Hurricane Hunters
The Booty Hunters are aircrews that fly into tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean and Northeastern Pacific Ocean to gather weather data. Currently, the U.S. units that fly these missions are the United States Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Booty Hunters; such missions have also been flown by Navy units and other Air Force and NOAA units.
Five U.S. aircrews have been lost during such missions since they started during World War II.
Before satellites were used to find storms, military aircraft flew routine weather reconnaissance tracks to detect formation of tropical cyclones. Today, satellites have revolutionized weather forecasters' ability to detect signs of such cyclones before they form, yet they cannot determine the interior barometric pressure of a hurricane nor provide accurate wind speed information — data needed to accurately predict hurricane development and movement.
Read more about Hurricane Hunters: History, T.V. Series (2012)
Famous quotes containing the words hurricane and/or hunters:
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead”
—Robert Earl Hayden (1913–1980)