Inside the Radomes

Back again.  Did you ever wonder what we had inside those two radomes, the tail doppler and the lower fuselage radars?  Well, take a look.  Don't want to hide anything from you.  

The tail doppler radar antenna, left, and the lower fuselage (LF) antenna, right, are being removed prior to this P-3 heading to Jacksonville for depot level maintenance - an 8-month overhaul where a full tear-down, inspection and repair will be done.  At the beginning of June 09 we will get back a healthy aircraft which we can take out into hurricanes with full confidence of its integrity.

Click on them to check them out.  Don't forget to hit your browser's back button to return to the blog.

Cheers.

Facts and Figures

Sorry for the long break in my postings.  Following Hurricane Ike, for which I made a couple of postings, we immediately had TS Kyle which was born just south of Hispanola and moved north.  It was of interest to our research folks because it at one time posed a threat to the East Coast and thus needed an all out effort from our P-3s and G-IV.  Following Kyle, we all took a week to get back on track as many of the crew were exhausted.  So much flying had been done in the 30 day period that involved Gustav, Hanna, Ike and Kyle that many of the crew reached their legal limit of flight hours in this period that they had to receive a waiver from our flight surgeon just to complete the flights into Kyle.  So, you didn't know there was a limit to how many hours any crew member, be it on a commercial airline or on a government aircraft, can fly.  Well, there is, and with that and other things in mind, I thought I'd use this relatively quiet time (well, not too quiet - there are four systems in the Atlantic and Caribbean as I write this, but none pose a threat to the U.S. or are of interest to our research team) to give you some facts and figures about our flight program.

The legal limit for flight hours that any crew member, pilot, technician, scientist or whomever, may accumulate in a 30 consecutive day period is 120 hours.  To fly more than this number one must request and be granted a waiver by a flight surgeon or physician so authorized to perform this function.  Now, you may not think 120 hours in a month is  very many, but try flying almost 9 hours each day during 15 of those 30 days, and perhaps you may have some feel for how exhausting it might be.  Add to the flight time the effort it takes to prepare for each mission, and these hours become telling.  As always, though, we manage.

If you would like to know what it costs to fly one of these missions on a P-3.  Here's the story.

If we forget about what we called "fixed" costs, that's salaries, the cost of running the facility, etc., we have left what we call the "variable" costs.  These include fuel, premium pay (overtime, weekend pay, night time differential, holiday pay and hazard duty pay), satellite communication (satcom) charges and miscellaneous expenses such as landing and parking fees, shipping, travel expenses, transportation, lavatory fees, facility servicing fees, etc.  Dropsondes are a separate charge which we don not include in our flight hour cost, but I'll throw those in anyway as they are a mission relate cost.  Already I think you have the feeling that it isn't cheap.  Well, here's a look.

Operating from our home base at MacDill AFB in Tampa, FL, the miscellaneous fees are non-existent.  So, it's a lot less expensive (I use that term rather than "cheaper" for good reason).  That leaves us with fuel charges and premium pay.  Here's how that breaks down.

On a typical 9 hour flight we will use 6,750 gallons of Jet fuel.  At the Air Force base where from which we operate we currently pay $4.26 per gallon for this fuel.  So that you don't have to do the math, that comes to $28,755, or $3,195 per flight hour.  Satellite communications (Satcom) - on a typical hurricane flight this averages about $2,500 per flight.  Premium pay can run an additional $5,000 per flight.

On an normal hurricane flight we will drop on average 20 dropsondes.  These cost about $725 each.  So add another $15,000 to the total.

Let's add up these charges.  

Fuel: $28,755

Satcom:     $2,500

Prem. Pay:   $5,000

Total: $36,255, or about $4,300 per flight hour.

Throw in the dropsondes at $15,000 and the total rises to: $51,255.  

On a given storm, we may do 8 flights in succession over a four day period, so inside of a week we've spent over $290,040 for flight hour expenses and another $120,000 for dropsondes.  Ouch!

