Soaring into the Eye of the Storm with Lieutenant Commander Christopher Wood
This episode is sponsored by Culligan Water
Have you ever wondered what it's like to fly directly into a hurricane? Most of us are told to seek shelter and avoid the storm, but for the brave men and women of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Corps, facing the unimaginable is just another day on the job. On this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hosts Sandy Winnefeld and Dr. Sandra Magnus take listeners inside a world few even know exists, as they interview Lieutenant Commander Christopher Wood, a seasoned hurricane hunter. Wood shares the unique challenges and rewards of flying a P3 Orion through the most violent storms on Earth.
The NOAA Corps, despite being the smallest of the eight uniformed services, plays a vital role in protecting communities by gathering crucial weather data. Established by Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s as the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the organization has evolved into a highly specialized unit focused on oceanographic and atmospheric research. Today, their primary mission is to collect data to improve forecasting models, ultimately saving lives and safeguarding property. Wood's journey to becoming a hurricane hunter began with service on a NOAA ship, followed by rigorous flight training and years of dedicated service.
But what exactly does it take to become a pilot for the NOAA Corps? It's a highly competitive field, requiring not only exceptional technical skills and education, but also the ability to work effectively within a team and make smart safety decisions. Wood revealed that only a small fraction of NOAA Corps officers become pilots, and the selection process emphasizes both technical aptitude and interpersonal skills. He explained that CRM (Crew Resource Management) is crucial for safely operating in severe weather events and keeping open lines of communication with the entire team.
Flying into a hurricane requires specialized aircraft equipped with cutting-edge technology. NOAA operates a fleet of ten aircraft, including the G4 and soon-to-be G550 high-altitude jets, as well as the P3 Orion which are equipped with a unique tail Doppler radar system, providing a "CAT scan" of the storm's structure and wind velocities. This real-time data feeds directly into the National Weather Service's forecasting models, providing invaluable insights for predicting storm behavior and potential impacts.
As fascinating as the science is, the human element of hurricane hunting truly captivates. The unique names of the NOAA Corps aircraft, all Muppet-inspired monikers, add a touch of whimsy to an otherwise serious and often dangerous mission. Wood shares the hilarious backstory of how one of the P3s, Miss Piggy, earned her name, highlighting the close-knit community within the NOAA Corps.
The risks associated with flying into hurricanes are undeniable, but the NOAA Corps prioritizes safety above all else. Detailed operational risk management protocols are established before each hurricane season. Throughout their missions, the NOAA Corps relies on crew resource management skills. Wood emphasized the importance of teamwork, communication, and situational awareness to mitigate potential hazards and ensure the well-being of the crew.
When asked about his most intense flight, Wood recalled a particularly harrowing experience flying from Hurricane Franklin to Hurricane Idalia where he encountered a massive zone of convection, turbulence, and icing, pushing the limits of both the aircraft and the crew. He also shared that some of the most intense turbulence he encountered actually happened in Category 1 hurricanes due to their disorganization.
Looking ahead, the NOAA Corps is embracing new technologies, including uncrewed aerial systems, to enhance their data collection capabilities and reduce risk to personnel. Wood emphasized the importance of these advancements. With the P3s nearing the end of their service life, NOAA is also transitioning to C-130 aircraft, although they are still trying to adapt the tail Doppler radar to fit the plane. In concluding, Wood offers these words of encouragement to aspiring aviators: Pursue STEM education, develop leadership skills, and seek opportunities to serve your communities.
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Transcript
LCDR Christopher Wood: Anybody who's gone through a car wash and it's just like pounding on your windshield knows what it's like to fly into this. You can't see anything but water. If you want the full experience, just do the car wash while you're on an old wooden roller coaster. And that'll be a pretty close approximation.
Sandy Winnefeld: We're told to avoid the storm, to seek shelter. But what if your job is to fly directly into it? What if the safety of millions depends on you facing the unimaginable?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: This is The Adrenaline Zone. And today we're going inside a world few, few people even know exists. The NOAA Corps, the smallest of the eight uniformed services doing some of the biggest jobs on the planet.
Sandy Winnefeld: Today, we have Lieutenant Commander Christopher Wood. He's not just a pilot, he's a hurricane hunter. He flies a P3 Orion through the most violent storms on Earth.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But this isn't just about surviving the storm. It's about gathering the crucial data that saves lives. And it's about understanding science and mastering the unexpected.
