A day in the life of a hurricane hunter

NOAA Hurricane Hunter Commander Adam Abitbol describes flying through severe weather and which storms were the most challenging for him to navigate.

Transcript

00:00Mhm. When the tropics are brewing a dangerous storm, hurricane hunters are

00:05tasked with flying planes into hurricanes and tropical storms. It's to

00:09gather critical weather data that can keep millions of people safe. We found

00:14that there's just a pretty big data gap in the storm itself. And the only way

00:18to get that data is to get an aircraft and the instruments inside of the eye

00:22of the storm inside the hurricane. The crucial information gets sent to the

00:25National Hurricane Center in Miami florida. It helps their team of

00:29meteorologists understand these storms in real time and alert the public of

00:34potential dangers to life and property. We're looking at temperature, pressure,

00:39wind speed, wind direction, humidity. And then now we're incorporating a lot

00:44of advanced technology. We're actually using air launched drones. So we'll

00:48launch a drone from the P three of the aircraft in the middle of a hurricane,

00:52which is really cool and really unique. Flight crews typically spend up to

00:56eight hours a day observing these storms. If you imagine like a storm is

01:00a circle and we kind of cut it up like a pizza. Really, it's the best way to

01:03describe it. We want to make sure we sample all four quadrants of the storm

01:07because they behave differently. The team is required to go through rigorous

01:11training before taking part in a mission. It does take about 2-3 years

01:16to bring a pilot on board to be fully qualified in the hurricane environment.

01:21So it's a hefty amount of time to get everybody up to speed. Commander Adam

01:27Abbott Ball has been flying into storms for over a decade. He says he's often

01:31asked about the dangers he faces on the job. The easiest way to describe it is

01:35what we do is hazardous, but it's not dangerous. And I like to say the

01:39difference is we try to mitigate a lot of the risks. We understand what the

01:43risks are and we have a lot of safety precautions and a lot of procedures in

01:47place to help make sure that we can get the aircraft and the crew through a

01:51storm safely. Of the hundreds of missions he's been on, there are a few

01:55he'll never forget. The two most memorable are Hurricane Patricia. I

01:59believe that was in 2015 and then Hurricane Ian in 2022. Very memorable

02:06storm indeed. So they're both memorable for the wrong reasons. They were very

02:11violent, very turbulent storms. So it made for a good ride. For AccuWeather,

02:17I'm Emmy Victor.

02:21Yeah.