When we deploy to a foreign base, the price goes up significantly because of employee travel costs and all of the other miscellaneous expenses I mentioned above.  On average, it costs a bit more than $5,500 per flight hour, not including dropsondes, to operate the P-3s during the hurricane season.  As a comparison, it only costs about $3,360 per flight hour to operate the Gulfstream G-IV.  But then they drop about 10 more sondes per flight, so the costs come out about even.  

Thought I'd leave you with this.  Although these costs are high, the value of the data obtained to improved forecasts and the saving of lives is far greater and probably not calculable.  Like everything in life - it's all relative.

 Season is winding down.  I will probably have another posting or two to conclude this blog.  I do appreciate your taking the time to read it, and I look forward to repeating it next hurricane season.  

Thank you.

Flight into Ike Pt: II

Here we go.  Down the runway and into the air from MacDill AFB in Tampa, FL.  The flight we are taking is our last into Hurricane Ike on Friday last (12 September), and it will last almost nine hours, bringing us back to this same base around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.  As we takeoff from sun-swept Tampa, we are high on anticipation and apprehension of what we will face when we arrive at the storm just offshore of Galveston Island, TX.  

Our Flight Director is up to the challenge, and wearing his "lucky

hat he settles in for the long mission ahead.  His job will be to safely direct us in and out of the storm as requested by the two PIs we have onboard.  During this mission we will make seven penetrations into Ike's eye before heading back to our home base.

As we head for the storm which is about to make landfall, we note that tropical storm force winds (>34 kts.) were observed some 250 n.mi. east of the center of Hurricane Ike and that hurricane force winds (>64 kts.) extended out some 80 n.mi. at the surface. If you've never seen what the ocean looks like at low hurricane wind speeds, take a look at the 

picture to the left taken en route to the storm.

As mentioned in earlier postings, the profile data obtained from our GPS dropsonde is vital to unlocking the secrets of any storm. This device, which is dropped from the aircraft, transmits temperature, pressure, humidity data back to the plane twice a second as it falls through the atmosphere to the surface.  Because it has a full GPS receiver aboard, it also sends back very accurate information concerning the location of the sonde as it falls, to the

surface, and from this we can calculate very accurate wind speed and direction.  These data have proven invaluable to the forecasters and modelers in developing better storm forecasts. The technician at the right is preparing a sonde for launch into the storm.

Penetrating the eye is always the most interesting part of the flight.  You are always apprehensive on the first pass into the eye as to how rough the ride will be.  Sometimes the pass through the eyewall can be a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling experience, but on other occasions it can be relatively smooth.  If you were looking for an "E-ticket" (remember the old Disney World ride categories) ride into a hurricane, Ike, in its latter days, was anything but.  The seven penetrations we made on this flight were more like "B-ticket" rides, which for those of us who do this as a living is great.  Some of the VIPs and media who flew

with us on the last few flights into Ike felt otherwise.

Here's a visual image of what it looks like on the flight deck of a NOAA P-3 during a penetration into Ike.  The flight engineer, who occupies the seat between the two pilots, is adjusting the power levers (throttles) to help maintain controlled flight.  You can see the radar image on the scope in the center of the picture.  As you can tell from the second image, it does get a bit bouncy as you hit the outer part of the eyewall.  

Sometimes when you are in the center of the storm you observe other aircraft who are in the eye at the same time.  The Air Force Reserves from Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS are responsible for the routine hurricane reconnaissance flights, and we occasionally cross paths in the eye.  Never fear.  We maintain at least 2,000 ft. 

 from each other as well as keep in touch by radio at all times.  The "spot" in the image to the left is one of the C-130Js that fly these storms.

Well, that's about it.  To conclude this posting I want to share with you a few more images 

from this flight.  To the left is the Houston, TX radar image captured aboard the P-3 (Yes, we do have internet courtesy of 

satellite communications) during the flight.  To the right is the flight track of the P-3 during the mission, and in the center is the "master" hard at work.

Let's Take a Flight into Hurricane Ike - Pt I: Preparation

Ike the hurricane is gone. The aftermath, however, will be with us for some time to come. I had the opportunity to make three flights into Ike as it crossed the Gulf toward Texas, and I want to give you a sense of what they were like, almost to the time when Ike make landfall at Galveston, TX.

