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KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- Hurricane season started early for the U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters who began flying storm missions May 27, five days before the official start of the season June 1.
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, assigned to the 403rd Wing, Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, flew five missions into Bonnie, which started out as Invest 91L May 27 and was named Tropical Depression Bonnie later that day.
The National Hurricane Center upgraded Bonnie to a tropical storm May 28, which made landfall in South Carolina May 29 and weakened into a remnant May 30. The storm, which impacted the Carolina’s with flooding rains, resided off the North Carolina coast this week and is making its way eastward out to sea.
The Hurricane Hunters flew their last mission into Bonnie June 2 and have been tasked to investigate another weather system developing off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula Saturday.
It isn’t uncommon for the Hurricane Hunters to fly a storm this early in the season, said Lt. Col. Brian Schroeder, 53rd WRS aerial reconnaissance weather officer.
“Even last year we had already flown Ana by the middle of May,” he said.
According to the NOAA’s Climate Prediction center, the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be normal, with a 70 percent likelihood of 10 to 16 named storms.
However, what is atypical is to have a third named storm this early in the year, said Schroeder.
“If this next system is named it will be the third named storm, which is rare this early in the season,” he said, adding that the Atlantic hurricane season is June 1 to Nov. 30, with the peak from mid-September through October.
This hurricane season started early with Hurricane Alex Jan. 7 in the Atlantic. The unit didn’t fly the storm since it was way out at sea and didn’t impact the U.S. mainland, said the weather officer.
The last storm to form this early in the season was Hurricane Alice, which developed Dec. 30, 1954, and dissipated Jan. 6, 1955, in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, Schroeder said.
The mission the Hurricane Hunters will fly Saturday is a low level investigation. These missions are flown at 500 to 1,500 feet to determine if winds are rotating in a circular pattern, indicating a storm is becoming more organized and increasing in strength, said Schroeder.
Once a system becomes a tropical storm or hurricane, the Hurricane Hunters begin flying “fix” missions, which are at higher altitudes, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 feet depending on the severity of the storm, he said. Aircrews fly through the eye of a storm four to six times to locate the low-pressure center and circulation of the storm. During each pass through the eye, they release a dropsonde, which collects weather data on its descent to the ocean surface, specifically gathering the surface winds and pressure.
During the "invest" and "fix" missions, the aircrews transmit weather data via satellite communication every 10 minutes to the NHC to assist them with their forecasts and storm warnings.
Since satellite data can be incomplete and oceans are data sparse environments, lacking radar and weather balloons, the information the Hurricane Hunters provides to the NHC is vital, said Schroeder.
“This information improves the forecast models, potentially saving lives and property,” he said.
Schroeder and his hurricane hunting counterparts are part of a unit that is the only Defense Department organization still flying into tropical storms and hurricanes, a mission that began in 1944.
While other C-130 units receive taskings from the geographic combatant commander they support or the Air Force Reserve Command for training missions, the 53rd WRS receives their taskings from the NHC, a Department of Commerce agency.
Through an interagency agreement, tropical weather reconnaissance is governed by the National Hurricane Operations Plan, which requires the squadron to support 24-hour daily continuous operations with the ability to fly up to three storms simultaneously and with a response time of 16 hours.
Slow, busy or average, whatever this year’s season brings, the Hurricane Hunters will be ready, said Schroeder.
“The important thing is to be prepared,” he said. “It only takes one catastrophic storm to make it a bad hurricane season.”
| Date Taken: | 06.03.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 11.21.2016 15:43 |
| Story ID: | 215441 |
| Location: | KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, MS, US |
| Web Views: | 124 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Hurricane Hunters fly Bonnie, prepare to investigate storm in Caribbean Sea, by Marnee Losurdo, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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