The Hurricane HuntersAdded : Monday at 12:43 Now, this is the type of flight where there will be no duty free being sold before you come into land. It's also the sort of ride that you would prefer not to have when you are doing a transatlantic flight, but for the crew of the Hurricane Hunters, it's all part of the job.
You are probably aware that Hurricane Irma is out in the Atlantic and moving slowly Westwards towards the Lesser Antilles and Bahamas.
The Hurricane Hunters are currently doing their second reconnaissance of the system and this is what it looks like :-
You can see that the plane has made two trips into the eye of the Irma and is about to make another. So, why the pattern? Also, why do they need to keep flying into the eye? It's not like they have excitable passengers in the back who are jumping up and down saying "Fly in it again! Fly in it again!"
The reason is that flight pattern allows them to get a "fix" on the exact centre of the system. Not just that, but by flying through the system in this way they can see whether the hurricane is more intense in certain quadrants. You can see this in modelling of the system here :-
Whilst it may look perfectly symmetrical, you'll probably find one quadrant with higher winds than another.
So why don't we just use satellites? The reason is that although they provide a wealth of information, there is nothing like human observations to see how well structured the system is and also allow dropsondes (you can see these as the telescope looking things on the top image) to be placed at strategic areas within the hurricane to build up a decent 3d view of the system which is then put into the high resolution weather models.
So, next time you are sipping your G&T at 30,000ft, spare a thought for the brave team of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron who fly into these systems every 6 hours so models can forecast these awe inspiring feats of nature properly.
METEOROLOGIST : MARSH |