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Reuters

The sky darkened, lightning flashed and a jolt of turbulence shook the cabin of the hulking Air Force turboprop aircraft as it plied its way toward the eye of Hurricane Irma, one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded.
Piloting the four-engine, WC-130J aircraft was Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hitterman, who over the past 22 years has flown into 40 to 50 hurricanes.
Every storm is different but he likens the experience to driving through a car wash – with one big difference.
“As you’re driving through that car wash, a bunch of gorillas start jumping on top of your car,” Hitterman said, adding that sometimes shaking gets so bad, he cannot see his instruments.
On Friday and Saturday, Reuters accompanied the Air Force Reserves’ “Hurricane Hunters”, whose hard-won data taken directly from the centre of storms like Hurricane Irma are critical to US forecasts that save lives.
Experts say US satellite data simply cannot do the job.

“We can estimate by satellite what the strength and size of a hurricane is. But only if you go into the hurricane can you really get an accurate measure of its exact centre location, the structure, the maximum winds,” said Rick Knabb, a hurricane expert at the Weather Channel and a former director the National Hurricane Centre.
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron’s “Hurricane Hunters” are based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. Its members trace the origin of hurricane hunting to a 1943 barroom dare by two then-Army Air Corps pilots to fly through a hurricane off Texas.

Today, the missions are carried out largely by Air Force reservists who, after a few days or weeks of chasing storms, return to their jobs in the civilian world.
Hitterman, 49, flies for Delta Airlines most of the time and, as a hobby, races motorcycles.
The flight meteorologist, Major Nicole Mitchell, is an experienced television news meteorologist and mother of an eight-month-old baby boy. She normally lives in Minnesota.
The way Mitchell sees it, the more accurate her data is, the more accurate the forecasts can be that tell US citizens whether to evacuate their homes as Irma or other storms advance.
“It’s a fact that we make a difference,” she said.

Mitchell’s plane would make four passes in total through Irma’s eye during that mission, some entries and exits more turbulent than others. Its final pass came on Saturday, as Hurricane Irma walloped Cuba’s northern coast.
Irma’s interaction with Cuba’s terrain weakened the storm from a Category 5 to a Category 4 hurricane but US National Hurricane Centre warned the storm was anticipated to strengthen again.
Irma was expected to hit Florida on Sunday morning, bringing massive damage from wind and flooding to America’s fourth-largest state by population. Millions of Florida residents have been ordered to evacuate.

Despite the severity of storms like Irma and the undeniable danger on the ground, these US flights into hurricanes have an incredible safety record – not one aircraft has been lost in more than four decades. The last time was in 1974.
But they are not without risk. Some six hurricane or typhoon hunting aircraft have been lost in total, costing 53 lives, according to the Weather Underground website.
Jeff Masters, director of meteorology of The Weather Underground, recalled an extremely close call during a flight into Hurricane Hugo in 1989 organised by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which also fields its own turboprop aircraft.

The pilot lost control of the aircraft, one of the engines caught on fire, and the aircraft descended rapidly, all because satellite data had given his crew the sense they were flying into a Category 3 storm. It turned out to be a Category 5.
They were flying much too low for a storm that potent.
“We went in at 1,500 feet, which is a no-no in a Category 5 and we got clobbered,” recounted Masters. The pilot was able to recover control after entering Hugo’s eye.
On the mission into Irma, jolts of turbulence also shook the equipment in the cabin as it neared the eye of the hurricane. Emergency parachutes swayed.

But then, suddenly, everything in the plane settled down.
It was safe enough to take off seat belts. The flying was smooth.
Inside the eye, the sky opened up. The dark “eyewall” – the surrounding ring of clouds – could be seen outside the cockpit window.
Masters says someday drones might be able to do the risky job now done by experienced aircrews.
But, from the cockpit of this Hurricane Hunter flight, that possibility still seems distant.
This aircraft, like all of the 53rd’s 10 WC-130J planes, are
specially equipped to gather meteorological data and send it to the US National Hurricane Centre. Some of that equipment is operated manually.


That includes releasing sensors through the belly of the aircraft that, as they fall, send storm data including Irma’s pressure, wind speed and direction.
As the mission got underway, the sensors – known as dropsondes – appeared to be malfunctioning.
Technical Sergeant Karen Moore, the loadmaster who releases the dropsondes from the aircraft, among many other duties, said she could not get its GPS signal as it fell into Irma’s winds.
So, Moore took out a screwdriver and literally started fixing them on the fly, one by one. That is something a drone would not be able to do.
Hitterman said he also could see a future where pilotless planes fly into hurricanes to get the data Americans need.
“But I think it’s a ways off,” he said.


