The Atlantic hurricane season officially began June 1 and runs through November 30. While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has not released its official forecast for 2024 as of this writing, in an average Atlantic hurricane season the U.S. experiences 14 named storms, seven of which are hurricanes and three are major hurricanes.

Buckle up. Given the likely return of La Niña (one of three phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation) and record warm sea surface temperatures in February as heated as we see in mid-July, this is not good news if you were hoping for just a mediocre season. If you live and fly anywhere along the Atlantic coastal plain or the Gulf of Mexico, here’s how you can prepare for what may be a wild hurricane season.

Even though hurricane season peaks on September 10, the tropics will begin to see increased activity during the months of June, July, and August as sea surface temperatures increase and the jet stream migrates north into Canada, creating a more favorable breeding ground in the tropics. During this time, what are called tropical waves will develop in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, forming in the tropical easterlies (winds moving from east to west). A weak area of low pressure with a closed circulation called a tropical depression may develop along one of these waves.

• READ MORE: The Ins and Outs of Pilot Weather Reports

If conditions are favorable, such as the presence of weak atmospheric wind shear over relatively warm waters, then convection can organize and strengthen into a tropical storm. Once it reaches tropical storm criteria, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) will give the storm a name. The first named storms of 2024 were Alberto and Beryl, with Chris, and Debby to follow. If you recognize a few of these names, be aware that the list is recycled every six years. The NHC points out that a name is removed from the list only “if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name for a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.”

Saffir-Simpson Scale

Let’s become familiar with the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. This scale from 1 to 5 was introduced in the early 1970s by the NHC, using estimates of peak wind, storm surge, and minimum central pressure to describe the destruction from both water and wind for tropical cyclones making landfall.

The Saffir-Simpson scale was simplified in 2010 to be solely determined by a one-minute-average maximum sustained wind at a height of 10 meters (33 feet) above ground level. Once a tropical cyclone reaches hurricane strength (sustained wind speed of 64 knots or greater), it is assigned a category, with a Category 1 hurricane being the weakest and a Category 5 hurricane being the strongest (sustained wind speed of 137 knots or greater). There has been some interesting discussion lately to expand this open-ended scale from 5 to 6 categories given that some of the strongest Category 5 hurricanes are well above that minimum threshold and may not truly capture the potential destruction. This change, however, is unlikely to occur any time soon.

• READ MORE: How to Wrap Your Head Around Weather

Next, you should become familiar with the NHC website, where you will find all of the official guidance published by NOAA. Each named storm, tropical depression, and tropical disturbance will be tracked along with public advisories, such as watches and warnings (e.g., hurricane watch) based on the threat to people and property. You’ll also find a public discussion for the tropics when there are no named storms and a discussion for each system being tracked.

Hurricane Graphics

One product that is ubiquitous during hurricane season is the tropical cyclone forecast cone graphic. This is designed to depict the expected track, location, and strength of the tropical cyclone over the next five days. It also shows the cone of uncertainty.

According to the NHC, “the cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone where the entire track can be expected to remain within the cone roughly 60-70 percent of the time.” Of course, the cone tends to get wider with forecast lead time. In other words, there’s more certainty with a forecast that is valid in 48 hours (smaller cone) versus one that is valid in 120 hours (larger cone).

Currently, the graphic only includes those watches and warnings along coastal regions. Starting in 2024, the NHC will be issuing an experimental tropical cyclone forecast cone graphic that also includes inland tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings in effect for the contiguous U.S. Recommendations from social science research suggest that the addition of inland watches and warnings to the cone graphic will help communicate inland wind risk during tropical cyclone events while not overcomplicating the current version of the graphic with too many data layers.

Electrification of Hurricanes

It’s probably not a surprise to hear that a healthy squall line moving through the Midwest can generate lightning at a rate of more than one strike per second for an extended period of time. But what about in a tropical storm or hurricane? You might be astonished to learn that, on average, a hurricane rarely produces more than a single lightning strike every 10 minutes. While there are some hurricanes and tropical storms that are highly electrified (especially when making landfall), don’t let your guard down—many are not.

No GA pilot is going to fly through the center of a tropical storm or hurricane on purpose. There’s typically plenty of advance warning from the NHC on the location and track of these powerful weather systems. However, once the tropical system makes landfall and weakens, how safe is it to fly through some of the precipitation remnants of the storm? A dissipating tropical system over land can contain some nasty convective turbulence and even small EF0 and EF1 tornadoes. Consequently, it is not unusual for the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) to issue a tornado watch for most tropical systems making landfall.

• READ MORE: Flying Through the Center of a Trough Should Have Been Uneventful

The precipitation signature as depicted on a ground-based radar mosaic associated with tropical cyclone remnants may not look too threatening to the average pilot.

First, it is often void of lightning, unlike what you might see with other convective outbreaks. Also, the automated surface observations in the area may only include +RA for heavy rainfall. In other words, you may not see +TSRA implying lightning exists as well as rain. Second, the ground-based radar mosaic may not have much of a true cellular structure with high reflectivity gradients that we often see with other deep, moist convection.

Despite the lack of lightning and a relatively benign-looking radar image, tropical system remnants should be treated as if they were that intense squall line in the Midwest. After such a tropical system makes landfall and begins to rapidly dissipate into a tropical depression or extra-tropical cyclone, it will move inland carrying similar risks.

This is evidenced by the remnants of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This was a powerful storm that made landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane at the end of August near New Orleans and moved north into the Tennessee and Ohio valleys as it dissipated.

Even after the storm was declared as extra-tropical, tornado watches were issued just to the east of Katrina’s track along the central and southern Appalachian Mountains and into the Mid-Atlantic. It is important to understand that the lack of lightning does not imply the lack of dangerous convective turbulence.

In order for lightning to form within deep, moist convection, three ingredients must be present in the right location of the cloud. This includes ice crystals, supercooled liquid water, and a “soft hail” particle called graupel.

Updrafts in tropical systems are actually quite limited, usually no more than 1,500 feet per minute. These updrafts are far from upright, owing to the strong horizontal wind shear present. According to hurricane researcher Dr. Robert Black, “while there is some presence of electrical fields, the graupel-liquid water-ice combination turns out to be at the wrong place at the wrong temperature and in insufficient volume to give the spatial charge distribution to produce a lightning discharge.”

In layman’s terms, little supercooled liquid water gets carried high enough to the level necessary to electrify the cloud. This continues to be true even after the tropical system makes landfall and dissipates inland.

The most serious electrification occurs in the outer rain bands as they spiral outward from the center of the storm. These can often look a lot like that Midwest frontal convection. Most convective cells along that squall line in the Great Plains or Midwest often move in a northeasterly direction based on the shift of the air mass and the winds aloft.

However, this may not be the case for these tropical cyclone bands. You may find these cells moving in a northerly or even westerly motion depending on the track of the tropical system.

Remain Outside of the Northeast Quadrant

If you split the storm into four quadrants based on its forward movement, the most intense atmospheric shear occurs in the northeast quadrant. This is typically where you will find the highest storm surge at landfall and where tornado watches are usually issued. As the system makes landfall, moves inland, dissipates, and becomes extra-tropical, you will find the northeast quadrant should be strictly avoided.

As we make our way through hurricane season this year, keep a close eye on the tropics and heed the guidance from the NHC. Even weak storms making landfall can add significant hazards for most aircraft. The convection associated with these storms is not the normal kind we experience during the warm season. Therefore, you can’t assume that the same ground-based signatures you might steer away from with normal convection will be present with this tropical convection.

Last, but not least, don’t use the lack of lightning to be your guide to determine what precipitation is safe to fly through. Assume there is ample wind shear in the atmosphere regardless of how it appears on radar. It may prove not to be a fair match for your aircraft or skill set.

This feature first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Keeping an Eye on the Storm appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Although the storm is not expected to make landfall until Thursday, the wind and rain in the outer bands of the hurricane could create issues for the rocket, which was slated to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

According to the NASA blog: “During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building.”

NASA planned for the September 27 launch before Tropical Storm Ian—which evolved into Hurricane Ian—had formed in the Atlantic.

Two previous launch attempts were thwarted because of mechanical issues.

Artemis I was supposed to head into space in late August, but problems with one of the rocket’s four engines, and a later hydrogen fuel leak, pushed the date back. The tank was resealed and tests revealed it was sound.

Moving the Artemis space launch system from the pad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building is neither quick nor easy. The rocket weighs approximately 18 tons and measures 322 feet tall—for reference, the Statue of Liberty measures 305 feet tall. During the relocation process the mover travels at approximately 1 mile per hour. The journey takes 8 hours one way.

The next potential launch window, according to NASA, is October 2. 

Mission Details

Whenever it manages to successfully lift off, plans call for a 42-day, 1.3-million-mile flight test mission. The Artemis I Orion spacecraft is expected to spend six days in lunar orbit, gathering performance data and testing systems. NASA has said it plans to push the uncrewed spacecraft beyond its design limits. If all goes as planned, the Orion capsule will eventually return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.

What’s at Stake

There’s a lot more than history riding on Artemis I. Some of the aerospace industry’s largest corporations have a big stake in the mission’s success, as well. Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) manufactured the guidance and navigation systems aboard the spacecraft in addition to core flight software, command data handling, and displays and controls. Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is the prime contractor for Orion. Boeing (NYSE: BA), Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE: AJRD), and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) are prime contractors for the SLS. 

