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.

Just In! Bill Gray's Updated Hurricane Forecast

Just in!  Bill Gray, shown at right, and his colleagues at Colorado State University have just updated their forecast for the 2008 hurricane season.  

In early June they were forecasting 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes and 5 major (Cat 3 and above) hurricanes this season.  Now their totals have swelled to 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes and 5 major storms.  

Since we have only had 4 named storms so far this season, their remains the possibility of 13 more storms, 7 hurricanes and 4 major storms.  Still a lot of storms to go and about two months, give or take, to get them in.  Time will tell. 

At the Aircraft Operations Center, all of the aircraft and crews are standing at the ready.

More later.

Hello and Goodbye Edouard

After a great week in Wisconsin, I rushed back thinking that my group would be deploying to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands on Sunday or Monday.  Well, it was not to be.  The system in the Atlantic that our customers were anxious about simply didn't materialize.  Hence, no trip to the sunny beaches of the Caribbean.

While we were looking to the east, a depression was forming to our backs in the Gulf of Mexico.  As it reached tropical storm strength, it was named Edouard - the fifth named storm of the season - and headed west towards Texas.  This morning, Edouard made landfall in NE Texas and is currently bringing heavy rains and squally weather to the Houston area and to the east as far as western Louisiana.  

The radar image above was taken from the Houston National Weather Service radar at approximately 1:00 p.m. EDT today, Tuesday.  

So, we say goodbye to Edouard and await what comes next.  At the moment, the tropics from the Gulf to the west coast of Africa is devoid of disturbed weather considered even slightly favorable for development into a tropical storm.  We have a long way to go in the 2008 hurricane season, so we're not ready to toss in the towel just yet.

Some of you inquired as to how you might learn of our plans on a real-time basis.  After some hounding by a couple of you, I"m giving you the number and extension to our P-3 hurricane hotline which is used to provide personnel here of the latest plan for the day.  The number is:

1-800-729-6622 x3128

If you care about the Gulfstream G-IV, that extension is:  3144

Some of you also indicated an interest in the Weather Channel's interactive radar display which is currently in its Beta stage on the web.  The image to the right shows the storm that passed by and around us last week.  The display can be zoomed in or out, and various controls at the bottom of the display allow you to play, pause, stop, control transparency, etc.  You can also put in your city or zip code and the map will go instantly to your neighborhood or wherever you wish.

This is online and can be found at:

http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive

This is not a link (I haven't figured out how to insert links yet - my next project), so you must copy and past in your browser.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the next installment, which will chronicle "Fay," if and when she develops.  Fay will be followed by Gustav and then Hanna.  

See you next time.