Hurricane Warning: 53rd WRS aircrews weather dangerous storms to gather data, save lives

STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON

15 September 2015

The view above Hurricane Katrina. (U.S. Air Force photo)

As the WC-130J Hercules draws closer to a hurricane deep in the Atlantic Ocean, the navigator lines up the crew’s flight plan with the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) information requests. Just for a moment, as the plane approaches the storm, the 20-year Hurricane Hunter veteran’s mind drifts back to a similar mission a decade ago. That storm, Hurricane Katrina, changed the way crewmembers view virtually every storm mission they fly.
“While I’m setting our computer up, it always takes me back to that normal Sunday morning in 2005,” Lt. Col. John Fox said. “We knew it was going to be a bad storm, but like so many other people, I was in the trap of thinking of Camille (a Category 5 hurricane that devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969). Nothing was ever going to be as bad as Camille, but here came Camille’s big sister. Katrina tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, John, you’re not a forecaster.’ The Katrina experience taught us that you never really know what you’re going to see.”
Although each flight is different, during a typical 10-plus-hour mission, each of the five crewmembers stay busy while on their way to the storm, inside the eye of the hurricane, and on the flight back to Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. On each mission, the crew flies through the hurricane in what they call an alpha pattern, penetrating its eyewall at least four times and collecting valuable data from each quadrant of the storm.
As “the overall boss of the aircraft,” Maj. Sean Cross, the aircraft commander, lets his co-pilot take care of the flying as he monitors the radios and the rest of the crew. While currently in his 14th season as a Hurricane Hunter, Cross has seen more than his share of hurricanes, both from the air and on the ground. Since he joined the squadron in 2001, Cross has made almost 150 “pennies,” a term crewmembers use for flights into the eyes of tropical storms and hurricanes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew spends their time on pre-storm checklists. They also use the satellite phone — a convenience crews didn’t have onboard in previous years — to talk with another crew on their way back from a previous hurricane mission to get pre-briefed on expected weather conditions. At the same time, they know they could face something different, maybe even considerably more intense, than what the previous crew experienced just a few hours earlier.
Daylight gradually disappears as the plane draws closer to the storm. The crew is relatively quiet as they approach the hurricane’s outer edges.

Air Force graphic // Travis Burcham

“The eyewall’s coming up crew!” Maj. Devon Meister, the pilot, announces as the plane approaches the area of about 200 miles of intense, spinning thunderstorms that whirl around the hurricane’s center. Anyone not already buckled up quickly clicks in their seat belt. The pilots are especially focused because they want to make sharp turns to ensure they reach the exact center of the storm, so they can gather the information they need. Sometimes the first encounter with the eyewall isn’t as violent as the crew might expect, but they know not to take it for granted on subsequent passes through the teeth of the hurricane.
“What you have to be careful of is that you don’t drop your guard on the next pass about 40 minutes later, because this thing is living and growing and spinning counter-clockwise,” Cross said. “The spot you went in is not going to be the same stuff you go through an hour and 40 minutes later.”
Inside the storm, the navigator and weather officer study the radar. The crew doesn’t mind flying through areas in red, but they want to avoid magenta, which usually means heavier rains and turbulence, and flashing white, which would signify severe turbulence.

Loadmaster holding a biodegrable dropsonde.
(U.S. Air Force photo)

As the WC-130J continues through the eyewall, radiometers on the wings gauge wind speed at the ocean’s surface every second. Meanwhile, Master Sgt. Jeff Stack, a loadmaster, watches the screen on his computer monitor while holding a cylindrical capsule in his left hand. He waits for the weather officer to give him the signal to drop the first biodegradable dropsonde that will collect the vital data on the storm as it falls attached to a parachute to the ocean surface.
The dropsonde is one of several weather instruments that measures temperature, pressure, dew point, wind speed and direction inside the hurricane, as well as the surface pressure inside the hurricane’s eye. It can directly measure at several levels in the atmosphere as it descends.
The weather officer is focused on his radar, waiting until the winds reach the maximum peak. He relies on surface wind data from the Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) — which continuously measures the winds at the ocean’s surface directly below the aircraft — to tell him when to give the signal the loadmaster is waiting to hear to release the dropsonde.