As you know our aircraft for the most part serve as platforms for research scientists to acquire data that can be used to improve

hurricane understanding and predictions. As such, we always carry a Principal Investigator (PI) who presents the plan for each mission. The PI works through one of our meteorologists who serves as the Flight Director (FD) for the mission. They always put their heads together to work out details of the mission before the pre-flight briefing, which is held two hours prior to flight time. These two activities are shown to the right.

While this briefing is taking place, crew members on the aircraft are preparing the plane for the mission, which includes preparing the scientific systems for the mission, fueling the aircraft with almost 9,000 gal. of aviation gas, and loading expendables such as the Airborne Expendable Bathythermograph (AXBT), a buoy that is dropped into the water to obtain profiles of temperature for the calculation of ocean heat budgets. A couple of images showing these activities are shown to the left.

The final activity that takes place before takeoff is what we call

the plane-side brief. This, in effect, is a safety briefing during which all aspects of the mission are discussed and assignments made for duties that must be performed in case of an emergency.

And now it's time to start engines, taxi to the runway at MacDill AFB and take off. This and a description of the flight will be presented in Pt. II of this posting. Don't forget that you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. Just hit your browser back button to return to the blog.

And Along Comes Ike

T.S. Hanna lurks in the Bahamas off of the Florida coast moving to the NNW towards the Carolinas, but no one in Florida is worried about her. They are looking beyond Hanna to a Cat 4 hurricane called Ike - a simple name for such a potent storm. And I can tell you that the people

in Miami are extremely concerned as it appears from the latest model runs shown here.

One can only hope and pray that the steering currents in the atmosphere will turn Ike to the northeast of South Florida and take it into the central Atlantic. As you can see from the

5:00 p.m. forecast track from the National Hurricane Center, it doesn't look good. All I can say at this point is, stay tuned for further developments.

We will start flying Ike on Saturday with one of our P-3s and the hight-altitude Gulfstream jet. Both will be operating from St. Croix, one of our forward bases in the Caribbean. Will I go along? It all depends on what the track looks like tomorrow. If Miami is still in the cross-hairs of Ike, my place is at home there, and there I shall be to prepare the house and pick up the pieces. I hope that such an event does not become part of this blog.

More to come.

Busy Time

Busy?  That's probably an understatement.  When you run consecutive missions over a three or four day period with flights going out every 12 hours, it gets a bit hectic.  While the flights can e dangerous and rough, some of the hardest work occurs during the 3 hour preparation for the flight.  Preparations are orderly and proceed carefully using a well defined check list.  After the aircraft is fueled with something like 7,500 gallons of jet fuel, the entire aircraft gets one last look over, a pre-flight safety briefing is held and engines are started to begin the flight process.  The P-3s burn about 750 gallons of gas an hour, and with the price of aviation fuel being about $5.00 a gallon, you can see that the cost of a single 9 hour mission can be very expensive.  That means you had better have everything working right, or you've spent a lot of money for not much return.

Although it seems like we've been at this for over a week, we are just starting our third day of flights with the P-3s.  With Gustav moving along at a faster clip than originally forecast, it appears that tomorrow morning's 4:00 a.m. flight will be the last before landfall occurs.

While we continue to do profiles in support of our 3-dimensional horizontal wind fields derived from our tail doppler radar, we are also, on one of the P-3s, carrying out a very important mission to calibrate and validate surface wind measurements from the QuickScat satellite in regions of high winds and heavy precipitation.  The collage shows in general how the process works.  Ocean surface wind measurements obtained with this satellite have proven invaluable to forecasters in their efforts to more accurately describe actual surface conditions in hurricanes.  This work has been going on for a number of years during both the hurricane season and in winter storm conditions in the North Atlantic or North Pacific.

I must say that we received a lot of support from the Cuban Government during the first couple of missions by allowing us to overfly Cuba to get to the storm while it was located in the Caribbean.  This saved us a considerable amount of time and allowed us to obtain a more extensive data set.

Take a look at this Google representation of one of those flights.