The Artemis missions are NASA’s plans for returning to the moon after a 50-year hiatus.

The Artemis I mission will lay the groundwork for the first crewed mission of the program: Artemis II, which will take a crew of four astronauts to orbit the moon as early as 2024. Artemis III will feature a moon landing.

The post Artemis Launch Scrubbed appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“There were nails everywhere.”

That’s just one glimpse into why the aerial support delivered by charitable aviation groups such as AeroBridge remained critical throughout the week after Hurricane Ida swept through the Gulf Coast.

In total, AeroBridge flew more than 90,000 pounds of materials and supplies over the course of 90 missions—everything from food and water to life-saving insulin.

In an interview over Labor Day weekend with Flying, pilot Brad Pierce recounted the hours he’d used his Cirrus SR22T flying back and forth from the organization’s staging airport at Pensacola International (KPNS) to airports and Louisiana, focusing their efforts on those places hit hardest.

“Going into Houma (KHUM) for our most recent assessment, [we saw] they are getting back up—Target is open, Lowe’s is open, they are getting stuff in,” Pierce said. “So now we’re really focused on Galliano (KGAO) in the far southern tip of Louisiana, where resources are lagging behind.

“They’re more remote, isolated, less accessible, more logistically challenging. Some road infrastructure held, but our associated folks on the ground reported continued difficulty—you need four or five tires to drive down here… [you’d get] flat tires every mile because of all of the nails and debris on the roads.”

Those images drive home the utility of general aviation in getting supplies in, even with a path open on the ground.

Survey from the Air

Pierce had just returned to Pensacola after making a series of relatively low-level passes at 1,000 feet agl, criss-crossing the severely impacted area. Though relief agencies were on the ground elsewhere, he said, “We did not see one relief or emergency or national guard vehicle…we flew back and forth to survey it all.” The ground vehicles just couldn’t get there yet.

He’s conducted relief flights over the course of 20 years—including support following Hurricane Dorian in September 2019—and he knows the media can sensationalize the depth of the problems. Therefore, it’s important for pilots to make an objective assessment.

“We like to get our own eyes on things; it’s not a sightseeing trip,” Pierce said. “If we see FEMA trucks, we stand down”—but there was zero happening in Galliano when they made their survey. So, they loaded up what they could and brought it into the South Lafourche Leonard Miller Jr. Airport.

“People in this parrish are in a bad, bad situation,” Pierce continued. “Our relief has not been redundant. We are not looking for an excuse to fly our airplanes—I get plenty of hours—we don’t launch airplanes and burn fuel just to feel good.”

Pierce typically flies up to 600 hours each year in the course of his business, which includes installing commercial kitchens at military bases. He appreciates everything the military does in supplying disaster relief in these times.

“When we see the C-130s come in, we know official help has arrived.”

He has been buoyed by the support coming from other quarters as well.

“The Pensacola Tower controllers showed up yesterday at the FBO. They said, ‘We need to talk with you…all of us got together and filled up a van full of supplies to load into airplanes. Now we’re a part of this thing too.’”

How to Help

“We’ve had more than 200 pilots sign up this last week alone,” said Pierce, noting that the National Air Transport Association issued a joint press release with AeroBridge, highlighting the group’s efforts.

But the need continues, he said.

“When the skies turn dark, we run towards the darkness. We deliver life sustainment, and then we fade quietly into the background until the next disaster comes.”

Pilots can sign up to support AeroBridge by going to the organization’s site.

The post Pilots Continue Aerial Support in the Wake of Ida appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We’ve all seen the reports of the devastation that’s being caused by Hurricane Ida. Homes are devastated, hundreds of thousands are without power, and worse. As so often happens during these types of disasters, members of the aviation community have already started to pitch in or stand by at the ready, doing whatever they can do to help victims of this natural disaster.

“Lots of people are hurting. We’re on our way,” said Trevor Norman, the national chapter coordinator for Aerobridge, one of a few organizations around the country that use donated aircraft to send vital supplies to areas affected by disaster.

For Norman’s group, what that means right now is setting up and staging supplies in Pensacola, Florida. Then, once it’s safe to fly there, sending supplies to three areas hit very hard by Ida:

• Hammond, Louisiana
• Houma, Louisiana
• Golden Meadow, Louisiana

However, the path of the storm is making things move a little bit slower than they’d like.

“We’re not flying [Monday] and we’re probably not flying [Tuesday] because the storm has slowed down,” Norman said.

