was a deputy director for operations

at Philadelphia's Office of Emergency Management. He was just wrapping up his shift,

waiting for the remnants of Hurricane Ida to hit. And about 10, 10, 30 of that night,

our operations center, which was maintaining a 24-7 posture, they called and they said,

our forecast changed drastically. And not only were we anticipating more flooding,

but it was a prediction of a flood level that had never been recorded in the city at that point.

We had gone from, this is going to be like a top five flooding event forecasted to,

no, this is going to be record breaking. And so we had this moment of, this is going to be different.

And it was. This neighborhood outside Philadelphia ripped apart.

States of emergency across the northeast after Ida took one last cruel turn, causing torrential

rain, catastrophic flooding, and a tornado outbreak. It has been a weather event unlike anything,

any of us have ever seen. Philadelphia saw as much as 16 feet of flooding in some areas,

and winds of up to 130 miles per hour. The Philadelphia area experienced as much as eight

inches of rainfall and tornadoes from the weather passing through. And so that storm really kind of

changed our posture to be much more proactive. Hurricane Ida shifted how people in Philadelphia

and surrounding areas thought about hurricanes. Now they're looking ahead to prepare for what the

next storm could bring. June marks the official start of Atlantic Hurricane season,

when tropical cyclones are most likely to form in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of

Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. You're going to hear tropical cyclone a lot in this episode,

so a quick definition. It's the umbrella term for the formations of clouds and thunderstorms

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