What do hunters do in the offseason?
Weather watchers collect data on winter storms, phenomena
When hurricanes begin spinning, hurricane hunters begin hunting.
For at least six months out of the year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Hunters are passing through tropical storms in the Atlantic and collecting data. The team is based out of Lakeland Linder International Airport, about an hour southwest of Orlando.
But after hurricane season, does the team take a break?
“I wish. Shoot we could’ve used one after last hurricane season,” said Jack Parrish, a flight director at the NOAA’s hurricane hunters. After the end of hurricane season, the hunters recalibrate their atmospheric instruments and prepare for several months as far as Hawaii and Alaska collecting data on weather phenomena such as atmospheric rivers and winter storms.
During the 2020 season, which started early in May and last until November, the hunters flew 86 flights on three different jets, and logged 678.2 flight hours, according to the NOAA spokesperson Jonathan Shannon.
Recently, Parrish returned from Hawaii, where he and a team gathered data about atmospheric rivers, which are large currents of water vapor that bombard the U.S. West Coast. One of the most well known is the “Pineapple Express,” named for its ability to bring moisture from the tropics near Hawaii to the West Coast.
Parrish has been flying with the NOAA since 1980 and has flown in and out of hurricane eyewalls 645 times. Much of his career swirled around Atlantic tropic disturbances. He’s also spent an enormous amount of time aiding in the NOAA’s data collection on atmospheric rivers.
These rivers in the sky can create extreme rainfall and floods leading to the disruption of travel, trigger mud slides and cause catastrophic damage to life and property, according to the NOAA.
“Think of these rivers as conveyor belts,” Parrish said. “It directs itself like a fire hose sending an enormous amount of water vapor at the West Coast, but it’s clear. You can’t see it. It’s only the relationship between temperature and humidity. That’s where our onboard instruments come in. We get a look at the river as it points the fire hose at California, where it’s relatively dry and stable, but then you have this creeping along a jet stream ready to hit with a bodacious quantity of rain.”
This gets problematic with the west coast mountainous landscape.
“Low altitude moisture rises into the mountains, becomes clouds and dumps rain onto San Francisco or a gigantic amount of snow on Sierra (Nevada),” Parrish said.
Atmospheric rivers can even
influence enormous winter storms as far inland as Texas, perhaps even being a reason for the recent calamity Texans observed earlier this month, Parrish said.
“It’s all connected, especially moving from west to east at the mid-latitudes, so weather activities that strengthened over the Pacific might very well have increased and enhanced the major trough in the jet stream that brought the huge cold mass down over the Midwest into Texas,” he said. However, it will take years of research before meteorologists can confidently point to the rivers as a reason for the cold disaster in Texas, Parrish added.
“We were out there flying to collect data that makes such an analysis possible, and that’s the importance of our mission,” he said.
Parrish’s team flew out to Hawaii in January and studied about 15 to 18 atmospheric rivers, many of which can be 250 to 375 miles wide. The rivers are extremely high in the sky, making NOAA’s Gulfstream IV, also known lovingly as “Gonzo,” the ideal jet of choice for data reconnaissance.
The data collection is a two-month project and is important for city officials looking to avoid flooding, so that they can drain reservoirs in advance if an area faces a large amount of rain. Forecasts surrounding atmospheric river events are crucial in controlling water levels as these events account for an average of 30% to 50% of all annual precipitation on the West Coast.
“It may not be as fun to fly through as a hurricane, but these rivers could be just as detrimental to know about in advance. That’s why we do this,” Parrish said.
A second hurricane hunter team recently swapped places with Parrish’s team after the latter had worked for about a month collecting data on the river events. The new team will be monitoring skies until the end of March.
However, another hurricane hunter team was deployed to a different part of the county after the 2020 hurricane season. A group of 19 specialists are flying the NOAA’s P-3 Orion N42RF, also known as “Kermit” out of Anchorage, Alaska. The team is measuring winds at the surface of the ocean, with a focus on extreme wind events, said project manager Lt. Cmdr. Peter Freeman.
The purpose of the mission is to test onboard weather reading tools and see if the instruments are making the same observations as satellites in the atmosphere. The process is a sort of dress rehearsal ahead of hurricane season. Winter storms are particularly useful for testing weather instruments because of the lack of precipitation along with hurricane-force winds the storm produces over sweeping areas of ocean.
“There is a dangerous element to it,” Freeman said, who has also worked as a navigator on these flights. “With hurricanes there’s a known quantity of information you’re working with, like you know what altitude will keep you safe. These storms, they cover a wider area and are much more dynamic. It’s more hectic with winter landings.”
Plus, the team needs to be hyper aware about icing on the exterior of the plane.
The instruments the teams tests out in these winter cyclones include the “scatterometer,” which measures wind speed and direction, and the “Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer,” which is designed to measure surface winds from hurricanes. Remote tools launched from the jet include dropsondes, which is a GPS attached to a parachute, which detects storm conditions in high-to-low altitudes
While flying through winter storms is important, the dangerous winds and icing conditions make for a much more uncomfortable ride than what Freeman is used to in hurricane season, he said. When asked if he preferred to fly through a hurricane as opposed to a winter storm, Freeman paused.
“Ask me that question again when the next hurricane comes through, and I’ll have an answer for you,” Freeman said.