News 6 Report: Who are the Hurricane Hunters?
During coverage of catastrophic Hurricane Dorian, there was a lot of chatter about “Hurricane Hunters.” Just who are the Hurricane Hunters, and what role do they play in hurricane management?
According to the Air Force website, the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron is a component of the 403rd Wing, located at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The Hurricane Hunters “provide surveillance of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the central Pacific Ocean for the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The unit also flies winter storm missions off both coasts of the United States.”
The data collected during flights is used by many agencies, including the National Hurricane Center and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, to make decisions on the impact a storm may have on the United States.
The Air Force webpage shares that each crew consists of a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, flight meteorologist, and weather reconnaissance loadmaster. The Squadron is authorized 20 aircrews; 59 unit members hold air reserve technician positions, and the remaining force, about half of the hurricane hunters, is made up of Air Force Reservists.
Hurricanehunters.com shares that hurricane hunting began when Lt. Col. Joe Duckworth flew an AT-6 Texan training aircraft into the eye of a hurricane. It turns out that Duckworth flew the single-engine, propeller-driven aircraft on a dare.
The Air Force website says, “Duckworth flew into the eye of that storm twice that day, once with a navigator and again with a weather officer. Duckworth’s pioneering efforts paved the way for further flights into tropical cyclones.”
Now the squadron flies WC-130J aircraft, also known as Super Hercules. Each plane is outfitted with meteorological data-gathering instruments. The crews fly through the eye and release dropsondes, equipment that is used to collect information such as temperature, pressure, wind direction, and wind speed. The data collected is then transmitted over satellite to the National Hurricane Center. The flights can last beyond 12 hours.
“It’s like driving through a car wash on a roller coaster,” Air Force navigator Maj. John Gharbi told CNBC.
The work that the Hurricane Hunters do can help save lives.
“You have plenty of land observation,” Joel Cline, a meteorologist at NOAA’s National Weather Service told CNBC. “With hurricanes, if we wait to get land observations, it’s a little bit late to be warning people.”
“We’re trying to save lives and reduce the impact from evacuations,” weather reconnaissance officer Maj. Jeremy DeHart explained to CNN. “Everyone is kind of familiar with the cone of uncertainty, and the data that we send them reduces that cone up to twenty percent. So, the more often we fly into it, the more accurate the forecast will be. That is ultimately what we are doing.”
Watch the Hurricane Hunters on a video created by CNBC here!
