Hurricane hunters fly into belly of the beast

ABOARD A P-3 ORION OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO — From 20,000 feet, the storm was a whirl of gray padded by dark puffs, its untidy tendrils protruding over the water in every direction.

The hurricane hunters had arrived at the heart of Tropical Storm Barry, and the center looked unfinished, a semicircle that convulsed and heaved.

“It’s a mess,” declared Paul Reasor, one of the meteorological researchers who had crowded into the cockpit to take a look.

None of those aboard the plane expected to be flying now — not in July, so early in the six-month Atlantic hurricane season. But Barry had formed in unusual fashion, as a disturbance moving down from the South into the Gulf of Mexico.

The hurricane hunters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based in Lakeland, Florida, and their partners went to study the storm on Thursday.

The pilots pointed the nose of the aircraft directly at the messy center.

“Folks,” warned Mike Holmes, the flight director, “we’re going to punch through some tough air here.”

Hurricane hunters do much more than confirm a storm’s location and strength. The planes that NOAA uses, two Lockheed WP-3D Orions nicknamed Kermit and Miss Piggy, are sophisticated flying research labs that launch probes and collect real-time data that is crucial to understanding hurricanes across the globe. The planes logged their first flights in the mid-1970s.

It is especially important to gather data from weather systems like Barry that defy predictions: The weirdest storms can sometimes produce the best science.

“To me, these are more challenging than a traditional storm,” Holmes said from his seat behind the cockpit of Kermit on Thursday. “When a storm is getting its act together or weakening, that’s when they get more sporty.”

It would take eight hours for the 14-member crew of NOAA Flight 42 to reach Barry. They would then carefully crisscross it in what is known as a butterfly pattern, communicating over the roaring engines through headsets and radio.

A single flight would not solve the mystery of why a storm did not develop as expected. But the real-time data went to the National Hurricane Center before its next forecast advisory. And, once on land, the scientists could plug the new data into their models to make them more accurate.

For now, the conclusion was this: On the north side of Barry, the air was dry, and the storm struggled to get organized. On the south side, there was the bottom half of a full-fledged — and very wet — system.

Wind buffeted the plane to the left near the cockpit, and to the right near the tail. It pushed up, making the passengers feel heavy. It pressed down, making them feel light.

Finally, about 90 harrowing minutes later, a break appeared in the massive storm blob. The seatbelt sign went dark. Passengers exhaled.

For a few hours, scientists worked in relative calm, squinting at the tiny numbers and streaks of color that would soon help cities below them prepare for the onslaught. Then it was time to turn around; to head back south, into the nasty stuff. In the cockpit, the pilots felt a bump.

“Come on, Barry, don’t be like that,” one of them said.

And they went in, again.