‘There were a few jumps then
We suddenly dropped as if
slapped by an almighty hand’
November 2017 51status from a hurricane to a tropical storm and predict its
likely path.
We descended to 5,000ft off Cape Canaveral. Our
navigator had spotted some disturbances ahead on his
radar screen and was talking them though with the two
pilots. The Herc shook as if driving over a few cobbles.
There were a few lumps in between and then wallop! We
suddenly dropped as if slapped by an almighty hand.
“We’ve got 65 knots wind speed from 064,” said weather
offi cer Major Eric Dutton.
By now we were really bucking around. At times the
plane felt like she’d fl own into a rubber wall, at others a
wing dropped and pilot Captain Nickels surged the
throttles to prevent us stalling. The sudden realisation
that I was playing with the big boys had my heart
pounding through my shirt.
“Hurricanes sure clear the airspace,” joked Nickels as we
bowled headlong through the impenetrable darkness.
Then suddenly all went smooth.
“Matt, there’s the eye at nine o’clock, see it?”, called the
second pilot, Major Bear.
Lit by the moon, the curved wall of cloud clearly marked
out part of the rotation and although it was too dark to see
down to sea level, the hairs stood up on the back of my
neck. How many people get to see this?
“Our max wind speed there was 88
knots,” confi rmed Dutton. “That makes Irene a
Hurricane so it’s plenty of penetrations [fl ights through
the eye] tonight boys.”
As we fl ew down track, Eric monitored the conditions
inside the eye and called out the ever-decreasing wind
speed and direction. Everyone went quiet.
We passed through the eye wall again and reached the
bottom of our second run. Lightning started to fl are up
around us and on the radar screen we could see black
blotches marking the fi ercest part of the thunderstorms.
“Gonna have to take another 20 penetrations just to be
sure,” announced navigator Major Fox, “This thing’s
growing in front of us.”
Sharp fl ashes were all over us and rain streamed off the
windscreen in rivers. I went to my canvas seat and
watched the dawn break to reveal the stormy looking
clouds that had been throwing us around all night.
Two hours later I woke up, my lap harness taut. The
plane was lurching violently to one side, followed closely
by a drop in the noise of the engines as we corkscrewed
down towards the foaming waves beneath.
After punching the eye wall for what felt like minutes,
we emerged once more into the tranquil eye and weaved
our way to fi nd the centre. Our last fl ight through the eye
was at 0925, recording just 50 knots, after which we
headed for home having
burnt 50,000lb of fuel in
ten and a half hours.
After the violent
lurchings of a Category 1
hurricane I could barely
imagine what it would be
like to fl y in one of the
worst storms. “When the
turbulence is so wild that you need three of you to handle
the plane and the instruments are being shaken around
so much that the needles just wobble in front of your eyes,
you know you’re just along for the ride,” said Nickels.The 53rd Weather
Reconnaissance
Squadron extracts
live data from
hurricanes by
flying into them“Our max wind speed there was 88
knots,” confi rmed Dutton. “That makes Irene a