Weather Glossary

This aircraft is used for reconnaisance and research of hurricanes. It flies directly into the eye wall of a hurricane and takes readings of the conditions inside the eye wall. The plane flies up and down, as high as 20,000 feet and as low as 1,500 feet inside the wall of clouds that rotate around the eye of the storm. The eye wall is the most dangerous part of a hurricane. The winds are violent and unpredictable. The pilot of the plane does not have much time to react to the winds that blow as fast as 200 miles per hour inside the storm. Dangerous wind updrafts and downdrafts can throw the plane out of control. Once a hurricane hunter mission takes off, the crew will spend up to 10 hours in the air taking readings of the storm.

As the plane is flying up and down inside the storm it drops a weather instrument called the GPS- (Global Positioning System). This weather instrument gives scientists measurements of air pressure, humidity, temperature, and wind direction and speed. This information gives meteorologists an idea of the storm's structure.

The P-3s gather important data that is used to make computer models of the storm that predict the strength of a hurricane and where it might hit land. This information is sent to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md. who puts the data into numbers and then sends it to the National Hurricane Center.

The Gulfstream-IV jet is NOAA's newest aircraft. It is used to study the atmosphere above the top of a hurricane. It gives information about the steering winds that guide a hurricane. The Gulfstream flies as high at 45,000 feet above the surface of the ocean.

Text Citations:

NOAA:
http://www.nc.noaa.gov/aoc/