Meanwhile, Steve Purello, the executive director of Angel Flights Southeast, says that once it’s safe to do so, they’ll be heading to Houma with Steve Ewing, the president of another rescue organization, Crossroads Alliance and Ministries, to do some recon work so that Ewing’s group knows what they need to do to be effective.

In the meantime, Angel Flights and Crossroads have a staging area in Ocala, Florida where they’re getting supplies ready to send to Louisiana.

‘We Just Do Our Job’

In all, Purello says Angel Flights Southeast has done about 1,500 missions of varying intensities and complications.

“Our most challenging one was Puerto Rico after a hurricane there,” Purello said. “It was just so hard to get people the things they needed because things weren’t set up very well.”

He said there were similar challenges during Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. But even though reports were that Ida may have been a stronger storm than Katrina, Purello didn’t expect things to be quite as difficult this time around.

“Even if the storm was as bad as Katrina, it won’t be as bad because they’ve got the levees figured out,” he said.

Whatever the obstacles, Purello says when the bell rings, his group as well as the many they partner with are ready to answer the call.

“We just do our job,” he said. “Whatever comes up. We just do our job.”

How You Can Help

There are a few ways that you can help the many people affected by Hurricane Ida.

You can send supplies to the staging areas in Pensacola and Ocala. Items in great need include:

• Sports drinks
• Bottled water
• Baby supplies (diapers, formula, baby food, baby clothing)
• Non-perishable food (canned, boxed cereal Mac n cheese, canned meats & vegetables
• Generators
• Tarps
• Hygiene Kits
• Hand soap
• Shampoo
• Toilet paper
• Toothbrush toothpaste
• Deodorant
• Wash Cloth
• Towels
• Bedsheets, pillows
• Bleach
• Disaster buckets that include: trash bags, Pine Sol, sponges, gloves, bleach, zip lock gallon bags, flashlights, batteries
• Chain Saws

In Pensacola, you can ship to:

Pensacola Aviation Center

C/o Aerobridge

4145 Jerry L. Maygarden Rd.

Pensacola, Florida 32504

In Ocala, the address is:

5580 SE 37th Place

Ocala, Florida 34480

Many organizations are also always on the lookout for pilots to volunteer their time to fly missions.

Contact one of the local or national aviation relief organizations to find out how you can be of service. Organizations include:

• AeroBridge
• Air Care Alliance
• Air Charity Network
• AirServ International
• Angel Flight Southeast
• Emergency Volunteer Air Corps
• Operation Airdrop
• Samaritan’s Purse

The post Aviation Community Helping Victims of Hurricane Ida appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It is 9 a.m. on a gray Tuesday. I am standing on our dock at City Island in the Bronx, New York, surveying my handiwork, sipping hot coffee to assuage the gnawing tension. I have just finished preparing my sturdy boat and home, Windbird, to ride out a hurricane on a 40-year-old dock in an exposed marina. The storm is not to arrive for a few hours yet, but a freshening salty breeze and foreboding smudge on the southern horizon foretell its coming. I check and double-check the braided dock lines, which are fitted with rubber snubbers and anti-chafe gear, spiderwebbed between strong points on the boat and various dock cleats of admittedly questionable integrity. Fenders are arrayed on the leeward side of the hull. I’ve removed our dodger and Bimini canvas and lashed the framework in place. I cut short a family vacation and flew into LaGuardia Airport yesterday afternoon to storm-prep the boat. With Dawn absent and me working singlehanded, I decided to leave the headsails in place on their furlers. I hope that wasn’t a mistake.

When we sailed Windbird from Florida to New York City this spring, it was partly so that I could fly out of my new base’s airports of Kennedy (KJFK), LaGuardia (KLGA) and Newark (KEWR) without commuting—but also to get out of the way of tropical cyclones like this one. Yet this is the second named storm to hit New York this year, and it’s only the beginning of August. Isaias is also the ninth Atlantic cyclone of the season, which in a typical year would not arrive until October. The times—they are a-changin’.

Isaias is technically a strong tropical storm, though it was a hurricane when it came ashore in the Carolinas last night. It remained surprisingly robust post-landfall thanks to an unusually strong-for-summer southwesterly jet stream, which also accelerated the slow-moving storm to nearly 30 knots of forward speed. The eye is forecast to pass about 50 miles west of here, placing us squarely in the feared right-front quadrant, where circulation around the low combines with the system’s forward motion to produce a cyclone’s most destructive winds. The newest forecast models call for gusts well above hurricane strength. This doesn’t surprise me because this isn’t my first encounter with Isaias, and the storm has already been punching above its weight.

