The beautiful blue sky and pleasant breeze Tuesday on Galveston Island made me forget all about the date - April 15. For the first time in years, I filed an extension. But on this tax day, my attention was focused on Scholes Field and this plane, operated by the National Weather Service and our tax dollars:

This is the P-3 Hurricane Research plane. It's one of several planes that fly into hurricanes and tropical storms. You're probably more familiar with the larger C-130 Hurricane Hunter. While smaller, this storm does an important job sometimes flying at a different altitude than the C-130 gathering data used for forecasts and for research.
One of the unique features of the plane is its three radars.

One in the nose:

One underneath:

And one in the tail:

This allows the crew on-board to see all aspects of the storm and hopefully, down the road, research may yield the answer to the mystery of storm intensification. As much as we know about hurricanes and as much improvement as we've seen in hurricane track accuracy over the past 20 years, we still don't know why one storm will strengthen while another weakens.

Inside the plane, one of the most important spots is where the dropsonde operator sits. Dana Naehr demonstrated how the tube, called a dropsonde, is literally dropped into a storm:

As it falls, it deploys a parachute and sends information about the temperature, wind and humidity back to the plane. That data is critical because it tells forecasters at the National Hurricane Center exactly where the strongest winds are. Without that, hurricane models can be very unreliable.

Who flies on the plane? There are up to 20 people at any one time including 2 pilots, a navigator, two engineers, two technicians and a meteorologist. Barry Damiano has been flying for 21 years. This is him standing in front of the side of the plane tattooed with decals showing all the storms the plane has flown into:

Barry told me that the first time he flew into the plane, he lost his lunch, but now he's a pro and that hasn't happened since. The plane usually flies anywhere from 5,000 to 12,000 feet, well above any real serious turbulence. In fact, Barry said that the P-3 has flown into thunderstorms that were bumpier than most hurricanes.

We're gaining more knowledge of hurricanes through the research done on the P-3. That makes it a good use of our tax dollars in my humble opinion.

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