Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
WATCH. RINSE. REPEAT.
Tours give a look at the life of a Hurricane Hunter
If you can imagine being a plate in a dishwasher at least 1,500 feet in the air, then you’ll have some idea of what it’s like to be the pilot of a Hurricane Hunter Aircraft flying through a churning storm.
“You’re shaking around quite a bit, there’s water blowing all over the place, and it’s really, really loud,” said Lt. Cmdr. Nate Kahn, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
He was one among many hurricane flight crew members, forecasters and emergency managers at Opa-locka Executive Airport on Friday, giving hundreds of schoolchildren a day of show and tell.
It capped a weeklong NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour that began Sunday in Canada at Gander, Newfoundland, with stops in Islip, N.Y., Washington D.C., Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Orlando, before landing at Opa-locka.
The annual event alternates between Atlantic and Gulf coasts in advance of the hurricane season.
A U.S. Air Force WC-130J Hercules cargo plane and a WP-3D Orion were the star attractions on the tarmac.
Visitors got a look at the cockpits and the computer console stations where meteorologists sit and forecast from inside storms.
The four-propeller aircraft are designed to fly slow enough into ferocious crosswinds to gather sci-
entific data to define the speed, strength, direction and danger-level of a tropical storm or hurricane.
“The whole reason we do this is to narrow that cone of expectancy of where that storm is going to hit,” said Staff Sgt. Nathan Calloway.
The aircraft often fly almost sideways, at 30 to 45 degree angles, when crossing through a hurricane.
Dozens of “drop sondes” — two-foot-long cylinders filled with meteorological equipment — parachute out of each plane to collect the data from within the storm’s walls and eye.
The information gathered can determine what coastal areas need to be evacuated and when.
After 12 years flying combat missions as a U.S. Navy pilot, Kahn is beginning his third year at the controls of the Orion — nicknamed Kermit the Frog — and he admits it’s scary.
“Anybody that tells you they’re never scared in a storm or on a storm flight, they’re either crazy or they’re lying to you,” he said with a chuckle.
Depending on the nature of the storm, these aircraft fly between 1,000 and 13,000 feet above the rough ocean waters, said Warren Madden, aerial reconnaissance coordinator with NOAA and the National Hurricane Center.
“They are incredibly sturdy,” he said. “The [Hercules] are literally the pickup trucks of the Air Force and the [Orions] are also extremely rugged aircraft.”
Not on display was the Gulfstream G4, a third aircraft, which flies on the fringes of the storm at about 45,000 feet to measure steering currents.
Just when you think there isn’t anything a Hurricane Hunter won’t do, Madden said they won’t fly over a storm at that altitude.
“You’re getting up above the freezing level and with that much moisture being thrust up you’d turn a plane into an icicle,” he said. “Icicles don’t fly very well.”