LCDR Christopher Wood: There's only two aircraft equipped with these capabilities in the whole world, and they're both here with us.
Sandy Winnefeld: In this conversation, you'll discover the shocking truth about what it really feels like to fly through a hurricane.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: The unique names of the NOAA Corps hurricane hunting aircraft, and the hilarious story behind them.
Sandy Winnefeld: The cutting edge technology that allows these pilots to see inside a storm and why it's so vital.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: The surprising danger that lurks even in the clear air of a hurricane eye.
Sandy Winnefeld: The other extreme weather phenomena these pilots tackle that are just as dangerous as hurricanes.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: How this small elite team is leveraging technology to do even more and keeping communities safer.
Sandy Winnefeld: Get ready to go behind the scenes of a mission where the stakes are life and death and the courage is extraordinary. This is The Adrenaline Zone.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But first, many thanks to Culligan for sponsoring this season of The Adrenaline Zone.
Sandy Winnefeld: With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra filtered water you need to fuel your high performance lifestyle right on tap. Learn more at culligan.com.
All right. So Lieutenant Commander Christopher Wood, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Hey, thank you guys so much. I'm really excited to be here and talk to you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this. And you know, normally we start with why our guests chose their path, but it might be more useful today to start with the bigger picture first, because I don't think a lot of people know what the NOAA Corps are and what they do. I think they've heard of the hurricane hunters, which of course you guys do, but you do so much more. Can you kind of help everybody understand the scope?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah. So the NOAA Corps is one of the eight uniformed services. We're definitely the smallest. We got about 350 or so officers right now. And we are all officers. There's no enlisted, although we are authorized up to 500 total strength from the Authorization Act back in 2020. Originally, we’re created by Thomas Jefferson. So back in the early 1800s. So there's a long history. There is the coast and geodetic survey where they would go out and start some nautical charting and stuff like that to help the commerce flow. That's really where our origin is. And then just over time, it eventually became its own thing. It used to be a joint service service and now we are our own unit. We're associated with NOAA. So that's kind of how the NOAA Corps came into being.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So you guys were sailors first?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yes.
Sandy Winnefeld: Not many people know about this. So how did you find out about it? What was your path into being a pilot inside NOAA?
LCDR Christopher Wood: And everyone's going to have different paths and we're doing a whole lot of additional recruiting now. But when I first found it, I actually was doing some job searching in between jobs and I was on Monster and they were advertising on monster.com and I found it there and I was like, “Okay. This sounds cool.” And it kind of went down the rabbit hole. And I was like, this would be a really cool organization to work for. They're doing a lot of really interesting things. And of course the hurricanes being originally from South Carolina, you know, that's a very impactful mission set. So there's a lot of interest there. However, for, you know, anyone who might be interested, we are doing a lot of active recruiting. If you go to a lot of events, you know, or any like air shows and stuff like that, especially for those who are interested in aviation, you can definitely find some of our people there.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What made you choose this? I mean, it's kind of unique and some could argue, risky and dangerous career. So what attracted you to it?
LCDR Christopher Wood: So I have a background in physics and so I like to do, you know, a lot of stuff with science and I was very interested in anything scientific related. But I also had a large drive to do something greater than just working for myself or working for the next paycheck. So service in the government, especially in this career field, which has a lot of scientific impact, was just kind of like a perfect storm of service impact and just doing stuff that's cool.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Definitely checks the cool box.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Chris, you didn't start out as a pilot. You started out as a junior officer on the NOAA Ship Rainier. So how did you make the transition to pilot? How much training did you have to go through? What kind of training? Tell us how you got into the position you're in now.
LCDR Christopher Wood: So a lot of the NOAA Corps is dedicated to the maritime field. Most of our officers are actually serving on ships and other vessels. Some of them do the same work that the Coast and Geodetic Survey did, mapping using sonars. Some of them are involved in better understanding the populations and fisheries work and stuff like that, or in, you know, oceanographic research. Originally, most of the pipeline to get to aviation for the NOAA Corps was to originally go to the ship, serve on the ship side for a minimum of two years, and then you'd be able to apply into aviation if you were, you know, showed the desire and the capability and stuff like that. And that's the career progression that I fell into. Presently we are actually bringing people directly into the aviation field, those who are highly qualified, so we can get them directly into this highly technical field and get them operational as soon as possible. But for me, I had to go to the ship first, which was a great experience for me. I got qualified as a NOAA diver. I was the medical person in charge, you know, and of course got qualified in the small boats and as the officer of the deck for the ship before being selected for aviation. Once I was selected for aviation, which was an application process and we had to submit some testing batteries and stuff like that, as well as interviews, I went to initial flight training at a civilian flight school, and I went through all of my FAA certifications up through my commercial, multi engine and instrument rating. And then from there, I actually came to AOC and started training in our actual aircraft themselves. So from the start of flight training to being qualified co-pilot took approximately 15 months of just flight training. And then from there, we go through a long and rigorous period of learning the aircraft and learning how the missions operate and learning how to actually command and run the missions and represent both the Aircraft Operations Center, the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, and NOAA to all of our stakeholders. And so that whole process takes about 18 months to complete, at which point, you're a qualified aircraft commander in that plane and you are able to actually sign for it and be in charge of the missions.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So I have some questions about the planes you fly, but first I have to ask, was it competitive, the process, to become a pilot inside the corps?
LCDR Christopher Wood: It is very competitive. Like many things, it's going to depend on how many people are interested in any given point in time. But in general, we are out of 350 or so officers. There's only about 50 to 60 aviators.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Okay.
LCDR Christopher Wood: So we represent a fairly small portion of the actual total officer body for the NOAA Corps. And we're really looking for highly qualified folks, not only in their technical skills and their education, but also in their ability to work as a team. Because more than almost anywhere else, when it's just you and another pilot in the cockpit for six to eight hours on a mission flight, you have to be able to work with all sorts of different personalities.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Okay. So yeah, I get, totally get it. An operational environment like that. Can you tell us a little bit about the planes you fly into these hurricanes and the specialized equipment on those aircraft that let you go into the hurricane and gather data?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Right now we have 10 total aircraft. Only three of those aircraft are hurricane aircraft. The rest of them are involved in other missions or the emergency response that may occur after a hurricane and stuff like that. But our hurricane aircraft specifically is a high altitude jet, which is currently a G4. We have a G550 that's being outfitted with the scientific suite that should come online at some point, hopefully in the near future. And that aircraft flies well above the storm and it's measuring a lot of the different environmental effects that will actually help steer and feed those storms that are happening at 40,000 ft to 45,000 ft. I fly one of our two P3 Orion aircraft. The original concept was as a Navy submarine hunter, but the four engine turboprop is really actually a great aircraft for flying through the middle of the hurricanes themselves. So for that aircraft in particular, one of the biggest and the coolest pieces of equipment that we have on there is our tail Doppler radar. And it just sticks off the back end of the aircraft and it effectively is able to measure all of the different winds that are going on in a hurricane. And almost it's like having a CAT scan for the storm itself. So it's going to create an image of the structure of the storm and all the different wind velocities and stuff like that, which they can then directly feed into a lot of their forecasting models and everything else like that that the hurricane center and therefore the weather service uses to build the models and to issue all of their advisories for what's happening with these storms.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I have a huge bunch of science questions. I don't want to drill it, but I assume all that data is getting fed out real time, or can you not send it through the storm?
LCDR Christopher Wood: All of our data is in as close to real time as we can possibly do. So there's a slight delay as it runs through our data system and goes through some initial quality checks, but it gets off the aircraft while we're in the storm environment itself. And that also includes any of the rest of the scientific suite we may have, such as measuring surface winds, our flight level data, and any expendables, such as the dropsondes or the bathythermographs that we're using to also measure the storm environment.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Sandy, you should probably go before I take us down into geek land.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, I was going to say that. A slightly less scientific question from the dumb fighter pilot in the room. Is it true that your two Orions have unique names? And if so, how did they get them?
LCDR Christopher Wood: They do have unique names. In fact, all of our hurricane hunter aircraft, with the cooperation of Jim Henson Corporation, have Muppet names. We have Kermit and Miss Piggy as our two P3s. And then Gonzo is our high altitude jet.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, that's hilarious.
LCDR Christopher Wood: The story goes is that Noah 43, so Ms. Piggy, initially required so much extra love and attention from the maintenance department to keep it working that they had started to jokingly call it Miss Piggy. And then somebody got the wild hair to go and actually ask if they could put it on the side of the aircraft. And they went and talked to Jim Henson and they said yes. And so then the rest of the aircraft got names as well. And we all have a nice side art of that as well.
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Dr. Sandra Magnus: Going back to the flying into the hurricane topic. So you must have safety procedures established, you know, because I know it's easy to get heads down on a mission and not think about the environment sometimes. So how do you guard against that? What kind of safety procedures? And then if you do realize there's an unsafe situation either before, I mean, during the mission, it's clear it's the commander, but you must have a set of protocols that you follow because you're doing something innately dangerous.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Our operational risk management starts well before hurricane season. And we review this every year. And we'll get a team of folks together, they'll review any of the requirements that the hurricane center or our other research partners are asking of us for this season. They'll evaluate all the different risks that are associated with that. And then they will put into this document, this operational risk management document, all of the different controls and mitigations that we're going to do in order to actually execute what they're asking. And so that's the initial really look at it. And that's going to help us define kind of what our operational parameters are allowed to be. This is things like altitudes, air speeds, what kind of modules we're willing to accept, bank angles and everything else like that that might be required for whatever we're being asked to do in the storm. And then once we are actually flying the mission, we really rely heavily on crew resource management skills. So making sure that everybody in the crew is on the same page, everybody on the crew feels like they can speak up if there's something going wrong, making sure that everybody is backing each other up. Because it is very easy to get some kind of scope locked on what you're doing or having something pop up that kind of keeps you just locked onto maybe the wrong thing for a little bit too long so that you start losing your situational awareness. And so when we fly, we actually are flying with two pilots at the controls. We have our flight engineer who's managing the engines and the aircraft systems, there's a navigator who's helping us to basically find the center and keep on our track. And then we also have a flight director, which is our in-flight meteorologist, who's actually analyzing the radars and managing all the scientific requests that's going to help us find our way through the storm. And so all of those folks are in a constant communication cycle to make sure that nobody's losing any sort of situational awareness. We're not avoiding or ignoring any sort of unnecessary risk.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Do you guys have certain conditions that you'll never go fly in?
LCDR Christopher Wood: We will try our best to do what keeps the aircraft safe. So if there's ever a time where any of the members on the aircraft, anybody from the front to the back, you know, anybody dropping dropsondes or operating data systems says that they think something is dangerous, then we will pause and we will discuss what's going on. We will find a safe place to orbit or anything like that to really kind of get everybody on the same page and make sure that we're not missing anything that has on occasion led to a, hey, this is too dangerous, it's too close to land and we're going to get too many mesocyclones and we're going to get pinched up between the storm and terrain or something else like that, where we have decided to not continue a pass. But in general, as long as the storm is over water and there's no extenuating circumstances like that, the crew and the aircraft can pretty much handle just about anything that these storms throw at them.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow, that's a lot.
Sandy Winnefeld: So this may be kind of a dumb question here, Chris, but you guys are based in Lakeland, Florida, right? So I would imagine that has the advantage of being kind of close to where the hurricanes are spawned and where they sort of, you know, approach the coast, but they could hit your base. Right? So how do you handle that if it's making a beeline for Lakeland, Florida?
LCDR Christopher Wood: This happens pretty much every year at this point.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Unfortunately.
