ORLANDO, Fla. – The Hurricane Hunters play a vital role when it comes to forecasting the track and intensity of an approaching storm.
Beyond that, these brave men and women are tasked with conducting research to help further advance the science.
News 6 Meteorologist Jonathan Kegges was invited to NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter home base in Lakeland to get a behind-the-scenes look.
“It’s like going down the worst dirt road at 210 mph with your eyes closed,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jacob Ellis, a second-year Hurricane Hunter pilot.
That’s just one of the ways Ellis describes what it feels like to fly through a hurricane.
“We are the observation and we drop roughly 40 drops per flight so now you’re having actually 40 weather balloons into a numerical model,” Flight Director Quinn Kalen said.
“This is where we actually drop these dropsondes out of the aircraft through the tube here. These collect temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direction as they fall to the surface,” NOAA Engineer Steven Paul said.
Paul is responsible for preparing and launching data-collecting dropsondes from the plane into the storm.
That data collected from those dropsondes is not only analyzed by forecasters but also goes right into the forecast models, significantly improving their accuracy.
“The accuracy of the forecast goes up by 10-15% with a P3 going through the storm regularly,” Ellis said.
To put those numbers in perspective we’ll go back to Hurricane Milton and give you this example.
The image below is from when the system that would go on to become Hurricane Milton developed. Hurricane Hunters had not yet investigated the system. Notice how the lines, which represent different models are far apart from one another.
After a full day of missions into the storm, notice the models come into better agreement since actual data from storm is being collected.
After two full days of missions into Milton, the model spread is nearly non-existent and confidence is high on where the storm will make landfall.
In addition to the NOAA Hurricane Hunters collecting critical information on individual storms, they also participate in research missions to advance knowledge of our atmosphere.
Why is the research so vital going forward?
“If one storm forms and goes the entire length of the Atlantic, why didn’t the other? So that is research and will help us answer that question,” Kalen said.
And with that research will come a better understanding of how these storms form and behave, which ultimately means better forecasts for you.
“The public, the nation, the scientific community. I think everyone has something to gain from it,” Kalen said.