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Hurricane Hunters head into eye of Felicia

  • Published
  • By Dr. Philip Breeze
  • Chief, 15th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii --  It was a dark and supposedly stormy night. It was 0400 at the 22 row on the Hickam ramp, where four WC130-Js of the Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron from Keesler AFB were lined up, ready each in turn to fling itself into the teeth of the storm. 

Days earlier, as fickle Felicia foamed and furied her way toward Hickam, some 75 members - pilots, loadmasters, navigators, air reconnaissance weather officers, weather loadmaster/dropsonde systems operators and others - of the famed Hurricane Hunters hastened to their Hercules and made their way to Hawaii, arriving a week ago today. 

No sooner here, they were aloft again, mounting round-the-clock reconnaissance missions into the eye of the storm to take the measure of her might.
 
Like a startled doe, hurricane Felicia cowered in the presence of this foe. More than 1,000 miles from Oahu when the first flights were launched in the pre-dawn hours last Saturday morning, feeble Felicia fell apart as the Hurricane Hunters zeroed in on her and began to drop the instruments into her heart that would discern her path and potential. 

The "sondes" that are ejected from the belly of the C-130, several during each pass through the storm, descend at a rate of 2,500 feet per minute, gathering and transmitting to the plane temperature, dew point, barometric pressure and other readings twice a second ... some 480 readings when dropped from 10,000 feet. 

Fitted with wing tanks, these WC-130Js can fly 1,000 miles to reach the hurricane, and make three triangular passes through the storm. The resulting 5,000 to 6,000 readings, taken over a two- to three-hour period provide National Weather Service analysts the necessary data to improve their weather forecasts by about a third over what satellite imagery would permit, enabling millions to make prudent, timely decisions in the face of nature's fury. 

This time the storm was no match for the mighty Hercules. Then again, they never are. The 53rd has never lost an aircraft in the more than 60 years they have been flying into some of the roughest weather on, or above, the earth.