Lt. Col. John Gallagher roughly calculates the size of Hurricane Igor’s eyewall onboard a WC-130J Hercules during a mission Sept. 16, 2010, over the Atlantic Ocean. Colonel Gallagher is a flight meteorologist with the Air Force Reserve Command‘s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base. Miss. (Photo // Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller)

During the 2005 season, only a few aircraft had the instrument available, but now each of the 53^rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron airplanes have the SFMR, nicknamed “the Smurf.” This constant measurement of surface winds gives the NHC a considerably more complete picture of the storm and can also determine rainfall rates within a storm system.
“Now we’re able to map the entire surface wind field underneath a hurricane and provide very accurate data on the strongest winds and where they are in the storm,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Talbot, the 53rd WRS chief meteorologist. “The exciting thing about this instrument is you don’t have to rely on visually seeing what the winds are, or just getting a single point sample. You have hundreds and hundreds of samples of what the wind speeds are, and you can see as the storm intensifies or weakens, and that directly relates into the warnings that go out.”
Finally, the SFMR shows the winds at their peak, and the weather officer gives the signal to the loadmaster. A few seconds after the loadmaster releases the dropsonde into a tube through the bottom of the aircraft, it descends attached to a tiny parachute toward the ocean and immediately begins sending data back to the plane on the way to the NHC.
Suddenly, the rain and winds cease, and the sky is now blue above the plane, which is surrounded by magnificently white and puffy clouds — what the crewmembers call “the stadium effect.”

The sun sets as the clouds break after the WC-130J aircraft penetrates Tropical Storm Lee Sept. 2. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters,” were gathering atmospheric data on the storm to send to the National Hurricane Center. The crew flew was flying to Houston to store the aircraft as Tropical Storm Lee was set to bring heavy rain to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. (Photo // Staff Sgt. Valerie Smock)

“We’re breaking out now,” the pilot announces to the rest of the crew. “We’re in the eye.”
“Turn left 10 degrees,” the weather officer tells the pilot, so the plane can reach the direct center. Once at the spot where the wind readings fall to zero, he tells the loadmaster to drop another dropsonde. The crew can then connect the two coordinates and refine forecasts on the storm’s movement and direction.
Once out of the storm, the crew works on their post-storm checklists and making sure the NHC has all the information retrieved during the mission. Some crewmembers are already thinking about the impact the information will have on weather forecasts and if people in the storm’s path will heed the warnings.
As each hurricane season begins, Cross reflects on the 2005 storms, including one conversation he had with a fellow Gulf Coast resident who had just discovered his house was destroyed. The man covered his mouth with his hand, and Cross tried to comfort him by placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. Cross told him he could rebuild, but was informed the family had no insurance.

The casino resort area of Biloxi, Miss., received significant damage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which had roared through the area four days earlier, as seen in this Fla. Fish and Wildlife Commission water patrol tour Sep. 2, 2005. Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast with wind gusts in excess of 140 miles per hour, flattened buildings and flooded areas from Florida to Louisiana. Millions of people were left without power and hundreds of thousands homeless. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Jennifer C. Wallis)

“It’s really hard when you do this years on end, because you know there’s always going to be somebody standing with their hand over their mouth because everything they owned is gone.”
Katrina remains the costliest hurricane in U.S. history and the deadliest since 1928, with more than 1,800 deaths, mostly due to the 30-foot storm surge that breeched the levees in New Orleans and flooded 80 percent of the city. But Katrina was only one of four hurricanes that reached Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale for winds higher than 175 mph. The busiest season on record produced three of the five most intense hurricanes in the past decade, according to NHC data.
Fortunately, this year isn’t forecast to be as devastating as the 2005 hurricane season was — a year that set records for tropical storms and the most major hurricanes to hit the U.S. The Hurricane Hunters remain ready for whatever the season — which continues through Nov. 30 — throws at them.  Less than a dozen 53^rd WRS members remain from a decade ago, when Katrina damaged or destroyed about 30 percent of the homes of squadron members, including Fox’s.