Six days ago, I was assigned a two-day trip on my last days of reserve duty for the month, with a 24-hour layover in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the summer, I check the National Hurricane Center’s website several times a day, so I was aware of what was then known as Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine bearing down on the island, but I wasn’t terribly concerned. Airlines fly into tropical storms and incipient hurricanes almost as a matter of course; my employer attracted some media notoriety for being the last airline to operate an evacuation flight in and out of San Juan only hours before the Category 5 monster Hurricane Maria smashed into Puerto Rico in 2017.

Winds above storm force aren’t really a problem so long as they’re moderately aligned with a runway (the Boeing 737′s max crosswind component limit is 33 knots, and the 757 is good to 40 knots), and while the torrential rain that spreads well out from a tropical cyclone’s core may cause flash flooding and massive mudslides elsewhere, most major airports with grooved runways and engineered drainage are fairly immune to inundation. The main concern, from the airline’s point of view, is making sure all their airplanes get out before any really destructive winds arrive.

The fates of crews laying over during a tropical storm are much lower on the airline’s list of worries, and this is where it pays to be a proactive captain. Before departure from Atlanta, I called our San Juan layover hotel, which is fairly exposed on Condado Beach. Operations all normal, I was assured. Very well. Our route took us from Atlanta down to Jacksonville, Florida, across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas’ Abaco Islands, then offshore east of the Turks and Caicos and Hispaniola, approaching Puerto Rico from the northwest.

While we were still 400 miles out, San Juan’s ATIS reported half-mile visibility in heavy rain, thunder and high wind—the first big outer band of thunderstorms spawned by the cyclone. ATC advised us that five jets were holding, so we slowed down as I calculated time and fuel to our two alternate airports (both west of the storm in the Dominican Republic) and sent a message to our dispatcher.

There was a complicating factor: As a new captain with fewer than 100 hours of pilot-in-command time at my airline, I was still on high minimums of a 300-foot ceiling and 1-mile visibility. We have an exemption that allows high-mins captains to operate down to published Category 1 and 2 ILS minimums with the use of autoland, but the wind exceeded the 737′s autoland limits. It was mostly an academic point—I wasn’t about to land in a thunderstorm—and in any case, the line soon moved west of the field, and the preceding flights all landed successfully, reporting moderate rain and turbulence on approach.

The line of storms was now between us and the airport, but San Juan Approach confirmed what our onboard radar showed: a sizable gap over Punta Salinas, a few miles west of the city. We headed for it and—with a few 30-degree turns—were able to negotiate the chicane with only a few fat raindrops on the windscreen and a couple good thumps of turbulence. The surface wind had died down to only 20 knots, nearly aligned with Runway 8, but we lost almost 15 knots of airspeed to shear on short final. My experienced first officer, Derrick, deftly arrested the decay with a timely burst of power and eked out a nice landing.

We stuck around to say goodbye to the deplaning passengers and then set out for the hotel. As expected, the area was fairly deserted thanks to the double whammy of the storm and the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, flight crews constituted the only guests for the night. I walked along the northeast-facing beach where large, angry-looking waves were already crashing ashore; I was soon chased inside by a security guard. Derrick and I settled in with a bottle of Barrilito 3 Star rum to swap tall tales and watch the surging winds whipping the beachfront palm trees.

Overnight, the NHC made it official, christening the new tropical storm “Isaias,” and when dawn broke, it was still lashing San Juan. As our afternoon pickup approached, the wind eased, but several flash flood warnings were issued. There was localized flooding on the van ride to the airport, but operations appeared to be fairly normal. Our airplane arrived on time, we loaded up what passes for a full load of passengers these days, and we pushed back just in time for a trailing band of thunderstorms to move onto the field. Gusts of 45 knots shook the airplane and torrential rain reduced visibility to almost nothing as I taxied out through a construction area at a snail’s pace, windshield wipers swiping madly at sheets of water cascading down the windscreen. The line passed as quickly as it came, but another trailed closely behind, with a moderate-to-heavy cell a few miles off the departure end of Runway 8. Tower informed us about it and cleared us for takeoff; we lined up and took a look with our radar.

Read More from Sam Weigel: Taking Wing

Here’s where experience comes into play: safe to launch, or taxi clear and wait it out? I had to make that decision many times as a captain at my previous airline, and I’ve sat in the right seat for many a grizzled old pelican as they made the call. I’ve been wrong a few times and got thumped. This time I decided that our northbound turn would keep us clear of the weather. Derrick agreed, we went, and our judgment was proved correct. We spent the next hour dodging powerful cells as we picked our way around the northern periphery of the large and well-organized system. I was not surprised when the NHC upgraded Isaias to a hurricane soon after we landed.

