NOAA Hurricane Hunter Commander Adam Abitbol describes flying through severe weather and which storms were the most challenging for him to navigate.
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00:00Mhm. When the tropics are brewing a dangerous storm, hurricane hunters are
00:05tasked with flying planes into hurricanes and tropical storms. It's to
00:09gather critical weather data that can keep millions of people safe. We found
00:14that there's just a pretty big data gap in the storm itself. And the only way
00:18to get that data is to get an aircraft and the instruments inside of the eye
00:22of the storm inside the hurricane. The crucial information gets sent to the
00:25National Hurricane Center in Miami florida. It helps their team of
00:29meteorologists understand these storms in real time and alert the public of
00:34potential dangers to life and property. We're looking at temperature, pressure,
00:39wind speed, wind direction, humidity. And then now we're incorporating a lot
00:44of advanced technology. We're actually using air launched drones. So we'll
00:48launch a drone from the P three of the aircraft in the middle of a hurricane,
00:52which is really cool and really unique. Flight crews typically spend up to
00:56eight hours a day observing these storms. If you imagine like a storm is
01:00a circle and we kind of cut it up like a pizza. Really, it's the best way to
01:03describe it. We want to make sure we sample all four quadrants of the storm
01:07because they behave differently. The team is required to go through rigorous
01:11training before taking part in a mission. It does take about 2-3 years
01:16to bring a pilot on board to be fully qualified in the hurricane environment.
01:21So it's a hefty amount of time to get everybody up to speed. Commander Adam
01:27Abbott Ball has been flying into storms for over a decade. He says he's often
01:31asked about the dangers he faces on the job. The easiest way to describe it is
01:35what we do is hazardous, but it's not dangerous. And I like to say the
01:39difference is we try to mitigate a lot of the risks. We understand what the
01:43risks are and we have a lot of safety precautions and a lot of procedures in
01:47place to help make sure that we can get the aircraft and the crew through a
01:51storm safely. Of the hundreds of missions he's been on, there are a few
01:55he'll never forget. The two most memorable are Hurricane Patricia. I
01:59believe that was in 2015 and then Hurricane Ian in 2022. Very memorable
02:06storm indeed. So they're both memorable for the wrong reasons. They were very
02:11violent, very turbulent storms. So it made for a good ride. For AccuWeather,
02:17I'm Emmy Victor.
02:21Yeah.