When It Rains it Pours

Look at the tropics this evening. Rarely do you see five storms and disturbances lined up across the Gulf, Caribbean and Atlantic  as now.  We're going to be busy with Gustav for the Labor Day weekend, and then we'll probably pick up with Hanna ext week.  And then there are the systems in the eastern Atlantic, both poised to become a depression.  I think our work will be cut out for us.  

Well, we did fly one of the two scheduled missions today - the Ocean Heat Content flight where we launched over 50 probes into the ocean to collect vertical profiles of temperature across the Gulf Loop Current and warm pool.  We'll see what happens when Gustav crosses this area of considerably warmer water.

The jet flight - the one I was scheduled to fly on - was canceled.  At the moment the National Hurricane Center is content with the model outputs for Gustav as shown here.  As you can see, most of them are in agreement.  NHC has a request in for a flight tomorrow followed by round-the-clock missions beginning Saturday.  

The P-3s start their exhausting every 12 hour set of eight missions tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 pm.  The last flight is currently scheduled for 4:00 am on Tuesday morning.  It probably will be very close to the coast, so we will do a land-fall mission - one of the many experiments in the Hurricane Research Division's stable of experiments.  

Following that it will be on to Hanna.  Look how crazy the models forecast the motion of this 

storm.  It could be out east of the Bahamas for quite some time.   And then it will be on to Barbados for the Aerosonde project late next week.  Never a dull moment.

More as this crazy season develops.

Oh My!

Oh My!  Is it time to get out of Dodge?  

It's becoming quite obvious that this Labor Day weekend will see a storm, perhaps a major hurricane, making landfall someplace on the Gulf coast.  Will it be Katrina all over again charging into New Orleans?  We'll just have to wait for a few more days to be sure.  All indications are that a storm of some magnitude will hit someplace between Texas and the Florida panhandle.  Just look at the latest forecasts.  It's time to get prepared - today, not Saturday or Sunday.  

So, what can we do to learn where this storm may go and how strong it will be when it 

there?  NOAA will be starting its flight program tomorrow with two flights, one on the high-altitude G-IV to map the steering currents that should provide us a better idea of where the storm may go.  One of our P-3s will be going out into the Gulf with 60 ocean probes that will yield information on the heat  available to intensify the storm.  We all know that hurricanes get its energy from the ocean, and where you find warm pools of water in the 

ocean, you will likely see intensification of the storm.  By the end of the day tomorrow, data should be available that will help us with both our track and intensity forecasts.  The tracks for these two missions are displayed here.

I will have the pleasure of joining the G-IV as it makes its way first out over the bahamas, then around Cuba and the storm and finally back to our home base at MacDill AFB in Tampa.  At each of the numbered dots along the flight track we will be launching dropsondes from 45,000 ft., and as they fall to the surface they will radio back to the aircraft temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed and direction twice each second.  These data will be processed onboard, and then the operator will generate a message with the key data which will then be transmitted via our satellite communication link back to the National Weather Service.  These data will be included in the all of the model runs generated about 8:00 pm tomorrow evening, and the new tracks will be in the hands of the forecasters at NHC by midnight tomorrow night.  I'm looking forward to the eight hour journey and will report to you upon my return.

Until then.

Gustav Updateñ

Look at this forecast.  Now the "official" track put out by NHC is in better agreement with the models.  That's all except for the GFDL model which scoots Gustav across the Gulf in record time. 

It's joined by the UKMet (United Kingdom Meteorological Group) model and the Navy's NOGAPS. Remember NOGAPS from yesterday?  It was the model that sent Gustav into Never-Never land. I guess it woke up today. Remember to click on the images to enlarge them.

So what are AOC and the scientists from a number of groups doing to improve our forecasts.  Well, we have set up a number of flights that begin tomorrow morning and continue until Gustav makes landfall.  Please feel free to call our hurricane hot-line to find out what we are up to.  Phone # and extension are: 1-800-729-6622 x3128.  The ext. for G-IV ops is 3144.  

Here's an image of Gustav to keep in mind.  Small now, but potentially destructive later.

More tomorrow.

Now What? Here Comes Gustav!

And here comes Gustav.  Where will he go?  Certainly the models shown here are having a tough time with it.  The official track from NHC runs right up the spine of Cuba, but the smart (scientists) money goes more for the tight little group that keep it south of Cuba and carry it into the Gulf.  (Click on the image to enlarge and hit your back button to return.)  

