When looking at a hurricane, from above or on a screen, it’s hard to tell the complexities going on within. Forecasters face this problem every day and depend heavily on one particular team to face the storm head on and collect the data they so desperately need.
Hurricane Hunters are specially trained pilots, navigators and weather reconnaissance experts who fly straight into severe weather to gather real-time information, which can be crucial in determining exactly who and when the storm will hit.
The Air Force’s Chief Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination All Hurricanes unit coordinates the two teams in the U.S. that act as Hurricane Hunters: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Air Operations Center and the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. The 53rd WRS, a component of the Air Force Reserve’s 403rd Wing located at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., is the larger and more active of the two.
At the request of CARCAH, who works daily with forecasters to determine what data they require, the 53rd Squadron sends its crews in and around hurricanes and areas of interest in search of data such as wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, pressure, and more, all of which are collected using one of the squadron’s ten specially outfitted WC-130Js.
Despite the advanced technical abilities of these aircraft, being a Hurricane Hunter is no easy task. “We take pilots who are perfectly capable C-130 pilots … but the one thing they’ve been taught throughout their entire careers is ‘don’t go near the thunderstorms,’” said Warren Madden, CARCAH meteorologist and former aerial reconnaissance weather officer with the 53rd WRS. “We have to train these people not only how to go near them, but go right through them and do it safely.”
The 53rd Squadron is the only operational military unit in the world flying weather reconnaissance on a routine basis, so training takes place mostly in house and in flight. When these Hurricane Hunters aren’t flying missions, they’re able to organize and conduct training and exercise flights based on their own known knowledge gaps and cater them specifically to their needs, which they’ve been working to assess since the squadron’s official creation in 1944.
Since then, the squadron has grown in capability to operate 24 hours a day, seven day a week. Once the crew, most of which are former active duty military, gets word that a storm needs to be looked at, they start planning their trip.
The 53rd WRS has a remarkably large range of responsibility, covering storms over water as far east as the Leeward and Windward Islands, the entire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, up the Atlantic Coast, in addition to the West Coast of Mexico toward Hawaii. Within these areas, the squadron will inspect not only developing tropical weather, but, more rarely, winter storms as well.
These investigatory missions can extend to more than 12 hours, and typically include about four penetrations of the center of the storm in a repeating “x” pattern, with trips to the outer edges of the storm, or “legs,” extending for about 100 – 115 miles. Throughout this time, crew members are working to collect the data the forecasters have requested, using the equipment outfitted on the plane or by dropping special sensors straight down through the storm.
All of the information collected during the flight is sent to the National Hurricane Center in real time. “Our data, on average, improves the hurricane center’s forecasts by about 25 to 30 percent,” said Lt. Col. John Fox, Chief Navigator with the squadron. “Satellites and radar provide a high map of the US, while we provide the street map. Our data says ‘this is what the storm is getting ready to do’, and a satellite picture just isn’t going to do that.”
Knowing what the storm is or isn’t going to do is crucial for making decisions such as evacuations, and protecting the potentially vulnerable people in the storm’s path. For crew members, this responsibility is a serious one. “Those of us flying in the storm, we have loved ones on the ground,” said Fox.
The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency is one of the many organizations that relies on data from the Hurricane Center to help prepare citizens on the ground for potential emergencies in a timely manner. The agency bases its decision making and action items on “h-hours”, or how long it will be before the storm hits. “The value that the human forecasting adds to all the data out there is tangible,” said Will Lanxton, GEMA/HS meteorologist. “The more accurate the data the Hurricane Center is getting, the better for everyone.”
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