I'm back from St. Croix after two weeks there and a week and half of flying Irene. The Hurricane Hunters haver pulled their crews out of St. Croix, brought them home to Biloxi, pulled in some fresh crews, and are deploying to Savannah, GA to continue flying Irene for the next day or so until she makes landfall in New England. I'll focus solely on Irene for this discussion.
The 5pm advisory for Irene put the storm at 265 miles SSW of Cape Hatteras, NC moving N at 14 mph. Maximum winds were at 100 mph and central pressure was at 951mb. Irene has weakened slightly today but is still a powerful hurricane. There are two factors that make this storm particularly dangerous. One is the size of the wind field. The Hurricane Hunters are measuring tropical storm force winds as far out as 250 miles on the east side of the storm. The second factor is that these storms do not often strike New England. Because of that, many residents in the New England areas affected by this storm may not take it as seriously as they should. This will prove to be a very significant storm for everyone from NC to ME. I would urge folks in this region to take every precaution in preparation for this storm.
The models are all in very good agreement on the track of Irene. A trough approaching the eastern half of the US is pulling Irene northward now and a turn toward the NNE is expected tonight. This will allow Irene to run along the east coast. As it approaches NY, it's not expected to accelerate as much as systems often do at this stage and so will pound the New England coastline from NJ to MA with heavy rains and tropical storm to occasionally hurricane force winds for an extended period of time as it traverses the region. This will be made worse by the extend of tropical storm force winds east of the center. This will mean that even though the center of the storm will be well inland over western MA by late Saturday night, Boston will likely still see tropical storm force winds with this system. By late Monday Irene should be well north of the New England into Canada as a tropical storm.
Current satellite shows a lot of dry air west of Irene and that is helping to impede any strengthening. Also stronger SW winds aloft ahead of the approaching trough is helping to create some increased shear over the system.
These factors are combining to weaken the system, somewhat, which is a blessing since it means that Irene will likely not make landfall in NC as a major Cat 3 storm. In fact, the official NHC forecast has it down to a cat 1 by landfall in NC early Sat morning.
We'll keep watching Irene over the next 72 hours as she makes her way up the east coast.
For those with iPhone, iPod Touches, and iPad's, there is a new app on the App store designed to help track the Hurricane Hunter flights and all the storms in the Atlantic. It's the first app I have seen that plots the flight tracks and the data generated by the flights.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hurricanehunterapp colallc/id456831217?mt=8
Give it a try. And let me know what you think (No, it's not my app but I know the creators).
Stay safe.
Randy
I'm posting some pictures from my hotel as we wait it out. I'll post again after we fly Irene in the morning by which time NHC expects Irene to be a hurricane.
Randy
2 of 3 ... Calm winds as the center of TS Irene passes over
3 of 3 ... South winds as TS Irene moves away.
Our third pass through Irene
Aircraft radar image as we pass through the center of Irene
Radar image from the aircraft as we made our first penetration.
The sun peeking over the top of the eyewall
Rain pelts the plane as we fly through the eyewall
By the fourth pass, Irene had a pretty well developed eyewall
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I don't like being in the crosshairs!
Always watching you guys as you fly those missions... you do such a wonderful job letting us know exactly what is happening within a storm.. Again Gods Speed to you and the others!!!
I enjoy hearing the reports from your perspective..and the pictures, of course!
code said..lol
09:30 GMT le 22 août 2011
Larry and Sharon from Homestead Hope you send that thing somewhere else
Hi Randy, waitin to hear what you find. Sitting here in Orlando wondering exactly what we will be faced with. Looks like mainly TS winds. That would be enough to clean out all my trees. Thanks for the Saint Coix pic.
Congratulations on your recent marriage. Hope your new lady is understanding for all the flying trips you need to go on. I am so glad you are happy.
23:17 GMT le 22 août 2011
Irene wasn't too terribly impressive as a storm goes. We made four passes through the center of the storm as it skirted along the northern coast of Puerto Rico. The pressure held study at 989mb on all the passes and the winds actually decreased slightly but we still found strong catagory one winds in the northern semicircle of the storm. Irene began to slow somewhat during our four passes slowing from 12 knots to only about 8 knots. And even the 12 knots was slow compared to the 20 knots it was traveling at prior to hitting us in St. Croix last night.
