In the eye of the storm

Nine thousand feet in the air, FIU senior Pete Curran wasn’t experiencing the typical plane flight with peanuts, beverages and a movie July 22. Instead, he was surrounded by computers charting data, scientists launching measuring instruments and was preparing for penetration of a hurricane eye wall. Curran was on board a Hurricane Hunter plane flying through Hurricane Dora, a research opportunity he received through an internship at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

(For a slide show of the day’s events, click below. Photos courtesy Pete Curran.)

“I was there at the right place, the right time, and I had always expressed a desire to fly in the planes,” said Curran. “In fact, I had toured one 15 years ago in California, and one of the guys who I spoke to that day happened to be the flight director on this very plane. It was his 500^th eye wall penetration.”

Before coming to Miami and pursuing a degree in atmospheric science at FIU, Curran spent 28 years as a paramedic and fire captain at Orange County Authority in California. Part of his duties included providing information about high-impact weather events to management. Curran eventually joined Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hurricane Liaison Team.

“Even though I was the ‘weather guy,’ I never had that piece of paper, I never had the degree that said meteorologist,” said Curran. “One of the times I was called down to the National Hurricane Center for a couple days, I was walking around campus and came across Hugh Willoughby, who offered to tailor a program for me in meteorology that still allowed me to intern at the center. FEMA told me that if I was a local, they would work with me as much as possible around my school schedule.”

Growing Program

Curran is one of five FIU undergraduates interning this summer with NOAA, the NHC’s parent agency. While Curran deals with communicating the different potentials of weather to emergency managers and speaking with federal and state agencies about potential outcomes of weather, other students have assisted in translating the NHC’s website into Spanish and measuring air-sea interaction in hurricanes.

“NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and Miami forecast office moved onto FIU’s campus in 1995. We finally have an atmospheric science/meteorology program with good students who can benefit from collaboration with these world-class organizations and contribute meaningfully to their important work,” said Willoughby, distinguished research professor in FIU’s Department of Earth & Environment. Willoughby, who worked at NOAA from 1975 to 2002, is a veteran of more than 400 flights into the eyes of storms.

Today, FIU’s program has four faculty members and graduates four to five undergraduate students annually.

‘Way Cool’

When scientists began to arrange a Hurricane Hunter flight through Hurricane Dora off the coast of Mexico to conduct research on how hurricanes weaken over cold water, Curran was quick to volunteer to be a member of the crew.

After a three-hour flight from San Diego to the weakening storm off the coast of Mexico, the plane spent three hours flying a pattern through Hurricane Dora. Once in the storm, the crew dropped a total of 19 instruments known as dropsondes to record wind, air temperature, pressure and humidity, and launched 16 buoys for ocean temperature readings.

“As an observer, I was put to work right away – there wasn’t a stewardess serving water and peanuts, there weren’t any iPods or movies,” said Curran.  “We were entering data into software, recording the average temperatures before the buoys finally sank, watching graphs, answering questions and listening to the constant communication between the staff on board.”

“It was definitely as exciting as I thought it was going to be,” said Curran. “It was way cool.”

— Emily Cochrane.