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Hurricane Irma

The ‘Hurricane Hunters’ who fly through monster storms for science

As nightfall approaches, a WC-130J Super Hercules from the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron known as the “Hurricane Hunters” flies through the eye of Hurricane Irma as it approaches the coast of Florida. Photo: Reuters

An onboard screen shows the WC-130J Super Hercules from the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron known as the "Hurricane Hunters" as it flies through the eye of Hurricane Irma as the storm approaches the coast of Florida, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A tail of the WC-130J Super Hercules from the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron bears the name "Hurricane Hunters" as the plane awaits its departure from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi to fly into the eye of Hurricane Irma off the coast of southern Florida, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A WC-130J Super Hercules from the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron know as "Hurricane Hunters" is readied for take off from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi to fly into the eye of Hurricane Irma off the coast of southern Florida, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A U.S. Air Force Reserves officer from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron know as the "Hurricane Hunters" shows the inner workings of a dropsonde, a device dropped from planes to monitor meteorological data in a hurricane, at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

U.S. Air Force Reserve Technical Sgt. Karen Moore (L) and Major Nicole Mitchell look at a dropsonde, a device dropped from planes to monitor meteorological data in a hurricane, aboard a WC-130J Super Hercules from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron know as the "Hurricane Hunters" en route to the eye of Hurricane Irma as the storm nears the coast of Florida, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

As night falls, the eyewall of Hurricane Irma is seen from a WC-130J Super Hercules from the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron know as the "Hurricane Hunters" as the storm nears the coast of Florida, U.S., September 8, 2017. Picture taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

First Irma, now Jose. Tourist island braces for next hurricane

Hurricane Irma and Jose (right) over the Caribbean. Photo: EPA

This handout picture released on the Twitter account of Anna Mazur on September 7, 2017 shows the damaged Casino Royale, on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, after the passage of Hurricane Irma. Powerful Hurricane Irma cut a swathe of deadly destruction as it roared through the Caribbean, claiming at least nine lives and turning the tropical islands of St Martin and Barbuda into mountains of rubble. / AFP PHOTO / TWITTER AND AFP PHOTO / Anna MAZUR / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / TWITTER / ANNA MAZUR" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

TOPSHOT - A man walks on a street covered in debris after hurricane Irma hurricane passed on the French island of Saint-Martin, near Marigot on September 8, 2017. Officials on the island of Guadeloupe, where French aid efforts are being coordinated, suspended boat crossings to the hardest-hit territories of St Martin and St Barts where 11 people have died. Two days after Hurricane Irma swept over the eastern Caribbean, killing at least 17 people and devastating thousands of homes, some islands braced for a second battering from Hurricane Jose this weekend. / AFP PHOTO / Martin BUREAU

This handout photograph provided courtesy of the Dutch Department of Defense on September 7, 2017 shows Royal Navy personnel patrolling a street following passage of Hurricane Irma on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. Hurricane Irma, rampaging across the Caribbean, has produced sustained winds at 295 kilometres per hour (183 miles per hour) for more than 33 hours, making it the longest-lasting, top-intensity cyclone ever recorded, France's weather service said on September 7. / AFP PHOTO / DUTCH DEFENSE MINISTRY / GERBEN VAN ES / Netherlands OUT / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / DUTCH DEFENSE MINISTRY/GERBEN VAN ES" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

What, where, when: the Caribbean islands hit by deadly Hurricane Irma

After raking Caribbean, Irma gains strength, targets Florida

U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in an official White House handout photo with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L), Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser Thomas Bossert (2ndR) and Vice President Mike Pence (R) as he participates in an Oval Office briefing tracking the approach of Hurricane Irma toward the coast of Florida, at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 7, 2017. Picture taken September 7, 2017. Andrea Hanks/Courtesy of the White House/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY?

A man walks among debris as Hurricane Irma moves off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, in Nagua, Dominican Republic, September 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ricardo Rojas

Aerial view of devastation following Hurricane Irma on Saba Rock, British Virgin Islands September 8, 2017, is seen in this still image taken from social media video. MANDATORY CREDIT Caribbean Buzz Helicopters/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

Trees sway in the wind at the main square as Hurricane Irma passes by Remedios, Cuba September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

A man observes the devastation of Hurricane Irma on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. Photo: EPA

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Every storm is different but pilot likens the experience to driving through a car wash – with one big difference
