Hurricane Awareness Tour

Hurricane Awareness Tour stop #5 - May 10, 2019
Brunswick, GA

Mark your calendars! The Hurricane Hunter aircraft and pilots will be visiting Brunswick, GA on Friday May 10^th, 2019.

The 2019 Hurricane Awareness Tour will make a stop Brunswick Golden Isles Airport on May 10, 2019. Public tours will occur from 2 – 5pm with all ages welcome to join us! This opportunity will allow the public to tour inside the aircraft, meet and talk with crew members and pilots, and speak with the National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham. Additionally, local first responders will be on site displaying their helicopters, firetrucks, and other emergency response vehicles. We invite you to learn more about all the hazards associated with hurricanes from National Weather Service meteorologists and Georgia Emergency Management. This will be the first visit near the Jacksonville, FL area since 2015 when it was hosted in St Augustine, FL. If you’re interested in the opportunity to meet a hurricane hunter or hurricane specialist, this is your chance to visit them in person to learn more about their exciting mission.

See below for more information:

Overview

Have you ever been fascinated by hurricanes or wondered how it is possible for people to fly safely into them? If the answer is yes, then mark your calendar for the 2019 Hurricane Awareness Tour in Brunswick, Georgia on May 10th! Here’s a quick video of what it’s like to be a Hurricane Hunter

Hurricane specialists representing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and members of the USAF Reserve will visit five U.S. East Coast cities. Together, they will be showcasing aircraft they use for tropical cyclone interrogation, a WC-130J Hurricane Hunter aircraft along with the NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft. Their visit is intended to raise awareness of the impacts from tropical cyclone threats and why it’s dangerous to face a land falling storm without a hurricane plan in place.

The National Hurricane Director, Ken Graham, and Hurricane Specialist Daniel Brown will also be present to help educate those in vulnerable communities about hurricane preparedness and will be available for interviews. Staff from Emergency Management offices, non-profit organizations including the American Red Cross, Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), and Meteorologists from the National Weather Service will be part of the tour at each stop.

Among those invited to participate and tour include community groups, media, local elected officials and select local schools (by invitation only) as well as the general public. Public tours will be given from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. Registration is not required for public tours. However, due to the schedule of the aircraft crew, public tours will promptly end at 5:00 pm.

Hurricane Preparedness Week – May 5-11, 2019

Free hurricane webinar for 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade classrooms broadcasting live at 10 AM – Sign up here

Event Information

What: 2019 Hurricane Awareness Tour

Where: Brunswick Golden Isles Airport

295 Aviation Pkwy, Brunswick, GA 31525

When: Friday May 10, 2019

Open to the Public: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Parking information coming soon

Timeline of Events

Participating Aircraft

Two aircraft used in hurricane operations will be on display at the HAT in Brunswick, FL

The WC-130J is a high wing, medium range aircraft used in weather reconnaissance missions. It is one of ten such aircraft used by the U.S. Air Force Reservists from the 53^rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, 403^rd Wing, located at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS. Designed to penetrate tropical disturbances and forms, the air crew flies directly into the core of developing tropical cyclones to record data critical for forecasting cyclone intensity, track, and landfall. The WC-130 is a durable aircraft that can sustain an 18 hour long mission aloft at the optimum cruise speed of 300 mph. On average, one weather reconnaissance mission lasts 11 hours and covers about 3,500 miles with the crew collecting data as often as every one minute. At a minimum, at least 5 crew man the aircraft: a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, aerial reconnaissance weather officer and a weather reconnaissance loadmaster.

The NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion “Hurricane Hunter” is a highly instrumented aircraft from the Hurricane Operations Center which plays an important part in hurricane forecasting. Known for use in hurricane research and reconnaissance, the WP-3D Orion flies directly into the center of tropical cyclones to collect meteorological data about the storm. The information collected is fed into numerical computer models to provide better forecasts of how intense a hurricane will be, and when and where it will make landfall. This mission helps forecasters make accurate predictions during a hurricane and to help NOAA researchers achieve a better understanding of storm processes. An average mission lasts up to 10 hours as the aircraft journeys through the eye wall of a hurricane where howling winds, heavy rains, and violent updrafts and downdrafts buffer the turbo-prop aircraft before it penetrates the eerie calm of the storm’s eye. Along the way, crew members drop Global Positioning System (GPS) dropwindsondes that continually radio back measurements of pressure, humidity, temperature and wind as they descend towards the sea below. This vital information provides a detailed look at the hurricane’s structure and intensity.