LCDR Christopher Wood: You know, my first hurricane season was when Ian came right through Lakeland, Florida. That was my first season flying. Even just this year, I was the aircraft commander for the landfall mission for Milton. So Milton's making landfall onto Tampa, going right over Lakeland, and I'm in the airplane flying, and, you know, my family is at home. Yeah, I know, it's great. So the reality that we all come to terms with when we put on the uniform and we go fly these planes is that we have a job to do. And the data we're getting is critically important to making sure that everybody can be as safe as possible and that everybody who is on the ground is depending on our data to be able to make the right decisions to keep themselves safe and keep their property safe. So we have to go up, we have to fly. You know, we have to do our best to manage our families and our property and everything else like that when we have the time to. But our mission is to go up and fly, and that's why we wear the uniform.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. It must feel funny to be flying into a hurricane and feeling like you're safer than your family is on the ground. Me, too.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yes. We spend a lot of time training and really like understanding these environments so that we as a crew, we feel very uncomfortable is the wrong word, but we're very practiced at flying into these storms. And so like what we're doing, we can feel relatively safe in that we have the right expertise on board to call it out when it's not safe. And so, yeah, there's a lot of times where it might very well be safer to be in the plane than it is on the ground. But thankfully we're getting that data out as soon as we possibly can to folks so that if it is going to be dangerous for them, they can make the decision to leave the path of any of these hurricanes.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So do you have specific pre-flight routines or mental preparations that you do before you go out to tackle one of these guys?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah. So our pre-flight generally starts about two hours before takeoff and we will all meet together. The flight director will give us a very in depth weather brief, not only on just what the storm is doing and what we think it's going to be doing, also on any of the scientific objectives that we might have before we go in there. And we will thoroughly discuss and make decisions on what we need to be doing for that. Maybe we'll wave off a couple modules because they're not going to be effective for what we need to do or they're not going to fit within the capability of the aircraft. But we're going to spend that time talking about that and coming to a really good agreement on what the mission is going to look like. And then from that point we're going to do some of the other just general aviation stuff, filing flight plans, making sure we have all the clearances, you know, our aircraft are released and there's no other outstanding maintenance issues that we may need to address. And then we'll get in the aircraft, we'll brief everybody up there as a crew and then we'll go. And at any point in time there, of course, just like in flight, if somebody's like something is unsafe, they all are empowered to speak up. We are operating this entire time as a crew. So it is vitally important that everybody is on board and on the same page with what we're doing.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I would imagine flying an airplane through a thunderstorm, which I've done before, is no fun. You know, I've been hit by lightning and that's really exciting. But you know, you're doing this intentionally and you're having to navigate. Obviously, you got GPS in the airplane and that sort of thing. But how do you maintain your situational awareness when you're being buffeted like that. And literally, I would imagine, surrounded by lightning and heavy winds.
LCDR Christopher Wood: The winds up there are definitely heavy. And it's not uncommon to see 20 to 40 degrees of crab angle. That's where the aircraft is pointing. 20 to 40 degrees offset of the actual direction of travel. While we're going through some of these stronger storms, the way we kind of navigate through that is by, again, using all of the crew to help manage all the different pieces of it, including, you know, what our inertia says we're doing, what the GPS says we're doing. But then we also are using the suite of radars that we have on board, including the nose radar and our multimodal radar, which is a 360-degree radar, to sort of keep awareness of what the storm is, manage all the different precipitation, rain bands and stuff like that, so that we can kind of pick the cleanest areas possible while not compromising the mission to take the plane through just so that we can minimize any sort of extreme turbulence or discomfort that we may face. But after that, especially since a lot of these storms are flown in the dark, we're really just flying by instruments at that point. It's very much just instrument flying. We're down, we're watching the attitude indicator, we're watching our, you know, flight management system and stuff like that, and just trying to make sure that we're staying on task.
Sandy Winnefeld: So having spent my life trying to avoid thunderstorms, I'm really fascinated by this. Is icing a problem? I would imagine if you are in those conditions, and sure it's in the tropics and all that, but you're at an altitude where it's cold. If you lose your PEDOT, static instruments and that sort of thing, it could be a bad day. Right? So do you have mitigations for that or is it ever really a problem?
LCDR Christopher Wood: So icing is something that we definitely discuss every time before we go fly and we brief the freezing layer and kind of what's going on in grapple, which can actually occur well below the freezing layer, is actually, and that's hail is actually a really major concern for us because that will do actual damage to the aircraft and possibly compromise its ability to fly the next mission while that gets repaired. So that's something we definitely kind of pay attention to. Even in the tropics, everyone thinks it's warm, but the freezing layer is still only about 16,000 or so feet on average. So we target our missions to fly just enough below that so that we are mitigating a lot of those risks. So most of our missions are somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 ft as we go through these storms. With 10,000 ft being kind of the sweet spot. The lower you get in the storm, the more turbulent it gets. The higher you go, the higher risk for icing and grapple you get. So we kind of are trying to mitigate those by choosing effective altitudes for what we're trying to do.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It must be pretty dramatic when you've been bounced around in those heavy winds and you break through into the eye of the hurricane where it's still and everyone's going–
LCDR Christopher Wood: It's very dramatic as you go into the eye most of the time because you're going from severe IMC, that's meteorological conditions. So we're in the clouds with lightning and really torrential rain. You know, anybody who's gone through a car wash and it's just like pounding on your windshield knows what it's like to fly into this. You can't see anything but water.
