Into the Eye of a Hurricane

Author: admin

13 Aug

It’s August, storm season, and I’m with the storm watchers, flying high off the coast of the United States as a tropical tempest rages around us. As our plane breaks through the towering “eyewall,” the dial on the digital wind-speed display drops to zero, the pelting of water on the wings comes to an eerie halt, the clouds fall away from the four huge engines, and suddenly it’s as though we’re floating peacefully in a snow globewithout the snow. I look up through a circular chimney of ashenclouds to blue sky. Below, though, in the Gulf of Mexico, huge waves are topped with white foam.

Operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) out of Tampa, Florida, our P-3 Orion aircraft—the same sturdy “eye in the sky” that has backed up combat troops over Iraq and Afghanistan—is a tweaked-out science platform measuring all things hurricane. The data gathered are relayed in real time to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. When you turn on the Weather Channel in New York or Seattle, you’re hearing a summary of what’s being discovered aboard Miss Piggy (the crew’s nickname for our blunt-nosed craft).

It’s rare for journalists to be on this flight, but photographer Charles Smith and I have gotten clearance to join the 16 crew members, officers, and scientists. The plane is 107 feet from nose to tail—as big as a commercial jet seating 100 passengers, but with computers and instrument bays occupying most of the interior space and only a few windows. It’s like flying in a noisy and very focused electronics lab. Everybody wears earphones to communicate. There’s no door to the cockpit, and the pilot and two copilots sometimes step out to check with the meteorologists. In the far back is a bunk, where someone is usually conked out. Hurricane season puts the crew on multiple shifts. Next >>