Hurricane Hunters Leaving Territory; Will Return In May For Tropical Season

ST. CROIX — Hurricane season begins on June 1 and runs through November 30, and every May, The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known by its moniker Hurricane Hunters (a special mission by the Air Force Reserves), setup shop at the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport in preparation for the important work of flying into the eye of storms and providing invaluable data to the National Hurricane Center, which in turn provides said data free of charge to the public.

The Consortium was invited to their base on Thursday morning, before the Hunters, aligned under the 403rd Wing of the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) and based at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, depart.

“Basically, in May, before the season starts up, what we’ll do is setup shop. We’ll bring extra tires, extra equipment, extra maintenance stuff and new tools that we need to fix the aircraft that you can’t get at Kmart,” said Bryan Lamar, public affairs manager for the Hunters.

Last year, although the season was not busy, the Hunters flew more storms in the Pacific than it had ever flown before, according to Mr. Lamar. The Hunters also flew into and recorded the strongest hurricane in history, Hurricane Patricia, last year — breaking two records in one year.

Hurricane Hunters Public Affairs Manager Bryan Lamar holding a dropsonde. The Hunters use the device to collect hurricane data by dropping it into the storm. According to Mr. Lamar, two pages of data is collected every second as the device drops.

The Hunters usually close up shop in December, but because of delays caused by various commitments, they rescheduled their exit for January.

The team includes “hundreds” of maintenance personnel, 10 full-time air Hurricane Hunters, and ten traditional reservist part-time personnel who come for one week on a monthly basis, or as need, Mr. Lamar said.

“It’s always somebody different because they try to rotate so different people could get some experience,” he said. Mr. Lamar also told The Consortium that the aircraft used by the Hurricane Hunters are not very different from commercial models.

“They’re just big cargo aircraft. Lockheed Martin makes a C-130, and we use it for all kinds of different things in the military. But what we did was added some extra weather equipment and some extra fuel capacity pieces to it, and now we call it a WC130-J,” he said.

As for the missions, the public affairs manager said they are always safe, although journalists sometimes get anxious.

“Sometimes journalists get frightened, but we have a pretty good safety record, and if there’s something wrong with the aircraft that’s going to hinder the flight, we scrap the mission and we go back. We don’t risk it. Flying is a risky occupation, and when you add going into a hurricane, that adds more risks. So we have a lot of safety precautions, a lot of training that we go through to make sure that we’re all safe up there,” Mr. Lamar said.

And the Hunters don’t go over the storm, either, as many believe. Mr. Lamar revealed that the storms go up to about 65,000 feet, and WC130s can’t go that high. Instead, the Hunters ascend to a “safe zone” of about 10,000 feet, which reduces the chances of the aircraft being hit by lightning and hail, and prevents icing from forming on the plane’s wings.

“What we’ll do is we’ll fly directly into the storm, penetrate the eye wall and we’re looking for the lowest barometric pressure center,” he said, which greatly aids in finding the true center of the storm.

The Hunters get their tasking from the National Hurricane Center, which falls under the Department of Commerce. The NHC tells the Hunters how many times they would need to fly a particular mission and what to look for.

As for the Hunters’ viability, the NHC also relies on other sources such as satellites for data, and if the weather system is close enough to land, data can be gleaned from buoys as well. But a report released two years ago by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, revealed that 75 percent of their forecast was comprised of data collected by Hurricane Hunters. And on the Atlantic side, the Hunters data enhances forecasts by 20-25 percent, according to Mr. Lamar.

The last time the Hunters lost a plane and crew was 1975, giving it a 40-year safety record. They began flying missions in 1943 during World War II; when military aircraft flew routine weather reconnaissance tracks to detect formation of tropical cyclones, before satellites tracked storms.