Sandy Winnefeld: Analogy.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: 40.
Sandy Winnefeld: I'll think about that next time I'm in a car wash, by the way.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah. I mean, if you want the full experience, just do the car wash while you're on an old wooden roller coaster. And that'll be a pretty close approximation again. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, once you cross through that eye wall, it just opens up and you go from torrential rain and not being able to see anything to just being able to see either the stars. It opens up and suddenly you can see again. And so that's really quite dramatic and kind of a dangerous moment to be like, “Oh, we're out of it.” Because the reality is, just because there's no clouds there doesn't mean the wind has fully stopped. Some of these eye walls do have a slightly larger wind field, and it could go into what would be the eye of the storm. So we're not out of it yet, but it's definitely a moment of relief and where we kind of like, okay, we're about to get 30 seconds of time to catch our breath before we go back to the other side.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We have been focusing on the hurricane, and we'll get back to some more about the hurricanes. But you guys fly in all kinds of other weather phenomena and conditions, and I don't think many people know the extent of things you do besides hurricanes. Can you just touch on that a little bit?
LCDR Christopher Wood: All of our aircraft fly a variety of missions, and some of them are related to the weather, and some of them are not. For the P3, we fly tornadoes during the summertime. Not every year, but some years. So in 2022, we were flying all through the Midwest, surveying, using the same stuff that we're doing for hurricanes, like with the tail Doppler radar and getting these homeless CAT scan or X ray pictures of these tornadic supercells that they could use for research and stuff like that. During the wintertime, we're also flying effectively what are winter hurricanes, either in Alaska or the North Atlantic, where we have to worry a lot more about icing, we have to be a lot more deliberate about kind of what we're doing there as well. And the news, especially for anybody on the west coast, has been atmospheric rivers recently, where it's these big giant basically moisture paths that just dump a lot of torrential rain down. And our Gulf Stream high altitude jet goes out there every winter, usually around December or January, and starts actually surveying those conditions so that the forecasters could get better at predicting those as well. But even when we're not flying weather missions, most of our pilots do fly more than one aircraft. So they're flying either the Twin Otter or the King Air, in addition to the Gulf stream and the P3. And they're doing a lot of more VFR weather work, like protected species or actually determining how much snow is on the ground for river forecasting for when it melts.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's a lot.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow. Tell us about your most intense flight. What was the one that had your adrenaline pumping more than any other flight?
LCDR Christopher Wood: There's a lot of different moments in a lot of different flights where, like, you can definitely get the adrenaline pumping, and it's not always going to be the most intense storm. The interesting thing about hurricanes is usually a cat 5 might be intense, but they're fairly well behaved, as opposed to a cat 3 or below, where they're still trying to figure everything out and they're a little bit more dynamic. And some of the worst, bumpiest rides have actually been in, like, a category 1 hurricane, just because they're not very well organized yet. But last year, we did a long series where we went from Hurricane Franklin to Hurricane Idalia, and there was a massive zone in between the two storms where it was just a really, really rough ride where there were just continuous lines of convection. And so we had to fly for almost 450 miles just going from point A to point B to get to Hurricane Idalia, which I think was still a tropical storm at the time where we were just constantly in icing and convection lines and it was just a really, really rough ride on the way to the storm itself. And so that was definitely a very adrenaline pumping moment just because we weren't expecting to have to work so hard for so long.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What about some of the other non-hurricane flights? Have they been rather intense or are those kinds of routine compared to hurricane flights?
LCDR Christopher Wood: There's definitely moments of adrenaline for every single aircraft and every single mission that we fly. In Alaska on our twin Otter aircraft, we're frequently at 600 ft going into fjords where you're only maybe 100 ft from the cliffside and you've got to do a 180-degree turn while you're inside of there and you've only got a half a mile of space to do it in. Now the aircraft is capable of doing that, but that can definitely get your blood pumping as you start to turn over. All you have in your windscreen is a cliff and that's all you can see. And so that can definitely get the pucker factor going up there and really get your heart pumping.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Do you guys simulate any of that stuff in simulators for training?
