In The Eye Of A Hurricane—Literally

Columnist Bob Drury shares a firsthand storm-chasing experience

July 3, 2013














To get to a hurricane's inner sanctum—the eye—the Hurricane Hunters have to punch through the most powerful part of the storm: the cylindrical eyewall, where two hundred miles of spinning thunderstorms tighten and intensify into one of Mother Nature's most punishing exhibits of centripetal energy. The plane they fly—appropriately called a Hercules—can take the pounding of heavy hail, rain, lightning, massive turbulence, and 150 mph crosswinds. When flying through particularly bad eyewalls, the rain is so thick and concentrated that it’s basically a solid wall of water. So their specially-modified W-C130J "weatherbird" has armored six-bladed propellers, which plow through these walls of rain like a boat prop, churning the precipitation so that it hits the jet intake as a "mist." This keeps the engines from "drowning" and flaming out.

For the last two years, as the producer and director of a documentary TV series about the Hurricane Hunters, I'd flown with them into every major storm. So I'd grown accustomed to being mistreated by eyewalls—getting smacked by microbursts, losing 500 feet in a split second, and feeling the plane shake like it’s coming apart. Along the way, I'd grown particularly fond of the moment when, boom, the plane crashes into something (the extreme pressure gradient between eyewall and eye), and we punch into the twenty-mile-wide eye, which is indeed beautiful and calm, as lore and legend suggest. Blue sky above, framed by beautiful circular swirls of vast clouds. It looks like God is using His finger to stir the foam in a huge 200-mile-wide cappuccino.

As a director, I'm always eager for the plane to fly into truly wild storms and eyewalls with my cameras rolling. And I got much more than I wished for on this one. From the beginning, everything about this flight felt eerie and special, from the tenor of the jokes to the color of the sky. Otherwise typical things took on a weird quality of foreshadowing. As we were inbound to the storm there was some routine ribbing of the newbie Capt. Meister. The Hurricane Hunters have a preternatural ability to stay cool and wisecrack even as they send themselves into ever-increasing vortices of danger. On my first hurricane flight back in 2010, as the plane shook and rattled and I was reasonably certain we would be commencing our death spiral any second, I couldn't help but notice that the pilots, while deftly handling the turbulence, were also cracking jokes about who was more adept at barbecuing things wrapped in bacon.

The jokes were flowing this afternoon, too . . . until Kevin Green, the flight's dapper Navigator from New Orleans with the most perfectly-groomed mustache I have even seen, said "today feels good. Everything is kind of jiving." There was a brief moment of quiet. Nobody ever says that. Nobody ever talks about how good things are going to go. It was the first of many so-called jinxes.

The objective on this flight was to criss-cross Rafael in a pattern that allowed for a detailed vivisection.  We'd punch into the storm at 10,000 feet, collect windspeed readings as we rode the rocky cells of the cyclone's central dense overcast, and then fly three or four times through the storm's eye to track Rafael's movement and get pressure readings revealing its strength. One of the trickiest things that the Hurricane Hunters actually "hunt" is the elusive zero-wind-point inside the eye, where the cyclone's spiraling winds diminish down to nothing. That's where the true center of the storm is, and the Hurricane Hunters get a "fix" on it by flying through it. Connecting the dots of these fixes over time, forecasters can plot the storm's course. But because this dead zero point is invisible, and because it moves—like the eye of a whirlpool in your bathtub—it's hard to find.  Neither satellites nor drones can pinpoint it. Hence the need for the Hurricane Hunters.
As we entered Rafael's outer rain bands we were greeted by booming thunderstorm cells. Rafael was last clocked at Tropical Storm strength, and the big question was will it become a hurricane? The crew didn't want the storm to grow—Bermuda was directly in its path. At the same time, they did want Devon to earn her first "pennie"—a flying penetration of a hurricane's eye which they tally with numerical patches on their arms. One pilot has 300.

Kevin Green's job was to pick the safest route through this minefield. The C-130's radar is coded in a color spectrum that reflects density of rainfall and pockets of turbulence. Blue means heads-up. Red is bad. Flashing white is the worst. On the screen, the plane's avatar was currently headed toward lots of red. Kevin helped the pilots plot a course around some of the worst patches. But the rest just couldn't be avoided.

As we hit the rough patches and started bouncing, I situated myself in a nook of the cockpit just aft of Brad's head, jammed one hand up against a piece of airframe, and wielded my camera in the other. I looked out at the flexing wings and bouncing engines and thought of a segment we'd shot a few days earlier, about the bad-ass maintenance cadre that is responsible for ensuring that these planes can sustain the pounding of a storm, land, and then be ready to fly again only hours later. One fact that stuck in my craw seemed to defy physics—these four, 4,700 horsepower engines are each attached by only four bolts. And the bolts aren't even that big. I had held them in my hand, and marveled at not only their shortness, but the surprisingly thin threads.