I posted the images from today as well as a series showing the change in wind direction here on the island as Irene passed overhead last night.
Will you fly again on Wednesday?
23:55 GMT le 22 août 2011
Thanks Rays! I haven't been told but yes, I would think I'll come up in the rotation again Wednesday!
A friend at work today was talking about how the general public gets filtered information about tropical systems, based on what the NHC puts in their statements, and how the TV stations translate them..
I pointed out that if you tried, there was lots of real information out there..and brought your blog up to show that we can even get reports direct from hurricane hunters.
He was suitably impressed. ;)
-Jeff
Hehehehe, guess you showed him, huh, Jeff? Your acquaintance at work should spend a little more time online!
How do mission flying hours compare to repair/maintenence hours? You guys take a beating up there and we know there are budget constraints.
Thanks for doing what you do!
06:35 GMT le 24 août 2011
That's a good question. The planes we fly now in the AF, the Lockheed C-130J Hurcules, is a pretty reliable aircraft and based on my experience, more reliable than the previous models we have flown. More often than not, we come back from our missions without any maintenance problems. The J model is a computerized, glass cockpit aircraft. That makes it easier for the crews to fly but it also makes it easier for the technicians to maintain the aircraft. The arrays of computers that monitor all the systems and the sensors that send the information to the computers about virtually all the systems on the aircraft make it easy for the maintainers to determine what the problem is when one occurs. Essentially the airplane tells us exactly what's wrong with it.
I think the environment we fly these planes into isn't really any tougher on the plane than the environment it's designed to fly in. The tactical airlift and airdrop crews take these planes into dirt airstrips in the middle east, landing hard, taking off and landing on short unimproved strips with heavy payloads. That's probably much tougher on the airplane then what we do to it.
Randy
06:36 GMT le 24 août 2011
(See, Rays? I didn't mention a thing about the facilities!)
One of my co-workers is asking about the dropsondes.
They actually drop and fall all the way into the water, right? Do they degrade, or are we putting a bunch of trash out there?
Not questioning the usefulness at all - just wondering about side effects and such.
Thanks!
-Jeff
LOL! It was a long flight Bug. :)
01:17 GMT le 25 août 2011
They do fall all the way to the water and are about 90% biodegradable. SO not too much garbage!
01:18 GMT le 25 août 2011
I'll let them know tomorrow at the office.
You make me look intelligent. :)
How far up North will the HH monitor Irene? (showing my ignorance here) Are there other bases/squadrons?? that take over or will you ?? restage?? (don't know the lingo, sorry) ..
Thanks!!
02:01 GMT le 26 août 2011
We'll monitor Irene as long as she is over water and a threat to land. We're the only ones that do the mission so no one else will take it. We're staging out of Savannah starting tomorrow to fly the storm until it makes landfall in NC.
Code, do you remember my "Outhouse" blog some years back?
It was right along that time and I asked Randy just what the 'facilities' were like on the plane.
Rays chimed in, "God, Bug. Trust you to ask something like that."
I replied, "Well, inquiring minds want to know."
Randy just laughed and said the 'facilities' were rather primitive and the female crew members weren't too enthused with what amounted to a bucket behind a curtain.
Oh, heck, I might as well ask.
Randy, have the facilities improved any since then? LOL
Thank You and the others for the great job you do for all of us!!!
Don't know if you guys saw this; interesting piece. Wish you were there.
21:38 GMT le 27 août 2011
LOL I do remember that line of blogging!!! :-)
But since you ask, yes, on the J-model, the facilities are better than they used to be though still not something the women like to use. It's basically been upgraded from a bucket behind a curtain to a toilet behind a curtain! :-)
21:43 GMT le 27 août 2011
There are actually several videos out there mostly from that same flight. Once we pulled back from St. Croix and started flying Irene from here in the states, the media was all over it!
21:44 GMT le 27 août 2011
I've finished my annual tour with the unit but I live locally to the unit here in Biloxi so I may get to fly again on anything that we can get to from here later in the season.
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