LCDR Christopher Wood: So we do use the simulators for training, but a lot of this is not anything that you can actually effectively simulate, at least with what's available. But we do practice a lot of those maneuvers both in the simulator and just sort of in a wide open VFR space to demonstrate that, hey, if you follow these procedures, you will be safe and get everybody kind of trained up and on the same page so that when they actually get into the environment where they have to execute, they're ready.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, it's interesting that you have so many brains in the cockpit. You know, there's four of us really flying the shuttle at the same time. So the crew dynamics are important. You know, we try and balance our shuttle crews out so it's a combination of veterans and rookies. So I imagine you have the same situation. You know, when you have a rookie on board, you've trained, everybody's ready, but until you actually do it right.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah. We try to make sure that we have, for the mission set, a comparable level of experience so that we're not putting, you know, a freshly qualified aircraft commander who's still really getting their feet underneath them for the command role with a brand new, barely just finished their qualification as a co-pilot low time aviator just because there's a lot of additional risk there. So we try to be deliberate with how we are putting people together so that we can manage that risk. But otherwise, the expectation for a lot of our folks is that, you know, once you've reached that level, that you will be capable of making smart safety decisions, even if you're brand new, and to be capable of actually identifying those risks and making the right call whether to continue or to discontinue a flight at any point in time.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: The CRM is really important.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Absolutely, yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: How's the job changed over the lifetime of your career? You've been doing this for a number of years. Has new technology played a factor? You're still flying the same old airplane, but how's the job changed?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Technology is continuing to march forward, and there's a lot of great innovations that come with that. In a lot of ways, aviation, at least government aviation, tends to fall a couple steps behind maybe what the top cutting edge of the civilian world we'll be using. We're still using the same basic avionics and flight management system on the P3 that it basically came with that the Navy's using. And there's definitely, like, fancier gadgets out there. However, by the same token, I've seen our Twin Otter aircraft go from steam gauges to touchscreen avionics suites. With that has come a massive increase in situational awareness for the aviators, because they have more information in better spots so that they can actually see what's going on, and they can manage the aircraft a lot better and manage their fuel better and everything else like that, because it's consolidating a lot of that information and putting it into something that's really easy for them to just kind of grasp and see at a moment's notice. By the same token, of course, all the scientific instrumentation is constantly under development, and we will frequently fly, you know, additional sensors or expendables and stuff like that that are really great for research, and they're working to get them operational. And, of course, there's a lot of excitement about a lot of those things because, you know, they represent the future, and we're getting to see those firsthand, and that's changing a lot of what we're doing.
One of the biggest pieces of technology that I think we're seeing start to come into the operational world is uncrewed systems. That's been a focus of ours for the last several years. We've had success deploying uncrewed systems or drones into the storm environment from the P3 itself. And that represents a massive win not only for the scientific community, but also for our safety because they're capable of flying into the most dangerous parts of these storms where we don't want to risk not only the airframe, but also the aircrew itself being in those areas, such as 50 ft above the surface of the water.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow. So you guys are collecting a ton of data as you've kind of alluded to. What do you think is the most crucial piece of data you've collected that's made a difference in forecasting? I mean, either for hurricanes or some of the other weather conditions, because you're getting such a wide variety of information.
LCDR Christopher Wood: The most critical piece of information, particularly when it comes to hurricanes, is going to be that tail Doppler radar. It feeds wind velocity data directly into the National Weather Service's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System, which is what they directly use for forecasting the storms. Without that data, a lot of the in situ and important data just doesn't happen. And it's a unique capability. Of the two NOAA P3s, you're not going to find an equivalent system on any other aircraft that's flying into hurricanes. That's probably the most critical, most important data that we're collecting on a routine basis for the public and for the National Weather Service.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So you said something about not other aircraft that are flying into hurricanes. How many other aircraft fly into hurricanes besides you guys? Because I thought you guys were pretty much it.
LCDR Christopher Wood: The Air Force also operates a hurricane hunter squadron, the 53rd.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I didn’t know that.