One of the maintenance crew members had assured me that the cantilevered bolts acted as a tension mount, adding, "besides, they're actually designed to break away if need be, because you don't want the engine attached if it's failing." Small consolation now, as I watched Rafael begin to stress-test those eight-inch pieces of metal responsible for pulling 164,000 of airplane through a cyclone. With me in it.

It was about this time that the weather officer at his instrumentation console in the back of the plane announced, "We're going to start picking up heavy lightning." Brad assured us that no matter how bad it got tonight, he was not planning on ditching. I'd never heard a pilot say that and by this point I'd deputized myself to be the Tabulator of Omens, and so I added that one to the Jinx Tally.

The plane's external sensors and the dropsonde that was fired from the plane's belly—it's an expendable weather device packed with recording instruments that looks like a parachuting torpedo—were giving the first significant data readings from the storm's first quadrant, including a windspeed of 93 knots. Those are hurricane force winds, well beyond the 74 mph winds needed to qualify as a Category 1. But they'd need to log hurricane force winds in a second quadrant before they could officially upgrade the storm to a hurricane. Brad told Devon she could take the plane on its first pass through the eyewall. Devon put her hand to her mic and moved it close to her mouth. "I have the plane," she said confidently.
As the radar showed the telltale curvature that suggested we were entering the eyewall, we hit our first truly massive lightning field. Even for late afternoon, it got very dark. "We're in the soup," said Brad. "Co-pilot is flying blind." Suddenly the blackness beyond the windshield was lit up with rat-a-tat flashes of lightning. Arcs of electricity fractured just beyond the front glass, illuminating all of us inside. Everyone knew the odds of getting hit by lightning were high. One Hurricane Hunter had told me of a lightning strike that had punched a hole in the plane's nose, traveled as a visible blast of electricity through the fuselage, and exited the rear bay door, leaving a foot-wide gash.

I was contemplating this when—"Crack!" A bright flash struck right in front of us, coupled with a noise like a breaking branch. We bounced like jackhammer and the crew made a quick assessment. There was a problem. The lightning bolt had taken out the Navigator's communications with the ground. Without full power on the comms, we risked being little more than a ghost to the outside world. Kevin worked to restart the link. He also checked the radar and maps to see how long we'd be in these heavy lightning fields. "All night," he reported.

We finally broke out of the dark clouds only to be swallowed by a bizarre field of opaque orange cloud periodically zapped to whiteness by lightning. These orange skies were something none of the crew had ever seen before, and they were particularly disconcerting to Devon, who'd recently spent considerable time in simulators during her C130 training. If you "crash" in the sims, the digital windshield turns this same orange color, the universally recognized sign for "you're dead." Now we were surrounded by it.

After being rocked and rotated 45 degrees to the left, and then jarred back to upright just as suddenly, we broke out of the dense orange mist into the storm's eye. The drop in air pressure caused us to plummet, and I was treated to a once-in-a-lifetime array of sunset light spilling over a terraced combination of swirling clouds that looked like a layer cake. The entire subset of the color palette from orange to yellow was on fire in the sky. We were at 10,000 feet, and the cloud ceiling was at 12,000. Although beautiful, this storm's eye qualified was actually fairly ragged. When a storm is well organized you get the clean, cylindrical "stadium effect." But Rafael's poorly defined eye meant the storm was in flux, either growing or dying. No one was sure which.

This also made it harder for the weather officer and the pilots to find the eye's dead center. They had no choice but to "sail" the storm's swirling winds, keeping them perpendicular to the left wing to ensure that the plane was headed to the invisible true center. They found a spot in the sky where wind readings fell to one knot. The bullseye. The Hunters fired a dropsonde, and got their first fix. Forty-five minutes from now, when they fired another dropsonde, they'd be able to connect the two coordinates and refine forecasts on the storm's movement and direction. Moreover, the GPS and weather data flowing back to us indicated that Rafael’s air pressure was dropping. The storm was intensifying considerably.

We punched out of the eye on the far side and did the aerial rodeo back to the outer fringes of the storm, where Devon handed the controls back to Brad. He briefly guided the Hercules along the storm's outer reaches and then turned and headed back for the center. Inbound again, we received a second hurricane-force windspeed reading. It was official. Rafael was now a bona fide hurricane. And it was still aiming straight for Bermuda.