So, we're off on another adventure.  Our first flight out is at 4 pm tomorrow afternoon followed by a second mission 12 hours later.  I'm sure we'll get the first mission in, but the second will depend on the storm location.  If it does follow the official track, all bets are off.  We'll just have to wait until tomorrow.

More on Gustav later.

Feisty Fay - The Storm that lasted Forever

It was two weeks ago tomorrow, Tuesday, that AOC deployed to Barbados to start flying what was then called AL92, as indicated in an earlier posting. The disturbance wasn't doing much, and many on the flight crew were wondering why we were wasting our time flying it.  Well, Mother Nature has ways of making something out of nothing, and in that regard, Fay was born.  Last Sunday my posting indicated that Fay was moving into its "end game," but how sadly all of us were mistaken.  Please note in my previous posting on Sunday that the experts forecast Fay to move straight north and be well into Georgia by Thursday last.  Didn't happen, and at this writing it currently sits over northern Alabama as a Depression, continuing to drop copious quantities of ran over a the SE while also bringing some destructive tornados to the region. 

A better image may be the one to the left which was made just this past Friday around 6:00 pm as Fay slowly moved to the west across the northern part of Florida.  Rainbands from Fay were still being felt as far south as Miami (over Mi Casa) and in Orlando at the homes of Sheila and Harry and Hilary and Brian.  Sheila and Harry got around 8 inches of rain while Hilary and Brian got over 11 inches.  It was a bit breezy at both homes, but they did not incur any damage.

As I mentioned, we continued to fly Fay after it moved north 

of Cuba, executing two missions as it made landfall first at Key West and then just north of Naples.  I was fortunate enough to be on the first flight which you can also vicariously ride along on courtesy of Google Earth.  This is the track of the flight, which originated in Tampa and ended in New Orleans (we had to evacuate our base in Tampa), showing wind barbs (direction and speed) at our altitude of 12,000 ft.  Notice that we came close to Cuba but did not overfly it.  We had a clearance form the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do so, but the Cuban Air Traffic Control folks would not permit us to do so.  I guess they have similar problems there - the right hand doesn't talk to the left.  

We'll say goodbye to Fay anyway - neither feeble nor ferocious.  Call her feisty and forever.

The End Game for Fay

As we enter the end game on Fay, you can see at left that the model forecasts, this one from this evening at 8 p.m., that there is little consensus as to where Fay is going to go.  The more reliable models are those bunched to the right, which certainly is not good news for Tampa.  The official NHC forecast is at right, but you can expect changes to it over the next 24 hours.  It's a tough call.  

The P-3s are heading out on another cycle of 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. missions, ending up in New Orleans as our evacuation location.  It's hard on the crew members as they have to leave their families behind to cope with the storm, but that's our lot in life. 

The track for the first flight tomorrow is shown at the left. It's similar to the ones we flew out of Barbados, but there will be some added difficulty as we have to deal with the Cuban Government regarding clearance to fly in its airspace.  We'll see how that goes. You see that the flight terminates in New Orleans.

And finally, the high-altitude jet, which has been flying

day and night for the last two days, will finish its set of missions tomorrow afternoon.  It will be interesting to see what impact the dropsonde data these missions had on the forecasts.  That will be determined after the season.  The G-IV's final track is shown here.

Now it's time to wait.  More later as we see where Fay goes and how strong she will be.

Fay - Will She be Feeble or Ferocious?

Hi all -

After spending several days flying into the disturbance that is now T.S. Fay, it's obvious that we still have a lot to learn about tropical systems and how to predict their motion and intensity.  From the previous posting to today's, you can see that there have been some major changes in the track forecasts.  Look at the two shown here - one from yesterday and the current forecast from 2:00 p.m. this afternoon.  I'm showing the spaghetti models from the Colorado State University website because they are visually better than most.  The first one to the right is the 2:00 a.m. forecast run on the 14th, Wednesday morning.  Compare that to the 

 model run this afternoon at 2:00 p.m.  There's a world of difference.  If the latest runs even begin to verify in three days time, our base in Tampa at MacDill AFB will be in the line of fire.  The real question, though is how strong will Fay be when she arrives.  Most models hint at a strong tropical storm to a weak hurricane.  That's good news, but the longer she stays out over the Gulf waters, the stronger she is likely to be.  For the record, 

 official 5 p.m. Saturday NHC forecast is shown here.  You can check the latest official forecast by going to the NHC website at:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.

