Hurricane Hunters Eye the Gathering Storm

The winds howled at 120 mph, tearing sheets of spray from seas as high as three-story buildings.

As the P-3 Orion research plane labored higher, ice particles clattered against its metal skin and cut visibility to less than wingtip distance.

While scientists monitored rattling racks of radar screens and other instruments, pilots manipulated control yokes, throttles and rudder pedals to keep the aircraft aloft.

When hurricanes threaten, coastal dwellers board up, fuel up and head inland. Weather watchers cut to the chase--powering straight into the whirling clouds.

As Hurricane Fran clobbered the Carolinas recently, 18 government fliers and scientists clambered aboard Miss Piggy--as the lurching laboratory is known to its crew--rocking and rolling right into the eye of the storm.

For frequent fliers, the ride was just another day at the office.

“I told my mother I’m going out here to relax,” said Capt. George Player, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aircraft Operations Center, after a turn in the pilot’s seat.

The 10-hour flight started with pass after pass through the storm at 5,000 feet, while scientists probed every wind gust, pressure change and lightning bolt. Misty plumes blew from ducts in the plane as the air conditioning fought the wet atmosphere.

The Orion, one of the flagships of an NOAA air fleet based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., sent data to forecasters before starting experiments to gauge electrical activity in the swirling clouds and rain bands.

Plunging into hurricanes is regular duty for the airborne research platforms, which go around the world to study severe storms, global climate changes, air chemistry and pollution, Arctic ice formation and oceanography.

Each storm is different, however, and a distinguishing mark of Fran was a ragged, cloud-filled center rather than a clean doughnut hole down to the churning sea.

“It’s a very cloudy eye, which will be fortunate for people along the coast,” said hurricane watcher Mike Black, bouncing and swaying in the seat behind the pilot as his voice strained above the roar of the propeller engines.

At least Fran wasn’t building to Category 4 strength--winds from 131 to 155 mph--as did Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Hugo in 1989, said Black of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division in Miami.

In bad storms, the pilot keeps both hands on the yoke while the flight engineer throttles the four turboprop engines to keep the P-3 from being spun around or upended by violent updrafts and downdrafts.

“Once you know what’s going on, it all makes sense. Air pockets, turbulence, it’s all part of the ride. In a sense, it is routine,” said Brian Taggart, who needs at least 50 storm flights before he can command a hurricane plane.

Taggart, 34, whose father was a NOAA pilot, has waited a long time for his first turn at the controls in a hurricane. In high school, he took flying lessons after class, sometimes playing hooky. He earned his pilot’s license before his diploma.

It’s worth it, he said. “You’re not flying a bus here. Every mission is unique.”

The plane climbed to 20,000 feet for the electrical experiments that Black and his colleagues had designed.

In hurricanes, the fliers said, flickering ball lightning--long known to sailors as Saint Elmo’s fire--can build up on the air-sampling boom extending from the nose of the plane.

The pulsating glow may grow from basketball size to a globe six feet in diameter before it suddenly vanishes in a shimmering cascade back along the plane’s hull.

Fast-growing hurricanes tend to be electrically active, while mature or weakening storms produce less lightning, studies show. Researchers hope learning more about the electrical behavior of storms will mean better forecasts.

Hurricanes can tower up to 50,000 feet. From 15,000 feet up, Fran, like others, was a swirling mass of subzero winds, snow and ice.

The aircraft bounced and creaked as it climbed, ice particles clanging noisily. But there was no lightning.

Electrically, Fran was a fizzle.

Still, such chances for firsthand observation draw researchers from all over the world.

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Chris Samsury, 28, of the Hurricane Research Division said he was destined from childhood for a spot on the plane--whatever the risk.

Growing up on the Texas coast and in New Orleans, he was so fascinated with the disruptive storms, he studied meteorology at Texas A&M; and earned a master’s degree in hurricane structure.

“At that point I was interested in being here, studying hurricanes,” said Samsury, co-author with Black of the electrical experiments.

“Obviously, flying into hurricanes is not the safest thing. But they’re professional pilots and the plane is built for it,” he said. “If you’re not a little concerned, you’re probably not human.”