Now, after five days of waxing and waning and weaving its way through the Bahamas, sidling its way past Florida and soaking the Carolinas, Isaias has found me once again in New York. The foreboding smudge arrives and with it comes southeasterly wind: 30 knots, 40 knots, 45… Stinging rain drives me belowdecks where I watch our wind instrument graph the storm’s building fury. Suddenly: bang! I go back topsides to find one of the bow dock lines has snapped. I grab a spare and rig it up, then run around the boat and readjust the groaning fenders that are now keeping the hull from grinding against the leeward finger pier.

Then the wind gets markedly stronger. Huge waves roll directly into the marina from its most exposed direction, flying spume whipping off their crests. Windbird is bucking wildly in its slip as the wind howls through the rigging, grabs the windage and heels the boat far over on its side. The leeward rub rail crushes the fenders and grinds at the dock. Another rope snaps. A neighbor hustles over to help me. There’s a loud crack from the windward side; the finger-pier boards have split, and the cleat securing our aft dock lines has pulled free.

When the wind eases and veers behind City Island, and I’m no longer too frantically busy to be properly scared, I go below and review the wind instrument. It reveals a 45-minute period of 55 knots sustained with gusts as high as 80, all broadside to Windbird’s ample flank. This turns out to be New York’s highest wind since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A friend’s new-to-him Grumman Tiger at Long Island’s Republic Airport sustained minor damage, while a number of neighboring GA aircraft were flipped. Our dock sustained major structural damage, and one boat near the end was sunk in its slip. But Windbird escaped with only a few minor scratches. The next day, the NHC revises its already-pessimistic forecast to suggest that this year will feature a gobsmacking 19 to 25 named storms in the Atlantic. With nine tropical cyclones so far—and with the three most active months of storm season remaining—New York isn’t feeling like a very safe port after all.

I like to think that as a pilot and sailor, I have a greater-than-average appreciation of and respect for the might of Mother Nature. I encountered Isaias as only a strong tropical storm with localized hurricane conditions for less than an hour, and it was eye-opening. I learned a lot about storm preparation and riding one out, and I am changing our plans accordingly. I’ll be quite happy if I don’t cross paths with another tropical cyclone this year on Windbird or in the 737, but hope’s not much of a strategy.

This story appeared in the October 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Two Views of Hurricane Isaias appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In the early hours of August 19, 2019, a tropical wave appeared off the west coast of Africa. A few days later, it began showing signs of organization and cyclonic movement inside a small low-pressure area. By August 24, the system had grown large enough to qualify as an official tropical depression centered about 700 nm southeast of Barbados. That depression, now known as tropical storm Dorian, made landfall over Barbados with sustained winds of 45 knots. Dorian continued to intensify as it approached St. Croix later that day with increased winds of 65 knots, and by August 30, Dorian was labeled a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 knots.

By the time Dorian reached the Bahamas’ Elbow Cay in Great Abaco, the storm had grown to a Category 5 with sustained winds in excess of 160 knots. Dorian’s devastation eventually matched its fury, nearly obliterating Great Abaco with $3.4 billion in damage. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report said water levels reached more than 20 feet above ground level in some areas. Dorian slowed to a crawl over the northwestern Bahamas, dumping nearly 23 inches of rain at Hope Town in addition to claiming some 200 lives in the area.

Though Dorian weakened as it approached the US mainland, the storm re-intensified to Category 3 status as it headed north, skimming past Georgia and South Carolina, its eye passing near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Dorian dumped nearly 16 inches of rain at Pawleys Island, South Carolina, before crossing Cape Hatteras. After clearing the Outer Banks, Dorian accelerated northeastward and became a strong post-tropical cyclone on September 7 before it reached Nova Scotia, Canada, and eventually spun out into the North Atlantic.

Hurricane Dorian spawned 21 tornadoes between September 4 and 6, two of which reached EF2 intensity. While no deaths were reported in the US, NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information put damage in the United States alone at $1.6 billion.

As the Season Begins

The US hurricane season runs for 153 days each year between June 1 and November 30. Thanks to significantly improved hurricane forecasting, aircraft operators today often receive enough advanced warning to button down in place or move their aircraft to safer locations. The trick for the experts is how to continue improving the forecasting of these often-temperamental storms in time to be useful to people in their paths.

The job of gathering data, creating forecasts and accurate storm modeling—essentially acting as first responders to hurricanes—falls to groups such as NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami and its operational arm of hurricane hunters based in Lakeland, Florida, the Aircraft Operations Center.

The NHC’s mission is simple: “To save lives, mitigate property loss and improve economic efficiency by issuing the best watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of hazardous tropical weather and the understanding of these hazards.”

