Storm Planes: Victory Is Returning Home

Sitting at the end of the runway the aircraft seems almost to paw the concrete with impatience, more than 18,000 horsepower cranking four big propellers.

Indeed, it seems too much power just to get a dozen or so people and some electronic gear aloft. But this is no ordinary plane.

The Lockheed P-3 Orion has scored 37 victories over the most fearsome storms known to man, flying into the teeth of hurricanes to fathom their secrets.

The hail and rain dousing the outside of the plane on a summer stop in Washington are nothing compared to what this craft has seen in the flights signified by 37 red symbols on its fuselage. The marks are in the shape that meteorologists use to record a hurricane on a weather map.

A victory for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research plane is recorded by flying directly into the storm to record its strength and then returning home safely.

Gilbert, the record-breaking hurricane that devastated Jamaica and parts of Mexico last summer, yanked the craft up and down and side to side but couldn’t prevent it from completing the mission.

“I was waiting for the one that would pull the wings off,” recalled navigator Tom Gerish. The plane survived half a dozen hard jerks in various directions when it flew from the eye of Gilbert into the heavy winds of the eye wall. It survived them all.

The calm eye at the center of Gilbert was only seven miles across, compared to 30 miles for an average hurricane, Gerish added.

240-M.P.H. Blast

Hurricane Allen, a year earlier, buffeted the plane with the strongest wind it has faced, a 203-knot blast, which translates to about 240 miles per hour.

The two NOAA Orions are based in Miami, remaining there in the warm, hurricane-prone months to be on call when needed, and traveling to other areas for various sorts of research in other seasons.

They get lots of riders--scientists, professors, reporters--early in the summer, Capt. L.J. Genzlinger said. But by the end of the year it gets lonely on the 4 a.m. flights looking for storms, he said.

The 37 hurricane badges on the plane include a few with their stylized cloud track backward. Those, Gerish explained, represent visits to Australia, where hurricane winds careen in the other direction.

On this side of the Equator hurricane winds whip counterclockwise around the center of the storm. South of the Equator they churn the other way.

In addition, the markings include a couple dozen flag symbols, representing countries from Denmark to India, Egypt to Japan, where the craft has conducted research. The Orion even has been been permitted to fly through normally closed Cuban air space.

Regardless of the season “there’s always weather out there” to be investigated, said flight engineer James DuGranrut.

The craft has investigated hailstorms in South Dakota, atmospheric chemistry in New Guinea, monsoons in India and Malaysia and fishery stocks off the coast of Alaska, among other missions.

Many Parameters

On its flight over the Chesapeake Bay the plane was equipped for studying cloud physics. Electronic display screens allowed the scientists to measure and record temperature, wind, water content of clouds, cloud droplet size, chemical components of the air, and so forth.

New Doppler radar allows the plane to measure the movement of wind and water inside a cloud from a distance, something DuGranrut appreciates.

“Before we had that, we had to fly through the cloud. We’d get a pretty rough ride sometimes. Remote sensing instruments are great,” he said.

Hurricanes, thunderstorms and many other clouds still must be attacked directly, though.

On a mission to the Midwest the plane had to fly into clouds to determine their suitability for rainmaking experiments, Gerish explained.

Rainmakers disperse chemicals into clouds in the hope that the chemical molecules will serve as nuclei for water to condense on, forming a cloud and leading to rain.