The Weather Notebook: Riding Hugo

Riding Hugo
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Nobody guarantees a smooth ride for the people who fly through hurricanes. The aircraft that gather data for NOAA and the Air Force have to navigate some of the strongest low-level winds found anywhere. Usually, it's not as bad as you might think. The wind that spirals around a hurricane's eye may blow hard, but the flow is often quite smooth and not terribly turbulent. The scariest part is the inner ring of torrential rains and squalls known as the eyewall. That's where a set of hurricane hunters almost hit the sea back in 1989.

They were flying aboard a P-3 east of Barbados, going after Hurricane Hugo. It was a growing storm, but the 16 people on board didn't know that Hugo was at Category 5 intensity--the strongest there is. Suddenly the plane was hammered with updrafts and downdrafts pushing at several times the force of gravity. An engine caught fire. The plane dropped to within a thousand feet of the Atlantic, and minutes later it was trapped inside Hugo's eye. After a few tense moments and some expert flying, the plane dumped fuel and made it to a safer altitude. Help soon arrived with an Air Force C-130 that checked out each side of the eyewall. The C-130 found a weak spot on the northeast side where the damaged P-3 could exit safely. In just a few hours, the close call was a memory for those pilots, scientists, and technicians, along with one newspaper reporter who got the story of a lifetime.

Thanks today to Bob Henson, who writes about weather and stays away from hurricanes in Boulder, Colorado. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. It's supported generously by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive. To put your eye on more hurricane stories, go to our website at weathernotebook.org.