Into the storm fly highly skilled daredevils in WC-130J Hercules “Weatherbird” and P3 Orion aircraft, and they stopped at the Portland Jetport on Monday, May 6, to kick off their Hurricane Awareness Tour. New Gloucester residents Andy Pohl and Beth Blakeman-Pohl were among those getting an up-close experience.
The National Weather Service Forecast Office in Gray, where Andy Pohl has worked for 19 of his 38 years as an IT specialist with the NWS, hosted the “Hurricane Hunters.” Both of the team’s aircraft were on display, and the public got to hear directly from the pilots and flight crew.
The purpose of the Hurricane Hunters tour is to establish links with local communities and raise awareness of threats from tropical cyclones and the dangers of being caught without a personal hurricane plan. According to Sarah Jamison of the National Weather Service Office, over 1,200 people toured the aircraft and exhibits, including 500 fifth graders from area schools.
The WC-130J is flown by the Air Force’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, a one-of-a-kind unit based in Mississippi that surveils weather on both coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. The P3 Orion is flown by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
These specialized aircraft fly into hurricanes to collect data that gets fed into the National Weather Service computer models. The forecast model is only as good as the data feeding it; at this point the information cannot be obtained any other way, Andy Pohl says.
A crew member drops a small cylinder called a dropsonde, out of the aircraft. The dropsonde parachutes to the sea, and its data assists in predicting the size of the storms and where they will make landfall.
NOAA describes the conditions and challenge for the crew, with the aircraft “slicing through the eyewall of a hurricane, buffeted by howling winds, blinding rain and violent updrafts and downdrafts before entering the relative calm of the storm’s eye,” probing wind and pressure multiple times in missions that last eight to ten hours.
For Andy Pohl and Beth Blakeman-Pohl, Midwesterners accustomed to tornadoes before moving to New Gloucester 19 years ago, the Hurricane Hunters’ visit was an opportunity for professional and personal interests.
Said Andy Pohl, “This kind of event only comes around a few times in the career of an NWS employee. In my 19 years in the Gray office, we have only hosted them twice. The last time was shortly after we moved here, and we hosted them in Portsmouth. The logistics involved are staggering. It is truly a team effort as two-thirds of our office were on hand to help out and make sure things went smoothly.”
Portland was the first of five stops on the 2024 Hurricane Awareness Tour. The team travels next to the Caribbean to share the mission and raise awareness there.
— Joanne Cole
