These hardcore Air Force crews fly into the walls of deadly hurricanes

When Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall in Florida this fall, they carved paths of destruction and damage on historic levels. Yet before they ever touched down, teams of airmen had already made contact with the storms, braving shearing winds to collect data and develop accurate ground forecasts.

The “Hurricane Hunters” of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, an Air Force Reserve unit out of Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, have one of the most specialized jobs in the service. The unit, which calls itself “the only operational unit in the world flying weather reconnaissance on a routine basis,” flies a squadron of 10 WC-130J “Weatherbirds” – a variant of the C-130 Hercules tricked out with pallets of data-gathering instruments specialized for meteorology.

According to the Air Force, Hurricane Hunter aircraft, equipped with a five-member crew, can stay in the air for up to 18 hours – and the typical storm recon mission lasts 11 hours and spans 3,500 miles. Data readings, which are collected as often as every minute across the duration of the mission, document ocean surface winds, cloud types, turbulence, and a full complement of atmospheric and wind conditions. That’s all dispatched instantly to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which can be a lifesaving source of information and warnings to those in the path of major storms. Missions are flown in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has its own fleet of Hurricane Hunter aircraft. The Air Force says the data the Hurricane Hunters collect can make those forecasts and warnings as much as 20 percent more accurate.

The key tools of the Hurricane Hunters are devices called dropsondes, a small parachute-mounted and GPS- and radio-equipped data-collecting tube that must be released as the W-C130 passes through the eye of the storm. And that means braving the intense winds of the storm walls that encircle the eye. 

Like many C-130s in the Air Force’s inventory, the Weatherbirds are aging. The aircraft’s first variant was introduced in 1965, and the current squadron dates to 1999. In an Air Force Times report from earlier this year, officials described a climate-driven increasing work burden on aircraft that routinely sustain damage from the punishing conditions inside storm walls. The story describes hail during Hurricane Ian in 2022 that left an aircraft’s propellers in need of replacement.

“I’m not authorized to say when enough is enough,” Col. William Magee, commander of the 403rd Maintenance Group, told Air Force Times. “But we are growing our storm missions at a rate of … if you were to say, ‘Today is enough utilization of our airplanes,’ about every two years, we would earn another airplane to maintain that current utilization rate.”

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Recent Air Force reports reveal just how intense the storm-tracking mission was for Hurricane Hunters during Milton and Helene. For Hurricane Milton, which made landfall on October 9, caused upward of $30 billion in damage, and claimed at least 27 lives in its rampage, the 53rd WRS flew a total of eight missions into the storm. They stayed in high gear as Milton entered a period of “rapid intensification,” with maximum winds ramping up to Category 5 strength within 25 hours. Ultimately, Milton would have gusts of at least 100 miles per hour. 

Lt. Col. Brad Boudreaux, a pilot with the 53rd, described flying through the eyewall of the hurricane just as it was strengthening from a Category 4 to a Category 5 on October 8. The turbulence on the Hurricane Hunter plane, infamous for making reporters and less-seasoned passengers lose their lunch, became even more intense, he said in a news release.

“The key to everything we do here is to narrow the cone of uncertainty,” Boudreaux said. “Our job is to provide weather information to the National Hurricane Center so that they can provide the best forecast so people can prepare.”

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Rapid intensification, which is defined as an increase in wind strength of at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours, can mean less predictable damage and chaos and less preparation time on the ground. It’s a frightening recent trend that scientists believe is driven by climate change. The phenomenon made Milton one of the fastest-building storms of the last two years.

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on September 26, two weeks before Milton, was also historic for all the wrong reasons. It’s believed to have claimed at least 250 lives and caused more than $40 billion in damage across the southeastern United States, leaving many regions flooded and devastated. 

The Hurricane Hunters flew nine weather recon missions into Helene before it made landfall; they tracked an escalation in wind strength from tropical storm to Category 4 hurricane in just 64 hours.  

“We have been working around the clock to provide data for NHC forecasts,” the squadron wrote on its Instagram page on September 26.

While risk is always part of the Hurricane Hunters’ missions, only five aircraft have been lost since the U.S. military began tracking storms in 1943. The only W-C130 casualty was in 1974, when a Weatherbird succumbed to Typhoon Bess in the South China Sea.

Feature Image: Lt. Col. Stephen Pituch, 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron commander and pilot, and Maj. Alex Boykin, 53rd WRS pilot, flew through Hurricane Helene, Sept. 25. The Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters fly storm missions to provide up-to-date weather data to the National Hurricane Center to help improve weather forecasts. (U.S. Air Force photo by Jessica L. Kendziorek)

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