Hurricane hunters demonstrate skills in Belize
While we are just entering the season in which our so called leaders argue daily and loudly about who is destroying the country and whose party is best suited to repair it, the greatest threat to Belize may lie not in any political disaster… but a natural one. And thankfully those people, mostly scientists, who we depend upon to mitigate such disasters, are quietly gearing up for any eventuality. Patrick Jones reports from the International Airport.
The opening of the 1998 hurricane season is still a month away but forecasters in the U.S. and the Caribbean are already busy preparing for what looks to be another active year in the tropics. Representatives of the National Hurricane Center in Miami have been on a weeklong tour of the region to meet with local authorities to share information and help increase public awareness of the threat of hurricanes.
Frank Lepore, Public Relations Officer
“It’s very important for our forecasters to know what it is like on the ground here. What kinds of capabilities do the local forecasters have, what kinds of problems do they have. Its very important for us but it also helps the forecasters in Belize know the people that they are talking to on the other end of the telephone when a storm approaches. So this face to face contact is very important.”
Belize is the second to last stop on the tour that began on April thirteenth in Acapulco, Mexico. The center piece of the tour is a hurricane hunter aircraft, a modified transport plane that routinely flies reconnaissance into the heart of severe storms to gather vital information, which helps forecasters to accurately track bad weather.
Lt. Col. Lamart Buggage, Flight Navigator
“We’ve got up to date equipment. We’ve got G.P.S. systems that give us exact winds at a particular point of the storm, the pressure, the humidity and also the direction that the storm is moving. And these are all things that we need to know as far as getting people out of the way of the storm.”
It is not a very fast aircraft but it is extremely rugged. The crew of six was most enthusiastic in showing visitors their workplace and the things they do to assist in making disaster preparedness less stressful.
But in terms of performance, the Airforce WC-130 aircraft is a reliable tool, which gives forecasters a virtual eye in the eye of a storm. It can stay airborne for up to fourteen hours and Flight Engineer Roy Cloud says teamwork is a key factor in ensuring that accurate data is collected.
Master Sergeant Roy Cloud, Flight Engineer
“The crew positions are very reliable and very good. The airplane is very good and we’d like to just keep on doing our job and informing people because we think that’s our major job… is inform the people so they can evacuate the storm. Use to hear of lots of deaths from storms. Now we give enough warning, twenty four, forty eight, seventy two hours where people can evacuate the coast area. So now you don’t have the large number of deaths; you only get the smaller numbers that couldn’t get out of the area or didn’t get the word.”
Patrick Jones
“This airplane travels at least a hundred miles. That is one hundred and seventy kilometers, on all four sides of a storm. In that way, storm trackers get to determine how far the most damaging winds extend in each direction.”
Lt. Col. Lamart Buggage
“What we are doing is we’re measuring the winds at each quadrant. A lot of time in a storm, we find that a certain part of that storm is stronger than at other parts. So let say the northwest quadrant is where the most weather is – the highest wind – we want to let people know that if they are going to be in the path of the northeast quadrant of that storm, that’s where you’re going to get he most damage and the most winds. The southeast may not be that bad. So what we’re doing is taking a look at the storm, taking a look at it from all directions and from all areas to see where the worse weather is.”
Buggage, who is an eighteen year veteran at flying reconnaissance missions, says the data that is collected by equipment on board the plane improves forecasts by as much as thirty percent.
Lt. Col. Lamart Buggage
“What the data does, it gives them a more accurate, a clearer picture of exactly what the storm is doing. They do collect a lot of data by satellite but one thing that limits their forecasting ability is cloud cover. You can only see so much by using satellite. By using a storm tracker or hurricane hunter aircraft we can go in and actually pinpoint the storm for them.”
Forecasters know that the role they play in protecting lives and property is invaluable and they rely heavily on all the help they can get. Hurricanes, while they may form anywhere the conditions are right, are not bound by geography. That is why nations in this part of the world are so meteorologically interdependent. Everyone plays their part.
Lt. Col. Lamart Buggage
“There’s a drop sonde operator and he drops an equipment, a piece of equipment called a drop sonde. And it’s like a weather balloon but instead of going up it goes down and while it’s dropping its transmitting wind information, pressure, temperature information directly back to the airplane. The airplane is linked to the National Hurricane Center via satellite with satellite communication systems. So as soon as the information gets to the airplane, it’s transmitted out the National Hurricane Center and they get it basically at the same time that we do.”
And much of that information is also now available on the internet.
Patrick Jones
“The hurricane hunter aircraft is not exactly a sight for sore eyes. But in times of a hurricane the data it provides could often mean the difference between life and death. Patrick Jones, for News Five.”
The hurricane hunter and its crew of scientists took off before noon for their final stop on the tour: Cancun, Mexico. To find out more about hurricanes tune in Sunday morning to the repeat broadcast of this week’s “One On One” with Dickie Bradley. Dickie’s guests are Chief Meteorologist Carlos Fuller and several members of the Miami Hurricane Team. Viewers in the districts can check with their local stations for airing times.