The AOC’s team of about 100 men and women are responsible for capturing the most up-to-the-minute storm data, such as temperature, winds and humidity, by flying directly into the teeth of weather most other pilots are happy to avoid. AOC aircraft include a pair of Lockheed WP-3D turboprops—originally known as Electras in civilian paint schemes—and a single Gulfstream IV biz jet. Their efforts are supported by a pair of NASA/NOAA GOES satellites hanging in stationary orbits more than 22,000 miles above the planet.

Tropical Cyclones Dissected

Hurricanes, technically known as tropical cyclones, are giant engines of nature fueled by warm, moist air—between 80 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit—that form in the tepid ocean waters near the equator. Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach, in a USA Today story, labeled hurricanes as “the atmosphere’s attempt to move heat from the warm equatorial regions toward the cold polar regions.” In the western Pacific and Indian Ocean, these same storms are called typhoons.

NASA’s website explains how hurricanes evolve: “As warm, moist ocean air rises, it causes an area of lower air pressure beneath, while higher-pressure air from surrounding areas pushes into these low-pressure regions, warming and adding moisture as it all moves. The surrounding warm air swirls eventually, cooling and forming clouds. The entire system of clouds and wind spins and grows, fed by the ocean’s heat and water evaporating from the surface.” North of the equator, tropical cyclones spin counterclockwise, while the direction is just opposite down south. Hurricanes also include clusters of intense thunderstorms concentrated in a relatively small area.

The Saffir-Simpson scale categorizes hurricanes according to their sustained winds. A Category 1 storm brings winds of at least 64 knots, a Category 3 has winds in excess of 96 knots, and a Category 5 includes winds of more than 137 knots, or 157 mph. Categories 3 through 5 are considered major storms. In a Category 5 hurricane, a high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, power outages can last for weeks or possibly months, and most areas will remain completely uninhabitable for weeks or months. And tropical cyclones are often unpredictable. Hurricane Maria destroyed much of Dominica in 2017, growing to a Category 5 by the time it made landfall, causing some $1.31 billion in damage, while Martinique just 50 miles to the south received only minor damage.The Hunters and Their Weapons

Understandably, people are often skeptical of the accuracy of weather forecasters. Hurricane forecasters are no exception. Jonathan Zawislak, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, says: “Certainly within the last couple of decades, we’ve seen improvements in general and track forecasting, although predicting hurricane strength is hard. Hurricane Michael in 2018 rapidly increased in intensity just before it made landfall.” In the end, he says: “Realize these are all just forecasts. No matter what, people still need to prepare because it only takes one storm like a hurricane Michael or Andrew, even during a slow season, to create chaos.” Hurricane Michael, in fact, became the strongest Category 5 storm ever to reach the US, in a season predicted to be nothing more than average.

As a research scientist, Zawislak often rides along on NOAA aircraft headed into the teeth of hurricanes to gather the most up-to-date data necessary to create forecasts and fuel the research efforts needed to better predict future storms’ intensities and paths. “We at the University of Miami support research from NOAA, but also with NASA, NCAR and other universities, so 10 heads working on a problem are better than one.” He adds: “It takes a broad range of backgrounds to improve our hurricane numerical models, tools that are really just differential equations. We need people with strong computer science skills, as well as physicists and meteorologists.”

A typical mission crew aboard a WP-3D includes a lead project scientist, who communicates the flight pattern needed to ensure the mission’s objectives are met. There is also a science crew, the aircraft flight crew, and a flight director who’s responsible for the overall safety of the flight. “The flight director, a meteorologist, acts as the liaison between the flight crew and the mission people,” Zawislak says. Flight dispatchers back in Florida handle the continual cycling of the flight crews.

The WP-3D Orions carry between 16 and 22 people, with typical missions carrying 16 to 18. NOAA’s flight crew consists of three pilots, two flight engineers, a flight director, navigator, data-systems technician, dropwindsonde operator/technician, system engineer and avionics technician. The remaining seats are used by research scientists, with typical hunting trips running about eight hours. The Gulfstream carries eight to 10 people.

The Orions are outfitted with sophisticated sensors and radars such as lower-fuselage and tail Doppler radar systems. Mounted to the belly of the aircraft, the LF radar scans the storm horizontally while the TDR scans vertically to create an MRI-like look at the storm. That information is pushed to the NHC within an hour of collection. That same information is shared with NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center for inclusion in the high-resolution hurricane forecast models being created regularly. In earlier times, when weather satellites were still new, the only option to gather data came by flying as close to a storm as possible and simply looking out the windows.

Jack Parrish is a 41-year NOAA veteran, with most of that time spent as a hurricane mission flight director sitting just behind the aircraft commander. A Florida native, Parrish grew up around hurricanes. Prior to earning a meteorology degree, Parrish served in the US Coast Guard as a radar technician. “Just after I finished college,” he says, “the Hurricane Research Division in Miami was looking for a meteorologist who also understood radar. My only question to them was, ‘Will I get to fly in hurricanes?’ They said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Hired.’”

