These government employees at NOAA fly four-engined Navy PE-3s into hurricanes in measure variables like strength and course. They carry an array of electronic instruments and a handful of meteorologists specializing in storms.
First, in the interests of full disclosure, no power on earth could induce me to undertake such a flight, not even once, whereas some of these guys have flown into dozens of hurricanes. Risky for sure, and expensive, but the flights save not only lives but money. It costs millions of dollars to evacuate a ten-mile strip of coastline. Narrowing the evacuation to a five-mile strip is economic manna. Second, whatever they're paying these pilots and crew, it's not enough. They don't just get bounced around. The air is filled with flying objects like knives and forks'and heavier equipment.
In this case, the pilots fly their PE-3 into hurricane Hugo in the Caribbean, later to make landfall near Charleston, South Carolina. The indications are that Hugo is a category 3 hurricane, but it turns out to be a 5 -- as high as the scale goes.
They push their way through the storm into the eye, where they encounter previously unheard of tornado-like vortices. Their belly radar stops working. Then their number three engine quits and catches fire. The loss of the engine causes them to lose altitude and come dangerously close to the surface. The the rubber "boot" -- a de-icing device -- tears lose from number four engine and threatens to be sucked into the air intake and cause another engine to fail, which means curtains for everyone.
Skillful piloting and the exercise of sweet reason allows them to dump fuel and painfully gain altitude by flying in slow circles within the eye of the storm. They manage to punch through the eyewall, through the turbulence of the storm itself, out the other side into the blue, and successfully return to Barbados.
Some seventeen pilots and crew of these flights have already died.
First, in the interests of full disclosure, no power on earth could induce me to undertake such a flight, not even once, whereas some of these guys have flown into dozens of hurricanes. Risky for sure, and expensive, but the flights save not only lives but money. It costs millions of dollars to evacuate a ten-mile strip of coastline. Narrowing the evacuation to a five-mile strip is economic manna. Second, whatever they're paying these pilots and crew, it's not enough. They don't just get bounced around. The air is filled with flying objects like knives and forks'and heavier equipment.
In this case, the pilots fly their PE-3 into hurricane Hugo in the Caribbean, later to make landfall near Charleston, South Carolina. The indications are that Hugo is a category 3 hurricane, but it turns out to be a 5 -- as high as the scale goes.
They push their way through the storm into the eye, where they encounter previously unheard of tornado-like vortices. Their belly radar stops working. Then their number three engine quits and catches fire. The loss of the engine causes them to lose altitude and come dangerously close to the surface. The the rubber "boot" -- a de-icing device -- tears lose from number four engine and threatens to be sucked into the air intake and cause another engine to fail, which means curtains for everyone.
Skillful piloting and the exercise of sweet reason allows them to dump fuel and painfully gain altitude by flying in slow circles within the eye of the storm. They manage to punch through the eyewall, through the turbulence of the storm itself, out the other side into the blue, and successfully return to Barbados.
Some seventeen pilots and crew of these flights have already died.