Now Devon turned to Brad with a request.  "You mind if I have the aircraft back?"
"Absolutely," he said. "You need to take this into the eye." Not only would Devon get her first hurricane pennie, but she'd also be at the helm when she did. It wouldn't be easy. Kevin relayed more bad news from the radar station. Severe turbulence at 12 o'clock. Devon was going to earn her pennie.

The storm had grown considerably more violent since our last penetration. Aas we hit the eyewall the winds picked up, the C-130's thin metal skin was rattled by what sounded like thousands of oversized BBs. The armored edges of the props were grinding through sheets of hail so thick that it must have been like jamming a propeller into a tub of ice. Suddenly a huge thunderclap exploded and the clouds that encompassed us flashed a bright, almost blinding white. We were in a monster lightning field, and I could swear I was seeing a slight purple sheath around each arc.
The voices over the comms were calm. The information they reported was not.

"Very strong patch of turbulence ahead. Five nautical miles, 12 o'clock. Here it comes."

"60 knots of shear. Pressure still falling."

In the cockpit, the pressure was rising.

Now Kevin began receiving bizarre, and rarely-seen, radar returns. To the left of our flight path, about three miles away, he reported a row of "hook echoes"—unusual, comma-shaped patches of white embedded in the eyewall that can indicate rare meso-cyclones, in essence airborne tornadoes. Two of these unpredictable hooks were in our path, and would be tough to avoid. Kevin suggested to Devon that she attempt to flank them by about a mile. But the plane was losing maneuverability. Brad asked Devon about our power. She replied that she was flying at full power. The aircraft started shaking dramatically. I heard Devon say "wow," and another crew member whisper, "uh oh." Finally the aircraft's robotic voice came alive. "Check altitude."

I looked at the radar. Do you remember the scene in Star Wars when it dawns on our heroes that what looks like a small planet in the distance is not a planet at all, but the Death Star? We had that same experience, but our shape wasn't a sphere. It was a black wedge—a bizarre void triangle that suddenly popped up on the left side of the radar screen moving toward our plane. The crew didn't know what it was. The assumption was that it must be an insanely thick chunk of storm that the radar couldn't penetrate. It looked to me like a high-altitude Bermuda triangle—blanking the radar, getting closer, about to envelope the aircraft.

We could not evade it. The mysterious dark notch moved asymmetrically, and it seemed to have its heart set on engulfing our plane. As it swept over us, filling the left side of the radar screen, we were rocked by the worst turbulence yet. We were hitting Hurricane Rafael during a rare moment of what's known as massive cyclogenesis, when the storm is growing incredibly rapidly. So even though Rafael was a technically a Category 1 in terms of windspeed, at its core it was considerably more turbulent and violent than most Category 5's. No one on board could remember encountering more storm energy. For good reason. The After-Action reports would confirm that Rafael doubled in size while we were in it. 
Now we were being thrown to the left, to the right, up, down; each jarring displacement occurring in just a fraction of a second. The force was unrelenting. You couldn’t orient yourself because there was no visible horizon to measure against, but your body could feel itself being knocked off its upright axis constantly. The shaking—and the prognosis for our collective safety—became so ominous that something truly rare happened: the cockpit became quiet. No joking. No preternatural cool. No casual banter amidst the crisis.

It also got very warm very fast. From the bodies under stress. When everyone stops talking and the temperature in the cockpit skyrockets due to body heat, you know it's serious. I ditched my handholds and made sure I was strapped into the bench next to Kevin. I could see his big frame bouncing and straining against his shoulder harnesses. My camera's mounted mini-LED lit up his face. Sweat streamed from his brow. He didn't look scared, just focused. And a little worried. As did Brad, the aircraft's commander. I had never seen that before. Brad broke the silence. "We may have a tornado off our left wing here."

The plane was knocked sideways violently, and the engines started to scream with exertion, as if angry or in pain. That black notch was a meso-cyclone—a large high altitude tornado spinning a tailwind over the plane's spine and canceling out 80 knots of forward airspeed. We could feel our forward momentum bleed off drastically. The Hurricane Hunters fly into eyewalls at a Thunderstorm Penetration Speed of 181 knots. Instantaneously losing 80 of those knots is bad. With the wind over the wings no longer sufficient to give the aircraft lift, we fell like a rock.

The pilots tilted the plane nose-high, with the props churning skyward at full power, clawing for whatever scraps of purchase the air could give us. Massive lightning strikes lit up the deluge we were now flying through. I looked out the window and saw the props, 20 feet away, performing their familiar ritual of churning like boat propellers underwater, despite the fact that we were at 10,000 feet. But this time it was really hard to see the props. Not because it was night; there was plenty of lightning for illumination. It was because the water was so incredibly thick. It was like a murky airborne river was flowing between me and the wing.

