A View from Inside the Hurricane

Nothing silences an airplane full of newspaper reporters faster than a face-to-face meeting with the eye wall of a Category 4 hurricane.
While en route on a 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron hurricane mission, the questions posed by media representatives from Tallahassee to Tokyo often resemble those posed by children.
"How does the airplane fly without falling apart?"
"Don't you get scared?"
Then, there's the question almost every reporter asks:
"Has anyone ever died doing this?"
"Yes, but just a little," the crew member often responds, with a straight face.
During my public affairs career in the Air Force, I had opportunities to fly in several major storms while assigned to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. My duties included accompanying national media representatives on flights with the 53rd WRS, the famed "Hurricane Hunters."
Crew members compare penetrating the eye of a hurricane to a wartime kill for a fighter pilot. It can also be compared to going down a roller coaster blindfolded 100 mph in a stinging downpour at more than 30,000 feet in the air.
Riding on the Hurricane Hunters' WC-130J, an aircraft converted for weather reconnaissance, seems just like another military flight until the aircraft reaches the storm's eye wall at about 10,000 feet. The windows are pelted by blinding rain, hail and lightning, sometimes so heavy the crew can't even see the wings of the airplane. The WC-130J shakes and rolls throughout the 12 minutes or so in this treacherous part of the storm. The storm's most intense winds are found here.
The view through the windows is often not that spectacular. Through most of the storm, the airplane is flying through clouds, and once inside the eye wall, the rain is pelting the windows like nails.
After about 12 minutes of this barrage in the eye wall, suddenly the ride becomes smooth, almost eerily gentle. There is a mild breeze, sunshine and a blue sky above, with a whirling wall of almost heavenly white clouds surrounding the aircraft. This is the eye of the hurricane. Every once in a while, the most picturesque sunset can be seen through the airplane's windows.
There are moments in some storms when you can look out the window and see the ocean-blue water through the storm and sunshine above the plane.
Once the WC-130J hits the eye wall, all chatter stops - not that you would hear it if someone was talking. At this point, all anyone can hear is the rain pounding the plane, and that wind. This is a wind that screams.
Fortunately, the WC-130J is a tough airplane, built to land on short, dirt runways in third-world countries and places where disaster has hit.
The squadron's WC-130s, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's WP-3 "Orions," furnish the National Hurricane Center with information unavailable to satellites. The 53rd WRS is responsible for missions in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans.
NHC officials say these inside-the-storm missions improve hurricane forecasts at least 25 percent. Hurricane reconnaissance began with Lt. Col. Joe Duckworth's flight in an AT-6 Texan into the eye of a hurricane during World War II. By 1947, the U.S. Weather Bureau began a full-time hurricane warning service, with the Navy in charge of flying into Caribbean storms and the 53rd WRS handling the West Central Atlantic. After Hurricane Camille devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, the 53rd WRS moved to Keesler four years later. In 1991, the hurricane flying mission was given to the Air Force Reserve.
From the Navy to the NOAA and Hurricane Hunters today, these flights have obviously made a difference in saving lives. Between 1900 and 1910, an average of 800 people were killed each year by hurricanes, according to Facts on Files statistics. By the 1990s, the number dropped to five, even though the cost of property damage increased from virtually nothing at the turn of the century to $2.6 billion in the 1990s.
With the help of the WC-130J's Improved Weather Reconnaissance System, the crew measures outside free air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and evaluates other meteorological conditions such as turbulence, icing, visibility, cloud types and ocean surface winds.
The crew obtains other vital information by dropping dropsondes - 16-foot long cylindrical weather-sensor packages that resemble canisters at the bank drive-through window. These dropsondes gather information as they descend beneath a small parachute to the ocean. The canister radios weather data on the temperature, humidity, pressure and winds inside the storm. The crew then processes the data and transmits the information by satellite to the National Hurricane Center every 30 seconds.
Although the WC-130 begins flying in developing storm systems at 500 to 1,500 feet, the aircraft penetrates hurricanes at 10,000 feet. It makes four passes through the eye wall to gather data on damaging winds from all four sectors of the storm and determine the sea-level pressure in the eye and temperature difference inside and outside the eye.
In 1995, the second most-active hurricane season in the 20th century, the 53rd WRS flew more than 160 reconnaissance missions. Twelve were in the eye of Hurricane Opal, which struck the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 4.
WC-130s have enough fuel to fly up to 14 hours, but most hurricane reconnaissance missions last between 10 and 12 hours. About six of those hours are spent inside the hurricane.
There is an adrenaline rush when they're flying in the deadliest storms in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. But they do it mainly to save lives.
And although no Hurricane Hunter crew member would admit it on the record, silencing squeamish reporters is also a fringe benefit.