Hurricane Hunter nearly meets his match

  • Published
  • By By Master Sgt. Brian Lamar
  • 403rd Wing Public Affairs
KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  (This article is the final piece of a series featuring personal encounters of Air Force Reservists of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron "Hurricane Hunters". The Hurricane Hunters are the only Department of Defense organization who routinely fly into hurricanes to collect weather data for the National Hurricane Center's tropical cyclone forecasts.)

For a six-year Hurricane Hunter veteran in the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, there is not much extreme flying that can put Lt. Col. Brad Boudreaux on edge, but he nearly met his match during a mission flying Hurricane Rafael in the Bermuda Triangle Oct. 15, 2013.

Boudreaux began his preflight routine like any other as he turned off the alarm on his phone and rolled out of bed. His goal for the day was to collect data for a strengthening Tropical Storm Rafael and to instruct Capt. Devon Meister, the newest pilot in the squadron, during what would be her first penetration into an eye wall of a hurricane.

"It all started off as a pretty routine day. Things didn't start to get weird until we were flying toward the storm around sunset in the outer bands of the storm," Boudreaux said.

In a C-130J simulator, when a pilot experiences a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, the screen is filled with a red glow letting the aircrew know that they plane has crashed. Boudreaux and Meister had seen this function known affectionately as the "red screen of death" numerous times in simulation, but as the sun was setting and filtering through the clouds, the red glow it cast reminded them of failed attempts in a simulator and set an uneasy feeling in the crew's stomachs," said Meister.

"It was like an omen. I remember seeing that red glow and thought that I don't like to see that in simulation and definitely didn't care for it in real life either. It was an eerie, creepy feeling," said Boudreaux.

As the sky darkened to night, the hunters made their first pass through the storm with a bit of turbulence, lightning and hail. Capt. Tobi Baker, an aerial reconnaissance weather officer on the flight noted that the winds had increased and the storm they were in had grown into a Catergory II storm.

"We had been getting reports that the storm was rapidly intensifying. These storms are always unstable and rough when they are getting stronger," said Boudreaux.

Sometimes when the Hurricane Hunters are in a storm that is intensifying, they start getting some small and brief encounters with hail. During Rafael, the hail noise started getting really loud and that is when the hair on the back of my neck stood up because of the loud banging on the windscreen was right in front of my face, he said.

"You can't help but wonder how strong is that piece of glass in front of my face being hit by marbles at 180knots," said Boudreaux.

As if passing through a hail storm while flying through a hurricane at night over the Bermuda Triangle wasn't enough, the crew began to also experience lightning.

"We had a lot of lightning. I am not talking about the heat lightning that just lights up clouds and is pretty, but actually striking bolts of lightning," said Boudreaux.

One bolt hit Boudreaux's aircraft on the left wing, which played havoc with electronics. "We got hit, immediately all of our comms went out and I was looking around trying to talk to the rest of the crew and no one could hear each other," said Boudreaux.

Boudreaux sprang into action to solve the problem and immediately thought of a 110 volt circuit breaker. Once he pulled the breaker and reset it, everything came back on to normal.

As an aircraft commander, anytime something happens like that, you have to assess the situation and find out if you have any systems that are degraded and any conditions that would preclude having a safe flight and returning home. Everything appeared normal and I felt comfortable that we could continue, said Boudreaux.

While approaching the eyewall with Meister at the controls, they began to experience rapid-fire lightning and very strong turbulence. The air crew could see the intensity of the eyewall painted on the radar. The radar began showing severe precipitation indicators, extreme turbulence was flashing white all around them, said Boudreaux.

"We were getting roughed up pretty bad and Lt. Col. Kevin Green, the navigator for the mission, saw a section on the radar that looked like a large dry patch of air. We decided to fly toward that. Little did we know that it was a massive tornado-like weather pattern called a mesocyclone and that dry patch of air was actually a huge swirling vortex," Boudreaux said.

Once Meister and Boudreaux began experiencing the strong erratic winds produced by the mesocyclone, the WC-130J began to stall and descend toward the churning Atlantic Ocean below. Sensing danger and realizing the limit of Meister's experience flying in these conditions had been reached, Boudreaux took control of the aircraft and sacrificed another 1,000 feet of altitude in order to gain enough airspeed to thwart the stall. Immediately Boudreaux piloted the aircraft to a safer location inside the hurricane and checked on the crew.

The crew recovered their bearings and continued the mission gaining valuable information for the National Hurricane Center's forecast models. As a result of the radar data retrieved from their flight, weather officers and navigators in the Weather Reconnaissance Squadron now know additional information about the formation of mesocyclones and can take better actions to avoid them in future hurricane missions, said Boudreaux.