A member of the Calif. Task Force (CATF) 4 out of Oakland, Calif., searches through the rubble of a house in Biloxi, Miss., Sep. 7, 2005. CATF joined the U.S. military and other agencies from around the country to search for missing Biloxi residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast with wind gusts in excess of 140 miles per hour, flattening buildings and flooding areas from Florida to Louisiana. Millions of people were left without power and hundreds of thousands homeless. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Jennifer C. Wallis)

If he ever needs a reminder not to take a storm for granted, Fox just recalls a flight 1,000 feet above the ravaged Mississippi coast from Houston to Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia, where they flew the rest of their storm missions before returning to Keesler AFB in November.
“Normally, there is some talk and some banter on the aircraft. This was dead silence,” Fox said. “I remember how quiet the airplane was. You were kind of punch-drunk looking at that. In our little part of the world, Katrina was like a house fire that everybody suffered, when you realized what was really important.”
On missions inside the most powerful storms like Katrina, crewmembers often reflect on how the data they gather will affect advisories and warnings that help people on the ground stay safe.
“You just hope that because we risk our lives to get this information out there to help forecast models to put the warnings out there, that people listen and pay attention,” Cross said.

Thick clouds engulf the WC-130J aircraft as it penetrates Hurricane Irene August 27. The flight was a pretty smooth one for the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters,” who transmitted storm data to the National Hurricane Center for their forecast models. The dropsonde measures air temperature, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and relative humidity. (Photo // Tech. Sgt. Ryan Labadens)

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2015/09/hurricane-warning/#sthash.xn8gjQFv.dpuf

New C-130J May Join Hurricane Hunters

The view of a hurricane is quite different at 10,000 feet. But even from the vantage point of a WC-130 Hercules aircraft, the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron  crew knows the potential death and destruction that could lie within the eye of the storm below them.
The 2005 hurricane season is expected to be a historic one for the Hurricane Hunters as they hope to complete the transition from the WC-130 to the faster, modernized WC-130J model this summer.
"We've done many experimental missions with this aircraft, and there were issues with radar, and with props that were previously reported in the press," said Lt. Col. Doug Lipscombe, 53rd WRS aerial reconnaissance weather officer. "Those issues, we think, have been resolved. We aim to prove that in the coming months, and we hope we will be able of fully implement the aircraft.
"If everything else goes as we hope, we will reach initial operating capability this summer."
The WC-130J's main features include an all-glass cockpit, heads-up display and modernized computer systems. But its best attribute will likely be what it will be able to accomplish in hurricane conditions.
"This aircraft can fly higher, faster, and consequently, farther than the C-130H," Lipscombe said. "The engines are more powerful, but also we're not required to carry that big 10,000 pound gas tank in back of the aircraft like we have in the WC-130H.
The 53rd WRS, based at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., flies into tropical storms and hurricanes to gather information that is invaluable to National Hurricane Center forecasters.
"When a storm is way out in the Atlantic, about all we have aside from aircraft reconnaissance is satellite imagery," said Steve Letro, a meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Fla.
"Satellites tell us something about the storm, but nothing gives us information like the planes going through the hurricane and getting information from inside it. This is how we get an idea of what steering currents there are and whether the environment is favorable for strengthening or weakening."
In September 2004, Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew a combined 59 missions into Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, Lipscombe said. Crew members, as well as the rest of the population in risk areas, learned valuable lessons in the 2004 hurricane season. Even though the squadron is based on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, last year's hurricanes also made a personal impact, especially for Lt. James Linder, 53rd WRS commander. Linder, who is also a Delta Airlines pilot, just recently moved back into his house on the east coast of Florida after it sustained heavy damage in Frances and Jeanne.
"The lesson from 2004 was to be prepared," Lipscombe said. "Every year, we see the number of deaths due to hurricanes decreasing, and that's the good part of it. The unfortunate part is we also see the damage. Through no fault of your own, a bullseye was painted on Florida, and you experienced four major hurricanes in one year, which is hard for anyone to bear.
"But when a hurricane is coming ashore, there's nothing anyone can do about that. People in Florida can be assured that we will continue helping the National Hurricane Center fulfill its mission of putting out the best possible forecasts."
With the help of the WC-130'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 cylindrical weather sensor packages that resemble canisters at the bank drive-through window.
These dropsondes gather information as they descend about 2,400 feet per minute 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 ever 30 seconds.
"The National Hurricane Center is getting high-density data via satellite," Lipscombe said.
"They get a complete look at all four quadrants of the storm, so they'll be able to see what the intensity of the storm is and where the exact center is, along with wind speed and pressure. All that information is fed into the National Hurricane Center computer modules."

