Staring into the Enemy's Eye

TEN THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN - This enemy does not fight with rifles, Scud missiles and anti-aircraft fire, but with the elements of nature's most awesome package of destruction.
Nevertheless, the United States Air Force was summoned.
Members of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base on the Mississippi coast took to the skies once again. Their mission was to fly directly into enemy territory, where an incredible storm boasting 100-mph winds and blinding rain persisted.
This time, the enemies were Hurricanes Edouard and Fran, with another tropical system off the coast of Africa possibly headed for a showdown with members of this squadron better known as The Hurricane Hunters.
The data taken from inside the eye of Hurricane Fran aided the Carolina coast's evacuation effort before the storm blew ashore late Thursday night.
"We're military guys, and flying into these storms has been likened to flying into combat," said Maj. Doug Lipscombe, an aerial weather reconnaissance officer.
"Military guys always want to have an enemy. Well, our enemy is the storm. So while we're out there flying into the eye, the military part of us is saying we conquered that hurricane by getting through that center and gathering all the data to tell everybody exactly what is going on inside that thing."
Riding on The Hurricane Hunters' WC-130 seems like just another flight until the aircraft reaches the hurricane's eyewall at 10,000 feet. During the 12 minutes or so in the eyewall, which can be 25 to 40 miles wide, the crew's visibility is zero. Pelted by blinding rain, hail and lightning, the durable Air Force Reserve workhorse airplane shakes and rolls inside the worst the hurricane has to offer.
The average mission entails four such penetrations of the eyewall.
"It's always the ride of a lifetime," Lipscombe said. "It's like going down a roller coaster blindfolded or down the highway 70 mph during a downpour. You want to pull over and slow down because you get that uneasy feeling.
"Well, we can't pull over and slow down. We just keep flying through that stuff."
After about 12 minutes of this barrage in the eyewall, 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 all around the aircraft.
"It all depends on the storm," Lipscomb said. "Bigger storms, like Edouard, typically have well-formed eyes, and we experience what is known as a stadium effect. It's like being on the 50-yard-line of a big stadium and all you can see are seats all around. All we see are clouds going up to 40,000 to 50,000 feet.
"So we're down here at the bottom looking up and all we see are clouds and blue skies above us. At night, you can see the stars. It's a very beautiful sight and one very few people get to see."
But The Hurricane Hunters don't fly these missions for postcard views. They furnish The National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla., with information their satellites are unable to gather, improving hurricane forecast accuracies by more than 30 percent.
The squadron's 10 WC-130s, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's WP-3 Orions, also based in the Miami area, are the hurricane center's eyes and ears.
"The information The Hurricane Hunters bring back is very valuable," said Houston County Emergency Management Agency Director Shelby Womack. "With this information, we can tell how a storm is strengthening."
"It all boils down to credibility and risk," Lipscombe said. "If the forecast is credible, people will take less risk and vice-versa."
In 1995, the second-most active hurricane season of the century, the 53rd WRS flew more than 160 reconnaissance missions. Twelve were in the eye of Hurricane Opal, which struck the Wiregrass Oct. 4, 1995.
Using a bow-like maneuver called an alpha pattern, the WC-130 penetrates the hurricane's eye from all four quadrants of the storm.
In each section, the operator releases a cylindrical object called a dropsonde through the floor of the plane. A parachute slows the dropsonde's descent to about 1,000 feet per minute as the sensors measure the hurricane's barometric pressure, dew point and humidity.
The information is immediately processed by a computer at the rear of the aircraft and sent by satellite to the hurricane center. The airplane's Improved Weather Reconnaissance System samples the atmosphere eight times per second and averages the data every second, Lipscombe said.
When a hurricane is within 1,000 miles of where the 53rd WRS aircraft is flying, The Hurricane Hunters go to work. They began flying into Hurricane Fran from St. Croix and moved to a stateside base as the storm approached the U.S. mainland.
WC-130s have enough fuel to fly up to 14 hours, but most hurricane reconnaissance missions last between 10 to 12 hours. Approximately six of those hours are spent inside the hurricane.
"It's just like combat - you don't want innocent people to pay with their lives," Lipscombe said. "We don't want innocent people on those beaches and shore lines to pay with their lives when it comes to these storms."