Into the Eye of the Storm
NOAA goes hurricane hunting.
By Mark Cantrell

Army Air Forces Colonel Duckworth was not amused. As World War II raged overseas, the flight instructor at Bryant Field in Texas had the unenviable task of teaching cocky British pilots how to fly on instruments. Accustomed to jockeying sleek and agile Hurricanes and Spitfires, the Brits looked with disdain at their training plane, the sturdy but distinctly unglamorous at-6 Texan—and they didn’t hesitate to let Duckworth know it. 

On the morning of July 27, 1943, the base received a hurricane warning: A strong storm was heading for Galveston. Upon hearing that the at-6s might be flown out to protect them from damage, the English pilots began to rib Duckworth mercilessly about the supposedly delicate nature of his planes. That was the last straw. He bet the British that not only could he fly an at-6 into the eye of a hurricane, but he also could do it on instruments—and drinks were on the loser. Grabbing the only navigator on base that day, Lt. Ralph O’Hair, Duckworth flew into the history books as the first pilot to intentionally fly into a hurricane.

I’m thinking about Duckworth as I sit in the galley of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D Orion awaiting takeoff at Tampa, Fla.’s, MacDill Air Force Base (AFB) on a beautiful September day. Although the aircraft is nearing its 30th birthday, it looks and feels like a much younger plane—a testament to the expertise and commitment of its maintenance and flight crews. Like the at-6, the Orion is a sturdy platform. Used during the Cold War as an antisubmarine patrol aircraft, the plane is built to take punishment. 

Today’s aircraft commander, 29-year career NOAA Corps officer Capt. David Tennesen, elaborates, “That’s the nice thing about a P-3—no matter what you hang on it, it’ll still fly. You’re in a flying pickup truck. That’s the way to think about this airplane.”

Earlier, Tennesen had briefed me on what to expect on the flight and issued me a flotation device. “We don’t expect any problems,” he told me, “but if there are, I can put this thing down in the water. It’ll float for a while.” Thus reassured, I’m shown to my seat in the galley, where I get an inkling of what I’m in for: The crew’s coffeepot is surrounded by steel straps and securely bolted to the table.

A few minutes later, Tennesen and the chief meteorologist brief the crew on our mission and target for today: Hurricane Isidore, a tropical nightmare currently churning its way west along the northern shores of the Yucatan Peninsula, its winds screaming at 125 miles an hour.

The mission

Tennesen and his copilots are members of the NOAA Corps, the nation’s seventh and smallest uniformed service, about 300 strong. Consisting entirely of commissioned officers, the corps operates and maintains NOAA’s extensive fleet of research and survey ships and aircraft. Although best known for their hurricane research, corps officers serve in all other NOAA divisions as well, including the National Weather Service; National Marine Fisheries Service; Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research; National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service; and National Ocean Service. Their talents also are put to use by the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of State. 

The seeds of the NOAA Corps were planted by U.S. president and scientific visionary Thomas Jefferson, who called for the establishment of a “survey of the coast” in 1807. The Coast Survey eventually became the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which performed reconnaissance, mapmaking, and other surveying work through World War II. In 1970, NOAA came into being—and with it the NOAA Corps and Hurricane Hunters.

In this age of technology, the name “Hurricane Hunters” is something of a misnomer. Pilots no longer need to search for hurricanes—satellites track the storms from their earliest stages. Today’s quarry is data: information on how this hurricane is developing, how steering currents are affecting it, conditions in the upper atmosphere near the storm, and a host of other pieces of the puzzle that is a tropical system.

There are actually two different sets of Hurricane Hunters—the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) at MacDill AFB and the Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron based at Keesler AFB in Mississippi. In 1992, the aoc moved to Tampa after Hurricane Andrew destroyed many of its resources at Miami International Airport. The 53rd maintains a fleet of 10 Lockheed-Martin wc-130 Hercules aircraft, which fly nonstop into a hurricane to obtain position and strength data as long as the system threatens land, while the NOAA aoc’s role is mostly research. 

At the helm of today’s flight is Tennesen, a pilot since he was in high school who has flown WP-3Ds into hurricanes since 1990 and has lost count of the number of storms he’s fought his way through. What makes someone take up hurricane hunting when he could be flying a nice, safe, transport or commercial jet? “Well, first of all, it’s fun,” says Tennesen, flashing his trademark grin. “And because I have an undergraduate degree in atmospheric sciences, it’s even more fun for me since I’m also a meteorologist.”

But Tennesen is quick to point out that flying into hurricanes is a team effort: “While I may be the quarterback, you cannot do this type of flying without the concerned consensus of everyone aboard. Each crew member adds a piece of the puzzle.”

For Tennesen, the most rewarding part of the job is the contribution the Hurricane Hunters make to atmospheric research. “If there’s only one message I can convey, it is that we’re here to help save lives and property,” he says. “That’s why the research is being done, that’s why the money is being spent, and that’s why the taxpayers pay for this asset.”

By any measure, it’s a bargain. Of the billions of dollars spent annually by the Department of Commerce (the Hurricane Hunters’ parent organization), NOAA’s entire fleet of aircraft account for only around $14 million—a mere drop in the atmospheric bucket. There is no way to know just how many lives have been saved through the efforts of the NOAA Corps and the Hurricane Hunters, but the total runs at least into the thousands.

What’s particularly amazing is that much of NOAA’s atmospheric research is accomplished using an aircraft that isn’t even manufactured anymore: The last Navy P-3 rolled off the Lockheed assembly line in 1990. The agency maintains a stockpile of spare parts, however, and Lockheed Martin and Vought Aircraft Industries recently announced an agreement to manufacture wings for the worldwide fleet of approximately 450 P-3s—good news for the Hurricane Hunters and anyone who lives in the path of tropical systems.

