Global Hawk Hurricane Hunters.

[Aric Dunn]

Interesting Idea.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/09/07/ ... e-hunters/


Missions
http://espo.nasa.gov/missions/hs3/hs3-calendar

[ozonepete]

Fascinating. I read it was coming but didn't know it was going to be this soon. I will definitely be on that site for every flight they make. This is ground-breaking!

[ozonepete]

The site is a little hard to navigate, but it appears to be saying that a drone went into Leslie this morning. I couldn't get past the calendar to find any data though.

Here's the NASA site link:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/09/07/ ... e-hunters/

[HurricaneAndrew92]

Doesn't this put people out of a job?

[tolakram]

Doesn't this put people out of a job?

or out of harms way. Let's see if these can actually survive flying through a big hurricane while being controlled on the ground.

[brunota2003]

They started it up again finally? The Global Hawk was first tested out a few years ago as a hurricane hunter, but it was stationed out in AZ I think. Moving it to VA makes a lot more sense. I think there should be 3 bases...one in the Caribbean, one in the Gulf and one in VA/MD area. That way we could have a couple nearest to the storms, regardless of where they are in the basin, and if there is more than one storm (Leslie/Michael for example), each area could help cover another area (with a range of 11,000 miles...you can reach anywhere in the basin, even Africa! That plane could reach Iraq from VA and still have 4,000 miles of operational range left!).

It is only, roughly, 2800 miles to the Azores from the east coast of VA. This means we could (FINALLY) know the intensities of storms like Kirk or Michael, that are well out of range of conventional hurricane hunter aircraft. The one GH carries 88 dropsondes. That means it can fly around the storm and drop 50 or 60 of those so we can get actual data in the data nonexistent regions of the Atlantic. Could you imagine real data in the models, showing the strength of the Bermuda High? If they can get the funding and sources...no more having to wonder if the models have the high right, because they'll have real data in them! That would help improve track forecasts a lot, I would think.

[JPmia]

Yeah, I think this brings us to a new era of hunting these storms especially ones out at sea. I would supsect the data they get will improve forecasting and models? I can forsee a time when they send a fleet of these out to investigate a developing storm or a major threatening a land mass.

[wxman57]

I've seen a number of presentations by groups associated with the unmanned flights into hurricanes, along with lots of presentations on the types of instruments that could be flown. Note that the Global Hawk is not going to be flown IN hurricanes, the plan is to fly the periphery of the hurricane as the G-IV does now. They don't want to risk flying a million dollar UAV into a hurricane. They might eventually fly over the TOP of a hurricane, dropping mini dropsondes.

One unmanned plane that WILL be flown into the eye of a hurricane is the "GALE". It's sort of like a modified dropsonde with wings and a propeller. It will be dropped from a P3 out of the AXBT tube and it's wings will pop out and engine will start - keeping it aloft for an hour or more while gathering data. The thing costs $30,000 and is not recoverable.

http://www.uasvision.com/2011/10/03/noa ... hurricane/