Devon soldiered on fearlessly, fighting for control of the aircraft. I later learned that, fortuitously perhaps, she had no idea how bad things were, as this was her first hurricane flight. She considered this mega-violence par for the course. But she was also an experienced pilot, and she quickly recognized what kind of trouble we were in when the plane went into emergency mode. When system failure is imminent, the plane's computer shuts down all extraneous dashboard data and de-clutters the HUD so that it gives you just the most important readouts that pilots need to stay alive. Airspeed. Altitude. Pitch.

And then it happened.
The plane's automated computer voice warned us, "Check rudder, check rudder."

Kevin the Navigator advised the pilots we were in a critical bank, tilting downward severely to the right. The crew's snap assessment was that the right wing was dropping because of what seemed to be the sudden loss of the two right engines. In the effort to get upward thrust, the jet intakes had pointed more directly into the thick onslaught of falling rain, causing the two engines on the right wing to ingest a thicker concentration of water and essentially drown—an unusual mechanical failure known as "water intrusion." Making matters worse, the tornado spun around and began pushing violently down on the dipped right wing, beginning to flip us.

The plane jackknifed, seemed to stop in midair, twisted to the side, and started to slide backwards. Despite the two remaining engines at full throttle, we were fast losing airspeed.

The computerized voice again. "Check altitude."

Too late. We were stalling. Lift was gone. I could feel us falling backwards and to the right. The computerized called out, "Stall, stall."

"I have the aircraft," Brad said.

"You have the aircraft," replied Devon.

I could tell it stung her to relinquish control. But it had nothing to do with her skill or performance. Brad recognized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, and that every ounce of experience would have to be brought to bear immediately in order to save the craft. To save us all.

My audio technician had rigged the C-130's comms system so that I could hear everything over the radio. Now I heard something new—groans—as Brad physically wrestled with the yoke, struggling and fighting to steer the plane and keep it from falling out of the sky.

What Brad did next was remarkable. Recognizing that we had no more lift, and that his right wing was being pushed down in an arc that was about to flip us over, he spontaneously dropped the plane sharply nose-down in sync with the dropping wing, and went into a deliberate nose-dive. His plan was to use gravity and freefall to regain airspeed and get more wind moving over the wings, thus giving us more lift. It seems counterintuitive, in retrospect—going into a dive to get the lift that will keep us up. But such is the wonder of aerodynamics. Lift is control. And the aerodynamic force perpendicular to the direction of motion is lift, even if that motion is straight down.
Brad knew that he had 10,000 feet to work with, so his choice was to sacrifice altitude for airspeed. When he suddenly dipped the nose, it felt like going over a cliff. We lost 800 feet in two seconds. The engines whined and our downward plummet introduced a new kind of violence, due to the fact that we were now slicing through the storm vertically. In the middle of the nose-diving I had the distinct thought, "So this is what mayday feels like." But then a second thought (or perhaps hope) occurred: No, it can’t be mayday. A film crew just happens to be on the first Hurricane Hunter plane to go down since 1974? No chance. Those slim odds were my comfort. Momentarily. And then my optimism dimmed as I wondered, "Maybe jinxes are real."

En route to oblivion, something changed. And as with many things in aviation, I heard it before I felt it. The engine noise had a new roar. It seemed like the drowning engines were sputtering back to life, jump-started by the freefall. The dead props, moving downward through air and thick water, were pressured back into rotation. Our descent started to go from vertical to angled.

"We got the airspeed." It was Brad's voice. "Climbing back up; there's our altitude."

No one else spoke as we bottomed out, hit the nadir of our descent curve, and began ascending.

Allow me to clarify something about the danger mechanics of this episode. It wasn’t that we'd nearly crashed. It was that we were crashing, and the pilots un-crashed us.

It was over. We leveled off, left the flashing white radar patches behind us, and punched out of the eyewall into the eye. "We should be coming in the clear air soon," said Kevin.

I leaned into Brad and asked him what the heck had just happened. "That eyewall, mixed in with the tornadoes that were right off of our wing, was the most severe weather I've ever been. Hopefully, will ever be in. We were one to two seconds away from catastrophic failure of the aircraft."

The after-actions confirmed that if Brad hadn't taken us into a nosedive at precisely that moment, we would have flipped over and gone down a second later. All souls lost at sea. Our lives were all saved by Brad’s split-second heroics. That was the good news. The bad news? We didn't get the storm's second fix. And without that fix, no one would know Hurricane Rafael's path.

It was then that I realized what this Hurricane Hunting crew was thinking. We had to go back in. Back into the Mayday Factory.