Page 57 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2021

Hurricane Hunters:
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron
surveillance. We fill in data gaps where it’s lacking or non existent. The only way to accurately do it is with a plane.”
Smithies says what many people don’t know is that they also stay busy in winter flying storm systems. “We’re a year round operational squadron.”
During hurricanes and winter storms, sensors aboard the C-130 planes are constantly recording data to onboard computers that within seconds relay it to forecasters in real time. “They see it as we collect it and are able to adjust their forecasts as we’re flying,” he said. “It’s distributed to various agencies from national offices to local weather offices.”
Some might say the Hurricane Hunters had an inauspicious
start. They began in 1943 with
what Smithies calls “sort of a bar
bet” when an instrument flying commander went up to observe a storm off the coast of Texas. “They didn’t even have satellite back
then,” he marvels. Soon pilots were surveying off the Atlantic Ocean in World War II. The 403 Wing came to Keesler in the 1970s and has operated as reservists since 1993.
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