Hurricane Hunters: Preparing for potentially above-average 2024 Atlantic hurricane season

ALBANY (WTNH) — With the 2024 Atlantic basin hurricane season starting on June 1, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force Reserve are hosting a series of events to help the communities along the East Coast prepare for an active season.

On Tuesday, NOAA’s WP-3D aircraft and the United States Air Force Reserve’s WC-130J, also known as the Hurricane Hunter, made a stop at Albany International Airport. These planes are responsible for flying into nature’s strongest storms.

The National Hurricane Center monitors tropical development and deploys the Hurricane Hunters to various missions.

“We get tasked from the National Hurricane Center,” Major Alex Boykin of the USAF 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron said. “They say, ‘Hey, 53rd, we need you to go out and fly an invest mission, or this is starting to form, you’re going to go into a fixed mission.”

Before satellites, military aircraft flew routine weather reconnaissance missions to detect any potential tropical cyclones. Nowadays, satellites coupled with new technology help scientists like Nikki Hathaway understand tropical development.

As NOAA’s flight director and meteorologist stated, “Instrumentation is being upgraded and changed out all the time.  We’re always experimenting with new things, especially on the NOAA aircraft. We’re flying more uncrewed areal systems into the boundary layer where we really can’t send the plane, the lowest layer of the atmosphere where we see the strongest winds and what ultimately impacts people on the ground.”

Recon missions are quite long, and according to Major Alex Boykin, these planes can withstand a range of turbulence — from a sluggish tropical storm to a monster Category 5 hurricane.

“If a storm is doing something, growing, rapidly intensifying, or hitting a land mass, then it can be very violent,” Boykin said. “Hurricane Michael was rapidly intensifying as it was hitting land.  Both our crew and NOAA crew got into very strong turbulence to the point where both aircraft had to terminate because it became so dangerous.”

As the planes crisscross through the center of the storm, scientists on board release dropsondes. Attached to a parachute, an instrument measures temperature, wind speed and pressure. This information can indicate a hurricane’s movement and development, which allows meteorologists to give better forecasts to the public.

According to Robbie Berg, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, preparedness should be taken before any potential threat.

“A hurricane or tropical storm comes with many hazards—the wind, storm surge, heavy rainfall, flooding, even tornadoes,” Berg said. “You have to understand the risks of those hazards and not just the storm itself.”

In the meantime, the Hurricane Hunters will keep an eye in the sky while Storm Team 8 keeps you informed on the ground.

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