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Hurricane season is starting to ramp up, with a rare storm hitting in southern California and increased activity in the Atlantic.
The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season officially began June 1, and hurricane hunters are at the ready to fly in and around these tropical systems to provide forecasters with the latest information about the powerful storms.
An arsenal of equipment helps track developing tropical cyclones, from 46-year-old workhorse airplanes to sleek jets and an array of high-tech tools that can be deployed by air, as well as unmanned solar- and wind-powered drones and GPS-tracked gliders.
For decades, the research has been done aboard aircraft flown by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known as the Hurricane Hunters of the Air Force Reserve.
In addition to investigating full-fledged hurricanes, the planes often fly into nascent storms, known as tropical waves or tropical depressions.
Missions flown by the Hurricane Hunters can last up to 11 hours and cover almost 3,500 miles, the Air Force Reserve Command said.
Monitoring a potential hurricane system
Hurricane hunters gather information essential to forecasting, information that can protect property and save lives.
Several environmental factors need to be in place for a hurricane to develop.
Ocean waters generally need to be at least 80 degrees to a depth of 150 feet. As temperatures heat up and moisture increases, thunderstorms begin to cluster together. When conditions are right, the clusters swirl into a tropical wave or tropical depression. As thunderstorms organize into spiral bands, pressure at the center decreases and winds around the center increase. A storm becomes a hurricane when sustained wind speeds reach 74 mph.
Where the aircraft enter a storm
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The Hurricane Hunters’ aircraft fleet
Hurricane Hunter pilots and researchers fly into some of the world’s worst weather.
The aircraft flew missions in the Atlantic and the Pacific in 2022, including Hurricane Ian, which struck Southwest Florida, whose most intense winds briefly reached 161 mph in the Gulf of Mexico just before landfall.
NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew more than 582 mission hours, passing into a storm’s eye 65 times and deploying more than 1,700 scientific instruments.
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron flew 109 missions into 13 named storms in last year’s hurricane season, including hurricanes Agatha, Kay, Orlene and Roslyn in the east Pacific and hurricanes Agatha and Nicole in the Atlantic.
The aircraft fleet includes:
Here’s a closer look at the aircraft
How Hurricane Hunters help predict a storm’s path
As a tropical storm or hurricane approaches land, hurricane hunter crews collect data that helps forecasters predict where winds will steer the storm. Here’s a sampling of their flight paths:
As the aircraft fly in and around a storm, they deploy drones and dropsondes, or expendable reconnaissance devices that drop through the storm, to gather atmospheric data.
Drones in the sky
The Altius 600 drone was used for the first time last year to learn more about Hurricane Ian. The drone’s main mission is to explore the hurricane’s inner boundary. With more detailed data measurements, researchers can determine whether a storm is intensifying.
Since the early 1970s, dropsondes have played a major role in collecting data on a hurricane. All aircraft release these GPS instrument packages that send back data on temperature, pressure, wind speed, humidity and other measurements. About 20 dropsondes are deployed on a mission and fall into the storm at a speed of 36 mph.
Drones on and below the ocean’s surface
Saildrones and underwater gliders will be guided into Atlantic hurricanes this year.
The seafaring Saildrone Explorers are equipped with a specially designed hurricane wing that allows them to operate in extreme winds.
“They are deployed near land during June and July and then directed to predefined regions where hurricanes have historically tracked,” said Greg Foltz, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. “The saildrones then operate and send back data during the peak of the hurricane season (August to October).”
NOAA has used underwater gliders to investigate hurricanes since 2014. Remotely controlled, they provide detailed measurements of the ocean’s environment, such as water temperature and salinity observations. They can reach depths of more than 3,000 feet, or just over a half a mile.
These systems and others are still being tested and developed as NOAA and its partners look for ways to provide more detailed forecasts of hurricanes.
Track the latest hurricanes with our Hurricane Tracker
When the National Hurricane Center is tracking a storm, watch its progress here:
