Patuxent River Naval Air Station was the second stop of five this week for the East Coast Hurricane Hunter Tour. Students from area schools, pubic officials and the general public were able to tour one of the two P-3 Orion aircraft used to fly into the eyes of hurricanes to study, track and predict extreme weather events. Accompanying the aircraft were officials from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Hurricane Center, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).
The tour was intended to be educational in advance of the hurricane season. The main message: be prepared. The message applies not onto to government agencies but also individuals and families, who were urged to have emergency plans in place.
Director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, William Read, harkened back to recent extreme weather events, most notably the onslaught of tornados across the South. He said, “No one expected anything that bad.” He said there haven’t been any major storms in our area recently, but he predicted “big, bad hurricanes in your future.” It’s one case where the past (locally) may not necessarily be prologue.
W. Craig Fugate, director of FEMA, in response to a question from St. Mary’s County Commissioner Dan Morris, said recent weather in the area hasn’t been any worse, based on the past. But, that isn’t a predictor of the future. “People don’t see that threat, but it is there,” he said.
Fugate said that some people think with today’s high tech society that computer models could be developed without sending the Hurricane Hunters into the eye. But the information gathered is vital and necessary, he asserted. “It gives information to local officials to make decisions.
As with the recent tornadoes, the officials emphasized the need to get information to people potentially affected by severe weather soon enough for them to make life-saving decisions.
At a subsequent St. Mary’s County Commissioner meeting, Commissioner Todd Morgan echoed what he heard at the briefing: “It always happens to someone else because we never think it could happen to us.”
In the United States, the Air Force, Navy and NOAA have all participated in the hurricane tracking missions. Scientists aboard the Lockheed P-3 Orions deploy GPS systems that continuously radio back measurements of pressure, humidity, temperature, and wind direction and speed.
Other stops on the five venue tour this week for the Hurricane Hunters were: Massachusetts Military Reservation in Falmouth; Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina; Savannah, Georgia International Airport; and Executive Airport in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
