The Hurricane Hunters

by Ivan Ray Tannehill

Of course, it was known that at the surface of the earth or the sea there was a small calm region in the center—an oddity in the weather, for no other kind of large storm has such a center. The tornado may have, but it is a very small storm in comparison with a hurricane. Its writhing, twisting funnel at the vortex is hollow, according to the testimony of a few men who have looked up into it and lived to tell about it. In the tropical storm, however, nothing was known about the central winds in the upper levels. There was no proof that strong winds did not blow outward from the center up there and a plane would be thrown into the ring of powerful winds around the eye. The only way to find out was to fly into it and have a look, but there was no one at the moment who wanted to venture into it.

On the outer fringes of the hurricane, where light, gusty winds blew across deep ocean waters, stirred at the surface by giant sea swells, the hurricane hunters were fairly well satisfied with their findings. In the middle regions, where deluges of rain slanted through raging winds and low-flying clouds, the grim fact was that they knew amazingly little about what was going on in the upper layers. Their balloons sent up to explore the racing winds above were lost in thick clouds before they had risen more than a few hundred feet.

On beyond, somewhere in that last inner third of the whirlwind, the increasing gales rose to a deadly peak and torrents of rain merged with the spindrift of mountainous wave crests to blot out the view of the observer. Within this whirling ring of air and water lay the vortex. When the mariner entered, sometimes slowly, but more often suddenly, the wind and rain ceased and usually there would be no violence except the rise and fall of the sea surface, like a boiling pot on a scale which was huge in fact but small in proportion to the extent of the storm itself. The entire whirling body of air would likely be bigger than the state of Ohio; the calm central region might be the size of the city of Columbus.

Here in this inner third were the mysteries. Where could all this air go—streaming so violently around and in toward that mysterious center but never getting there? It must go up, the storm hunters argued, for what else could produce all this tremendous rainfall if not the upward rush of moist air to be cooled in the upper levels? And then, why no rain or wind in the central region? Some argued that the air must descend in the vortex, growing warmer and dry in descent, but why the descent? And finally, if the air was moving upward in all this vast area outside the calm center, what finally became of it?

Even if the storm hunters were unable to answer these questions, they could render a service of enormous value if they could track the storm and predict its movements. But they knew that the only sure way to track a hurricane over the ocean was to find its center and follow it persistently and accurately from day to day. Tests had shown that it was not practical to send ships into the storm to find its center and report by radio. Ships couldn’t move fast enough. If the storm hunters had known enough about it, they might have concluded that a plane could enter the storm in the least dangerous sector and find its way swiftly to the calm center through some upper level without being hurled into the angry sea. If it reached the center of the vortex—usually called the “eye of the hurricane”—the navigator might be able to see the sky and the sun by day, the stars by night. Here the pilot might be able to figure out his position, as an ocean-going vessel does on some occasions, and that would be the location of the storm to be placed on the charts of the storm hunters in the weather office. But nobody took it seriously until after the United States got into the Second World War.

When the request for funds to hire commercial flyers in hurricane emergencies was presented to the Bureau of the Budget, the examiners asked why the Weather Bureau didn’t try to get the co-operation of the Army and Navy. Why couldn’t they have their pilots carry out the flights as needed? There was some talk about it in 1942, but at that time there were no experienced Army or Navy pilots to spare.

Naturally, the military pilots who thought about flying into the eyes of hurricanes wanted to know what it was like in the upper levels and in the center. Air Force pilots who expected to go on bombing missions to Germany thought it might be more dangerous flying into the vortex of a hurricane than over an enemy stronghold with the air full of flak and Nazi fighters rising on all sides. Nobody looked upon the assignment with any enthusiasm. One discouraging fact was that the reports of shipmasters who had been in the eyes of hurricanes didn’t agree very well. Few of them had the ability to describe what they saw. And those who had the ability told a story that was not reassuring. For example, one of the first was the master of the ship Idaho, caught in the China Sea in September, 1869, as a typhoon struck. With little of the precious sea room needed to maneuver, the ship soon was obliged to lie to and take it. Afterward, when by some miracle the ship had made its way to shore, the master calmly described his experiences while they were fresh:

“With one wild, unearthly, soul-chilling shriek the wind suddenly dropped to a calm, and those who had been in these seas before knew that we were in the terrible vortex of the typhoon, the dreaded center of the whirlwind. Till then the sea had been beaten down by the wind, and only boarded the vessel when she became completely unmanageable; but now the waters, relieved from all restraint, rose in their own might. Ghastly gleams of lightning revealed them piled up on every side in rough, pyramidal masses, mountain high—the revolving circle of wind, which everywhere inclosed them, causing them to boil and tumble as though they were being stirred in some mighty cauldron. The ship, no longer blown over on her side, rolled and pitched, and was tossed about like a cork. The sea rose, toppled over, and fell with crushing force upon her decks. Once she shipped immense bodies of water over both bows, both quarters, and the starboard gangway at the same moment. Her seams opened fore and aft. Both above and below, men were pitched about the decks and many of them injured. At twenty minutes before eight o’clock the vessel entered the vortex; at twenty minutes past nine o’clock it had passed and the hurricane returned blowing with renewed violence from the north, veering to the west. The ship was now only an unmanageable wreck.”

For many years, the classic case was the obliging typhoon that moved across the Philippines with its center passing directly over the fully-equipped weather observatory in Manila. It happened on October 20, 1882. The wind which came ahead of the center was of destructive violence, reaching above 120 miles an hour in a final mad rush from the west-northwest before the calm set in. It was not an absolute calm. There were alternate gusts and lulls. The way the winds acted led the observer to think that the center was about sixteen miles in diameter. He said:

“The most striking thing about it was the sudden change in temperature and humidity. The temperature jumped from 75° to 88°. The air was saturated at 75° but the humidity dropped from 100% to 53% in the center and then rose to 100% again as the center passed. When the wind suddenly ceased at the beginning of the calm and the sun came out, many people opened their windows but they slammed them shut right away, because the hot, dry air seemed to burn the skin.”