It's Raining Fish and Spiders (12 page)

The Most Extreme Wind Anywhere in the World!

A wind gust of 190 mph was measured by the weather station on the island of Miyako-jima in the Ryukyu Islands chain on September 5, 1966. This is the highest wind speed ever measured in a tropical storm anywhere in the world!

Pacific Hurricanes

Atlantic Ocean hurricanes affect the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern coast of the United States, whereas Pacific hurricanes affect the western coast of the United States and Mexico, the Far East (the eastern edge of China, plus Japan, Taiwan, and all other nations with coastlines along the Pacific Ocean), and islands in the Pacific, like Hawaii. In the Far East, hurricanes are called typhoons; Australians like to call them “willy-willies.”

The Pacific hurricane/typhoon seasons are May 15 to November 30 for the eastern Pacific (western Mexico, Baja California, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, Russia); June 1 to November 30 for the central Pacific (western Mexico, western Latin America, Hawaii, Polynesia, Micronesia, and central Pacific islands); October 15 to May 15 for the southwest Pacific/Australian basin; and year-round for the northwest Pacific basin.

Eastern Pacific storms originate just north of the equator, off the western coasts of Mexico and Central America, in places where the water reaches temperatures of 80ºF or more. These hurricanes then move north to northwest, into the central Pacific. While a hurricane proper has never hit the coast of California, remnants of hurricanes have. Most hurricanes weaken as they near the California coast because the water temperature there is 60ºF (156ºC) year-round, which weakens the storms considerably.

The Hurricane Hunters

“Dude, are you
nuts
? You're going to take a perfectly good airplane and do
what
? Fly it through a hurricane? You're one taco short of a combo plate!”

There's a group of pilots called Hurricane Hunters, who have flown directly into some of the most violent hurricanes in recorded history. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron is a U.S. Air Force Reserve group that is based in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The 53rd began flying in 1944, and they have shown that flying into hurricanes is safer than you might think. Altogether, only four planes have gone down: three Air Force craft in Pacific Ocean typhoons and one Navy plane in an Atlantic hurricane. Sadly, all thirty-six men aboard the four aircraft were lost. That's not to say that other planes haven't been badly shaken, and there have been a few injuries. On August 23, 1964, Hurricane Cleo shook a Navy Super Constellation so hard the Navy decided to scrap the airplane after looking at the damage!

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The Hurricane Hunters fly directly into hurricanes—that's right, not over or around, but
through
. They bore in from the outer edge all the way to the eye at the storm's center and out the other side. They gather information about the strength and makeup of the hurricane for forecasts and research—and to save lives. This vital information is sent back to the National Hurricane Center, where forecasters will use the data as the basis for forecasting where the hurricane is expected to travel and how strong it might become.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The dropsonde station
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The Weather Reconaissance Squadron flies planes with a six-person crew: a commander, a co-pilot, a flight engineer, a navigator, a weather officer, and a dropsonde operator. A dropsonde is a weather-sensing canister attached to a parachute. This instrument, dropped from the plane as it flies through the storm, falls all the way through the hurricane to the ocean below. As the canister falls, it radios back information on temperature, humidity, and winds inside the storm. The WC-130 aircraft also has instruments to record wind speed inside the hurricane, as well as radar to see the thunderstorms.

Another group, the NOAA Hurricane Hunters, also does surveillance, research, and reconnaissance with their own specially equipped aircraft: a WP-3D Orion and a very cool Gulfstream IV SP jet. The jet can get to a storm quicker than the WP-3D Orion turboprop planes that are the Hurricane Hunters' primary aircraft, thereby sending information back faster. The Gulfstream IV is flown over the tops of hurricanes and around a storm's sides. It records the steering winds so a storm's path can be better predicted. Flying this jet into a hurricane would be dangerous, as the wind turbulence inside the hurricane would disrupt the jet's engines. That's why turboprop planes are used to penetrate a hurricane.

Even today's supermodern satellites cannot give us all the data necessary to forecast where a hurricane will go and when it will hit. Especially vulnerable would be oceangoing ships, which are too slow to outrun a hurricane. The only way to collect information about wind speed and the barometric pressure inside a hurricane is to fly a plane through it.

The rising or falling of the barometric pressure in a hurricane determines the strength or weakness of the storm. If the pressure is falling, the storm gets stronger and if the pressure is rising, it gets weaker. That data is necessary to accurately predict a hurricane's strength as well as its movement.