Twenty-eight years later, he still remembers well a close brush in 1992 with Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm with wind gusts of nearly 170 mph that flattened significant portions of South Florida and south-central Louisiana. While Parrish’s family escaped unharmed, Andrew claimed his home. He remembers being on the Orion back then during a moment that confirms even today why a human element is so important to hurricane forecasting. “Andrew was just a disorganized mess northwest of Puerto Rico,” he says. “Dropwindsonde data started telling our scientist on board, James Franklin, however, that conditions might be ideal for Andrew to rapidly intensify. It sure hadn’t done anything up to that point. Then James got quiet for a second before he said, ‘Uh-oh.’” Parrish and his team suddenly realized Andrew, still two and a half days east of the US mainland, was about to make a hard-left turn. “We dragged out the paper charts we used at the time and drew some lines. They went right through south Miami. We never knew Andrew was going to gin up that way, but we became the first ones to know about it.”

Parrish says a typical mission’s preflight briefing begins with a discussion of information from the previous flight, except when this will be the first flight into a storm. “What I’ve learned,” he says, “is that by the time we reach the actual storm, sometimes three or four hours after the briefing, our info can be pretty stale. I’m comfortable now realizing that an area we thought might be a milk run to fly near may have become a ring of fire—information that must be passed on to the rest of the crew. My most important tools are my eyeballs looking out the windows and interpreting the onboard radar, but I’ve also learned to be ready for radar shadows and attenuation that might be hiding other hazards. It’s very much a real-time show each time we make a pass through a storm.” The hurricane hunters don’t always fly into growing storms. Missions often include flights into dying storms that might get mixed up with a cold front as they head up the East Coast of the US and could potentially beat up the people in regions up to Nova Scotia.

Thinking back 30 years or so, Parrish speaks to how hurricane forecasting has changed the lives of people in the path of a big storm. “Consider Dorian. We flew into that storm every day, and it just got stronger and stronger, well into Category 5 territory. Dorian leveled Grand Bahama about 70 miles from West Palm Beach, yet we were quite secure telling people on the east coast of Florida no more than to watch out for heavy surf. With the kind of information and forecasting we had 30 years ago, we’d have been evacuating people to Chicago.”

Despite the human connection, Zawislak explains NOAA’s growing use of expendable unmanned aerial systems, especially to cover regions deemed too dangerous for manned aircraft. Zawislak says the drones are used primarily near the incredibly turbulent boundary layer—typically within 1,000 feet of the water’s surface—to measure the sea spray that can fly a few thousand feet back up from the surface. “Working in that area tells us how the ocean releases its energy into the atmosphere,” he says. “The data we can get from a one-hour drone flight here is invaluable. Because this area is subject to incredible turbulence, we’ll never fly the aircraft below 5,000 feet in a small storm or 8,000 feet in a major one.” The UAS released from the WP-3D has a 3-foot wingspan and weighs between 10 and 11 pounds. Despite their size, Zawislak says, “They handle turbulence pretty well.”

The Outlook

Each April, Colorado State University’s well-known Department of Atmospheric Science releases its annual hurricane forecast. NOAA’s forecast appears a month or so later, just before the hurricane season begins, with updates once the season gets underway. For 2020, the university believes we will see “an above-average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean.” An extremely important side note warns: “As is the case with all hurricane seasons, coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for those people. They should prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted.” Penn State’s Earth System Science Center predicts we’ll see 20 named storms, potentially making 2020 the most active hurricane season since 2010 and 2011.

While Parrish and Zawislak find hurricane hunting exciting, their job gathering research and forecast data is also incredibly dangerous. Parrish amusingly says: “We often place aircraft too close to severe weather to be sensible. But then we must also get everyone back safely.” Before Parrish and I rang off during our interview, I asked if he’d ever seen a hurricane he didn’t want to fly into. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “Pretty much all of them.”

Follow the Hurricane Hunters: Important Updates for Pilots

Follow NOAA aircraft operations—as well as the USAF Reserve 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron—on Twitter and Facebook: @NOAA_HurrHunter & @53rdWRS

NOAA Aircraft Operations Center is on Instagram: @FlyNOAA

NOAA National Hurricane Center is on Twitter and Facebook: @NHC_Atlantic

The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory Hurricane Research Division posts during and after hurricane missions on Twitter and Facebook: @HRD_AOML_NOAA

AOML also has Twitter: @NOAA_AOML and Instagram: @NOAA_AOML

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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