Up close and personal

Today we’ll be continuing an experiment begun by Dr. Peter Black, a research meteorologist who is investigating how isolated currents of warm water can provoke sudden, explosive intensification in hurricanes — but for now, all I can think of is the takeoff. As the pilot stands on the brakes and throttles up the four big turboprop engines, the aircraft shakes and twitches like a cat that doesn’t want to be held. Then we’re moving, and after a long roll we’re airborne, and the wheels are thunking into their wells. Far over the horizon looms Isidore, its massive girth large enough to cover the entire Gulf of Mexico.

The Orion we’re aboard, WP-3D43, has been affectionately dubbed Miss Piggy (see “The Muppet Connection,” page 62). It rolled off the Lockheed production line in 1976. Miss Piggy’s twin, Kermit, or WP-3D42, was built a year earlier; it will be probing a different part of the hurricane on this mission. Circling above us is NOAA’s Gulfstream g-iv sp jet, peering down at Isidore with its phalanx of sensors, while the 53rd’s wc-130s ferry in and out of the storm, pinpointing and relaying the hurricane’s exact location and other data to the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla. Orbiting satellites complete the task force, providing fresh pictures of Isidore every few minutes. All these eyes in the sky mean that hurricanes get very little privacy these days.

The WP-3D’s most visible sensors are its radar systems. “We have three: nose radar, belly radar looking around the vertical axis, and around the roll axis of the airplane is the tail Doppler radar, which is one of the most powerful research radars flying,” notes Tennesen. The prominent radar unit mounted on the lower fuselage can sweep out an entire 360 degrees, its images complemented by the C-band nose radar and X-band Doppler radar in the tail boom, and the aircraft bristles with some of the most exotic meteorological sensing devices ever developed.

“We’re actually in a flying weather station,” says Tennesen. “This aircraft has just about every kind of weather instrument you can think of sewn into it and a whole bunch of experimental weather instruments as well.” These include precipitation and cloud particle probes, an aerosol sampling system, sea surface and air temperature radiometers, and C-band and Ku-band scatterometers, all of which help to paint a complete picture of the environment inside a tropical system. Science stations line both sides of the cabin, many of them perched on shock absorbers for protection.

The plane also carries a cache of dropwindsondes, or dropsondes, which are ejected from the plane by compressed air and descend to the ocean surface on parachutes. As the sensor-packed cylinders drop, they use global positioning system (GPS) to give constant reports of their location, as well as details of air pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind speed. They continue to broadcast from the ocean surface “until they drown,” as Tennesen puts it. As we get closer to the storm, I become accustomed to the launcher’s distinctive bang and hiss each time a dropsonde is launched.

Into the eye

If the Orion is a flying truck, I feel as if I’m riding in the bed. As we approach Isidore, the ride gets rougher; sudden dips and bumps make movement about the cabin an adventure. Fortunately, there’s a grab rail running the length of the fuselage ceiling, and as I make my way up to the cockpit to interview the flight crew, I silently thank whomever put it there.

From the navigator’s seat, the hurricane’s outer eye wall—a dark gray barrier in the distance—is clearly visible. Angry-looking thunderstorms slope upward toward it until they merge with its seemingly impenetrable face. “See that high cirrus?” says Tennesen, pointing up at the mare’s tails swirling away from the eye. “That’s the top of the storm bending up and blowing out. Those building clouds down there are the outer rain bands starting to show up.”

As I return to my seat, Tennesen’s voice on the intercom advises everyone to stow all loose gear, then “strap in and hang on.” I’ve just buckled my seat belt and grabbed the table in front of me when a giant hand comes down on the airplane—hard—and then releases it. It’s just the opening salvo in Isidore’s tropical “smackdown.” I feel like I’m riding in a fast, malfunctioning elevator that also is being shaken violently from side to side. My vision is too blurred to read the decals on the galley walls, and I have no doubt I’d be plastered on the ceiling if not for my seat belt. If this were a commercial flight, I’d want my money back. In the midst of this airborne chaos, I hear three quick bangs and hisses—dropsonde operator Ray Tong has somehow managed to do his job despite the mayhem.

Just as suddenly, we’re through the eye wall and the ride smooths out. I look out and see patches of blue sky, but the ocean is still a murky gray topped with frothy whitecaps. On radar, Isidore is an angry red welt surrounded by yellows, oranges, and greens—and we’re right in the bulls-eye. The storm had been forecast to move slowly west along the Yucatan coast, with a gradual turn toward the north—but hurricanes apparently don’t listen to forecasts. Isidore has turned south, and half its eye is now over the Yucatan coast. 

“Looks like we’ll have to go to plan B,” says Tennesen. “Not much point in doing hurricane research over land.” Land-falling hurricanes are notorious for spawning tornadoes, a good reason to cut this particular mission short so the WP-3D and its crew can live to fly another day. We entered the eye at 1,400 feet, and as we exit at 4,000 the ride is still rough but manageable. As we fly back toward Tampa the sun sets, painting distant thunderstorms a vivid red before they fade to black. 

The touchdown is smooth, and after disembarking I watch the ground crew carefully back the big plane into its hangar. As the crew disperses, I linger and take a few more photographs of the P-3 sparkling in the glow of the hangar lights. For an old bird, it still looks pretty good. Someday the plane no doubt will grace a gallery of the National Air and Space Museum, but for now it still has research to do and lives to save, and tomorrow it’ll be back in the air.