Hunters Knew Opal Would Pack An Awesome Punch

Only the most obsessed hurricane watchers had Opal on their minds in the Wiregrass in late September last year.
But 1st Lt. Scott Spitzer and The Hurricane Hunters were seeing something drastically different from their vantage point inside the hurricane.
Opal was not the comparatively minor minnow the National Hurricane Center was seeing in its forecasts, but a killer shark of a hurricane.
The data the crews from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron provided the hurricane center from inside the eye of Hurricane Opal showed that practically overnight, it had developed from a Category 2 storm to a monster with winds approaching 150 mph.
"With Opal, the drop in pressure was the thing for us," Spitzer said.
"There is usually a couple of millibars drop in about a day. That was happening by the hour in that storm. I imagine the National Hurricane Center was pretty awake that night."
Opal, the first hurricane to sweep directly through the Wiregrass since 1985, caused more than $1.5 million in damage in Houston County alone. At least nine area counties and 38 Alabama counties were declared disaster areas. In all, Opal was responsible for $3 billion in damage in the U.S., Guatemala and Mexico.
For The Hurricane Hunters, penetrating the eye of the hurricane has been compared with the exhilaration of a wartime kill for a fighter pilot. During 1995, Spitzer's first hurricane season, he netted a phenomenal 64 penetrations.
In high school, Spitzer became interested in tropical weather after Hurricane Elena flirted with the coastline in his hometown Pensacola , Fla., before coming ashore in Mississippi in 1985.
For some, the thought of flying into hurricanes such as Opal and Erin probably seems more like suicide than a job. But The Hurricane Hunters have a phenomenal success and safety record. Spitzer, the son of the late Col. William Spitzer, a 30-year Air Force pilot, downplays the danger.
"A lot of people consider this a dangerous mission, but a lot of times I think the guys in Bosnia have a far more dangerous mission," Spitzer said. "Because nobody is shooting at us.
"Everything the storm throws at us, our crews are trained to the level where we can handle it."
Since the military began hurricane reconnaissance missions in 1944, the Air Force has lost only three planes, all in typhoons in the Pacific. In that time, the Air Force Reserve aircraft have gathered inside information - literally - on some of the most intense and dangerous storms of the century, including Hurricane Camille in 1969, Hugo in 1989 and Andrew in 1992.
"There are two factors for that," said Maj. Doug Lipscombe, an aerial weather reconnaissance officer in the 53rd WRS. "Our maintenance people baby these airplanes. That's not to say the airlines don't baby theirs because they do. But because of the importance of our mission and the danger involved in flying into these storms, the maintenance people make sure the aircraft is in top condition.
"Also, our crews are trained extensively before they go out on a mission. We are very careful not to place ourselves in jeopardy. Based on past experience, we know where we can be and where we should not be."
To appreciate how important the squadron is to accurate hurricane forecasts, one need only remember the night of Oct. 4, 1995 in the Florida Panhandle and southeast Alabama.
"Opal was one of the prime examples of why we need to be out flying," Lipscombe said. "The night before Opal struck, a number of our airplanes were flying into the storm around the clock.
"Over a 12-hour stretch of time, we observed Opal go from a Category 2 hurricane with a pressure of 948 millibars and wind speeds of 105 mph to a Category 4 hurricane with a pressure of 916 millibars and wind speeds of 150 mph.
"During that time, the hurricane center said they did not observe that on satellite. Our data coming to them every 10 seconds allowed them to make the call that Opal was strengthening and speeding up, so people were evacuated earlier along the Florida coast. Because we were out there, fewer people lost their lives during Hurricane Opal," Lipscombe said.

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."

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.