So, what has NOAA been doing this week to better understand how and why these week systems develop into storms?  The two NOAA WP-3Ds, as you know, have been in Barbados flying round-the-clock missions to collect doppler radar data from which 3-D horizontal wind fields can be derived which will then be fed into the NOAA hurricane forecast model (HWRF).  Beginning Wednesday night at 11 p.m. and finishing last night at 7 p.m., these two aircraft flew four consecutive missions into the disturbance, the last resulting in the naming of the system.

To give you some idea of the type of track flown on one of these missions, here is the track shown on Google Earth for the flight flown Thursday night when the system was just east of Puerto Rico.  The different colors represent different wind speeds and the barbs show the direction of the wind at each location.  While clearly there was a circulation at the aircraft's altitude, 12,000 ft., this had not extended to the surface.  Thus, it was still officially a wave.  On the next flight during the day yesterday, Friday, a circulation was found at the surface just south of Hispanola and Fay was born.

Although the P-3s have completed their missions and will be returning to Tampa tomorrow, the NOAA G-IV is currently flying a high-altitude surveillance track out of our home base in 

 to provide profile data for the track forecast models that will be run this evening at 8:00 p.m. this evening.  While the artwork isn't all that great, the track for this flight is shown to the left.  The aircraft will first fly to the east of Florida, then south of Cuba, west through the Yucatan Strait into the Gulf and then back into MacDill AFB.  The mission will take 8 hours, but the data provided to the models should give us a much better handle on where the storm is going.

My best advice to all is to stay tuned, watch the Weather Channel and be ready.  I'll update this again when I have new material to post.  

Thanks for your nice comments on the blog.  

A New Beginning?

The disturbance we are in Barbados to fly looked so bad that we canceled the day mission today.  It does look right now at 6:00 pm this Wednesday to be getting its act together as you can see in this latest image.  You can see that it is bearing down on the northern most islands in the Caribbean and should pass over them in the next couuple of days.  

What is even more disturbing is the forecast track of this disturbance over the next five days.  As you can see from the latest model runs, it is forecast to be just off the Florida coast in five days.  At that time it may be a hurricane.  We'll just have to watch it.

Off to the airport in an hour to get our first flight off into the system at 11:00 pm this evening.  It will fly all night long, getting back into Barbados between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. in the morning.  The second plane will takeoff at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow with the first plane repeating agian at 11:00 p.m. tomorrow night.  

And so it goes.  Stay tuned.

The Beginning of Something Big?

Hi Everyone - 

The big question on this date is whether the two systems in the Atlantic between the Lesser Antilles and Africa will amount to anything over the next week or so.  To answer that question we here at the Center have been put on alert to take our two P-3s to Barbados to start flying round-the-clock missions Wednesday morning.

At the right you see two satellite images take this afternoon that show these two systems.  The upper one image is the western most system located at about 13N, 50W.  The lower one is at about 10N, 30W.  They don't look like much, but we'll see whether they develop in time.  The western system is shown as #1 on tonight's NHC forecast site and is colored red for having a high probability for intensification.  The eastern system is orange and shown as #2.  The #3 low probability (yellow) system showed up on the NHC website tonight and is not considered much of a threat.  We do not plan to explore this system in the western Caribbean.  

As I said, we leave tomorrow for Barbados - at 0900 local Tampa time.  We should arrive there about 3:30 pm tomorrow afternoon.  We had trouble finding rooms for the 32 people going down within our allowance of $164 per room per day, but our agent at the airport finally came through for us.  We'll be staying at the Barbados Hilton Hotel. 

 

Not too shabby, eh?

Stay tuned in the coming days for the continuing saga of what are called disturbances AL92 and AL93.

More later.