Hurricane Recon Flights

[coriolis]

Is there a strategy for flying into the center of a hurricane? Do they go with the flow, and kind of spiral into the center, do they take the direct route right perpendicular to the flow, or do they go in from above?

I'm guessing that those planes can probably hit 300 mph in still air, so they could theoretically fly in the face of hurricane force winds. I'd be surprised if they do that, though.

Just wondering how they actually do it.

[wjs3]

Poke around here:

http://www.hurricanehunters.com/faq.htm

Under question 14, there'sa link to a cyber flight that shows you the patterns flown in the storm. It's not bad.

Hope this helps.

[meteorjosh]

perpendicular to the wind direction, that way they get a true reading from a crosswind...so right for the COC it is...not to mention they loose quite a bit of lift if they get a tailwind in this type of storm...and they're only flying at about 1500 feet

[Steve Cosby]

perpendicular to the wind direction, that way they get a true reading from a crosswind...so right for the COC it is...not to mention they loose quite a bit of lift if they get a tailwind in this type of storm...and they're only flying at about 1500 feet

1500 for INVESTS and early stage TS's.

10,000 feet (pressure altitude) for Hurricanes.

Note the "pressure altitude" - they ride the 700mb (I think) pressure altitude into the storm. I heard one of the pilots say this weekend they are actually dropping from 10,000 feet (radar altitude) at the edges of the storm to 8,000 feet in the eye.

I also heard that the reason that they don't fly over land is not international boundaries per se but actually the increased turbulence over land.

I do hope these guys (even the dropsonde operator) are compensated well. That is one scary-a__ mission.