Flying into a hurricane is rather James Bond-like, but a Carrollwood man has done it several times, bumping along through complete darkness to the calm eye, all for the greater good.
By RYAN MEEHAN
Published August 6, 2004
[Times photo: Mike Pease]
When he’s not flying around or into violent storms, meteorologist Jack Parrish spends time in his office, in a hangar at MacDill Air Force Base. That’s a model of a P-3 research plane overhead.
[Times photo: Mike Pease]
Dropsondes go where planes can’t: low. The devices descend from NOAA planes and beam back information on air temperature, humidity and pressure — what people on the ground might feel.
[Times photo: Mike Pease]
Jack Parrish usually travels on the Gulfstream G-IV, which gathers information on the hurricane’s periphery.
[Times photo: Mike Pease]
The Gulfstream has been taking test runs inside hurricanes to see how it fares. This week, the plane flew into Hurricane Alex off North Carolina.
[NOAA]
A satellite image of Hurricane Andrew. In 1992 Parrish flew into the storm, which destroyed his Miami home.
CARROLLWOOD - The first time Jack Parrish danced with a storm, it stepped on his toes.
It was Aug. 6, 1980, and a Category 5 hurricane named Allen was sweeping south of Haiti.
"It was plenty of storm," recalls Parrish, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As Parrish and his fellow scientists flew through the hurricane's bands toward its center, the storm tossed the plane around, sending mechanical sensors and on-board instruments flying through the cabin. Three people on the crew never flew again.
"From a meteorologist's point of view, that was the perfect storm," Parrish said of Allen, one of the most intense hurricanes on record. It eventually killed about two dozen people in Texas and Louisiana, forced 300,000 to evacuate and caused $1-billion in damage.
"In 25 years, I've never seen anything like it since."
* * *
Parrish, a resident of Original Carrollwood for the past decade, is part of a complex process. He and his fellow hurricane hunters work feverishly to compile information about each incoming storm. Their vast amounts of data get fed to the public in the form of colorful weather maps and palatable capsules of information.
Behind the scenes - thousands of feet above the Atlantic in the turbulent throes of a storm - more goes on than meets the eye. Tracking a storm involves more than measuring wind speed.
NOAA deploys two aircraft to do the job, a Gulfstream G-IV and a P-3 Orion, both stationed at MacDill Air Force Base.
The Gulfstream spends its time on the hurricane's periphery, measuring weather systems that could affect the main storm.
You'd be hard-pressed to imagine it flying through a tropical disturbance. This type of plane is primarily used as a business jet, but its sleek structure and ability to handily climb to high altitudes make it a good tool for storm reconnaissance, Parrish said.
Before takeoff, computer models generate specific spots around the storm that the Gulfstream must measure in order to collect the most relevant data.
"The forecast models are so smart, they're able to tell us, "If you're going out flying tomorrow, you need to hit these three bull's-eyes,' " Parrish said.
The P-3, on the other hand, flies directly into the storm. Starting at the "envelope" of the storm about 100 miles from its center, the plane begins to measure wind speeds. As it progresses through the storm's bands toward the center, the information generated, Parrish says, is akin to what one might see on the Weather Channel: a graph that charts the intensity of the storm from the center outward.
The P-3 will often make several trips through the eye of the hurricane - trips, Parrish says, that never get old. "It never becomes normal, because you never know what to expect."
In a well-developed eye, though, you can expect to be enchanted, Parrish says. Flying through the bands of the storm, the plane is encased in complete darkness. Upon entering the eye, the crew is hit with a burst of brightness so powerful, most need sunglasses to be able to see.
Because the eye is completely calm, the crew has a chance to grab some coffee or a bite to eat, Parrish said. But the break is usually short-lived. Even an eye that's 20 miles across only takes about four minutes to traverse. Although the weather inside the eye is placid, that doesn't mean the crew stops taking measurements.
"The beat goes on," Parrish said, "wherever you take the airplane."
Both aircraft also use dropsondes, small devices dropped from the belly of the planes.
As each of the footlong tubes descends toward the ocean, it beams information on air temperature, humidity and pressure to the plane several times a second.
Immediately after a dropsonde is launched, it deploys a parachute to help ensure a vertical descent, so air flows through the device's exposed bottom.
Parrish said the dropsondes afford the storm trackers the luxury of obtaining measurements from extremely low altitudes that are off-limits to the planes. Those low-altitude measurements indicate what people on the ground might feel if the storm were to make landfall.
The information from the "atmospheric soundings" is compiled onboard the plane, translated into a universally understood format, and sent to the National Hurricane Center and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
Meteorologists use the data to predict a hurricane's path and intensity in the coming days. But the system is far from foolproof. No matter how many measurements scientists take, hurricanes still sometimes defy all educated predictions.
In his office inside a hangar at MacDill, Parrish has storm tracks posted all over his walls. He's particularly proud of one from last year that details the path of Hurricane Isabel. Three days before it hit North Carolina's Outer Banks, Parrish and his crew were able to predict - within 60 miles - where it would make landfall.
Creating accurate storm tracks is crucial. With the Southeast's coastal areas becoming more heavily populated, hurricane-related evacuations will become more of a challenge with each passing year.
"Just as important as warning the right people," Parrish said, "is not warning the wrong people."
* * *
Another one of the hurricane tracks that turned out to be dead-on came 10 years into Parrish's career with NOAA, in 1992.
Parrish remembers flying on a P-3 into Hurricane Andrew while the storm was still well out in the Atlantic.
"We just knew it wouldn't go north," he said. And it didn't. It swept across South Florida. Parrish's home was one of the 25,000 that were demolished. (Another 100,000 were damaged.) He was only able to salvage his and his wife's headboard.
Andrew never did go north, but Parrish soon would. NOAA moved its operation from Miami International Airport to MacDill shortly after the storm.
Parrish took his wife and two young sons to Carrollwood, and bought a home more suited to withstanding a big storm. A few years later, when he and his wife had their first daughter, they would give her the headboard they recovered amid the wreckage of their house in Miami.
Even after all these years, flying into a hurricane is still exciting for Parrish. He spends most of his time these days on the Gulfstream but says he makes "guest appearances" on the P-3.
The Gulfstream, while largely contained to the area surrounding a storm, has been taking test runs inside hurricanes to see how it fares. This week, the plane made its way to the North Carolina coast and flew into Hurricane Alex, the first named storm of this season.
In his office, Parrish points to a photograph taken in the eye of a hurricane. The clouds rise up 50,000 feet and create what he calls a "stadium effect." But beyond that, he finds it difficult to describe the phenomenon in words.
"It's very easy to ooh and ah Mother Nature's ability to put together such perfect weather," Parrish says. "But it's very bothersome that something that majestic in the air can do so much damage on the ground."
