Meteorologist explains urge to chase hurricanes
This NOAA P-3 flying above the eye of Hurricane Caroline. Come see Earth & Sky's Hurricane Hunter Photo Gallery for more.
DB: This is Earth & Sky, with hurricane hunter Barry Damiano.
JB: He’s a man who flies with a crew of other specialists straight into hurricanes.
Barry Damiano: You’re going out, you’re facing Mother Nature up close, there’s an awful lot to be learned out there. You’re not sitting at a desk. You know?
DB: Damiano is a meteorologist working for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We asked him why he does it.
Barry Damiano: I think 50 percent of my time is spent out inside the airplane flying to all these exotic locations around the world, meeting all different types of people, flying all different types of weather. And there is some excitement to it, but there’s also a fulfilling challenge that you’re going out there, you’re providing information to people which may eventually save lives.
JB: Last year, hurricanes striking the U.S. did over $100 billion in damage and killed more than 1,300 people. They might have been more devastating without forecasts that helped people evacuate. Those hurricane forecasts are so accurate, in part, because some people – like Damiano – fly into hurricanes. To see photos taken from inside a hurricane, come to earthsky.org. Our thanks today to NOAA. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
For more from Barry Damiano, read the Earth & Sky interview.
Where can I see photos from inside a hurricane?
Come see Earth & Sky’s Photo Gallery: Eyewitness photos from inside a hurricane.
Does anyone else hunt hurricanes?
This radio segment highlights the work of NOAA Hurricane Hunters, but NOAA isn’t the only organization flying through hurricanes for the public good. The U.S. Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron also gets into the act.
How do hurricanes work?
Read Hurricane Structure, from NOAA. And check out Anatomy of a hurrricane, from the Palm Beah Post.
For a wonderful account of an early hurricane hunting experience by Robert Simpson in 1954, read A Flight Through the Eye of a Hurricane, from Scientific American.
How did the 2005 hurricane season compare to previous years?
Read Climate of 2005: Atlantic Hurricane Season, from NOAA’s Climatic Data Center.
Wouldn’t it be safer just to use satellites to monitor hurricanes?
Hurricane hunters fly airplanes through hurricanes and collect weather measurements by releasing dropsondes – small tube-shaped devices that measure wind speed, moisture, temperature and pressure inside the storm. The data is beamed back to the National Hurricanne Center in Miami. There, the data is used – along with satellite and radar data – to determine the hurricane’s strength and likely path.
Scientists use satellites to monitor hurricanes, but sometimes satellites can’t completely see through clouds or rainfall to measure the wind speeds, temperatures and pressures inside. And land based radars can track storms when they’re close to land, but aren’t useful when the storm is more than about 200 miles away. So forecasters want that extra bit of information that can only be gathered by hurricane hunter aircraft.
Thanks to:
Barry Damiano
Flight Director/Meteorologist
NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center
MacDill Air Force Base
Tampa, FL
Additional Teacher Resources
Science Daily: NOAA Hurricane Hunter Pilot Captures Katrina at Her Meanest
NOAA hurricane hunter WP-3D Orion and Gulfstream IV aircraft conducted ten long flights into and around the eye of Hurricane Katrina. Lt. Mike Silah, a P-3 pilot, got to see Hurricane Katrina upclose and personal, especially when she was an extremely dangerous Category Five storm in the Gulf of Mexico. The day before the powerful and destructive storm made landfall on the USA Gulf Coast, Silah snapped a series of images capturing the eyewall of Katrina.
NOAA: In the Eye of a Hurricane…The Firsthand Report of a Former NOAA Hurricane Hunter
Imagine a summer thunderstorm, a dark, malevolent, hulking brute towering over 10 turbulent miles into the heavens, spewing blinding rain, hailstones and lightning. Now, imagine a line of these monsters 75 miles long, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Take that line and wrap it around into a circle 20-30 miles across, and spin it counterclockwise at 140 miles an hour. That is a hurricane eyewall. Our job is to transit across the hurricane, through the eyewall, into the eye and out the other side. We are the NOAA Hurricane Hunters.