LCDR Christopher Wood: And they are generally going to be in the storm doing fixes and they're generally the first ones on the scene. They do a lot of the invest missions. When the hurricane center thinks that there might be something forming, they go out there and try to see what's up. And so they're collecting a lot of that data and really fixing the position of the storm and providing some flight level and sound data to it. But they don't have the scientific suite available that basically our flying laboratories do. So we provide complementary data that altogether will provide the best picture of what's going on out there. The hurricane.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I didn't know they did that.
Sandy Winnefeld: I want to go back to the radar for just a second because our listeners, when they think Doppler radar are thinking, you know, what they see on a computer screen or TV of the Doppler radar that has a range limitation, you can't see that far out over the water. So are you just basically taking that capability out over the water, or is there something extra special about the Doppler you're carrying that makes it more usable in terms of the science?
LCDR Christopher Wood: It's going to provide a lot of similar data. The principles of Doppler radar don't change significantly. You know, it's still measuring changes in velocity basically as we go. Ours, as opposed to what most ground based radars are going to be, are definitely looking vertically and it's rotating around, collecting a full kind of sample of what the storm is doing. It's got about a 30 or so mile range, but 10 to 15 miles is really kind of the optimal range for resolution. But it allows us to measure wind velocities. Not all Doppler radars are calibrated to measure wind velocities, but ours do. And that's really kind of what makes them really fairly unique. However, once the storms do come kind of over land, a lot of what we can accomplish in a lot of our amazing values becomes too risky. Because those land based Doppler radars can provide a lot of the same information. They just can't provide all of it.
Sandy Winnefeld: So these airplanes are exposed to a lot of turbulence. I won't even ask about your body being exposed to the turbulence. But the airplanes themselves, is there a more stringent limitation, a lifetime wing structural integrity, you know, fatigue, life, that sort of thing than the average bear of a P3 Orion? First, I used Orion and bear in the same sentence. A little pun there, sorry. But anyway, you know, tell us about the lifetime of the airplane.
LCDR Christopher Wood: So our maintenance team is really dedicated and really attentive to these aircraft. And so anytime there's any sort of stress or damage to the airframe, the aircraft or any of its systems, they're right on top of it to make sure that it's repaired and in perfect working order. Because as I mentioned, there's only two aircraft equipped with these capabilities in the whole world and they're both here with us. So we're very dedicated to keeping these national assets as functional for as long as possible. When we do take it for major work and repair. What was found is that there's really not any real significant difference between the stresses that the airframe is getting from being in these storms versus what a standard P3 Orion would be going through. And the reason for that is that despite all the turbulence, a lot of the worst stress that these airframes go under is actually just landing the aircraft. You know, we're hitting these, all this turbulence, most of the time we're somewhere between 2 and negative 0.5 Gs for some of our hits. We've been a little higher and a little lower on the G meter, but for the most part, you know, we're kind of in a very comfortable range for these airframes.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I thought you were going to say that Navy pilots are just generally rougher than NOAA pilots, so it all evens out. But you were very tactful about that.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We're not going there.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Well, I've been on the plane when I've landed it and I definitely cannot make that claim.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So is it true that NOAA is buying some new planes, some C130s and if so, what are you going to do with those?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah. So we are definitely looking at some new aircraft. The P3s, the ones that we have are basically 50 years old at this point. They've been in service for a long time and they've been flying hurricanes the entire lifetime. So they're definitely ready to retire. The Navy has transitioned away from the P3, so a lot of the support and equipment that we used to use in the past is basically just non-existent at this point. And the airframes are getting older, so we kind of wanted to get an upgrade, get with the rest of the communities and stuff like that. We've actually got some C130s that are coming off the line in the next couple years that are going to be replacements for the P3s. Those do come with some challenges, mostly because if you were to look at them side by side, they look completely different. And as a consequence, the scientific suite has to change and has to evolve in order to handle this new airframe. One of the things that has to change is what I've been talking about a lot today is that tail Doppler radar, it doesn't fit on the C130 because the C130 doesn't really have a tail anymore. So they're doing a lot of work to find an equivalent workaround that's going to provide the same quality and the same level of information that we're getting off of the tail Doppler radar, but fit it to the C130 frame. And so that's still an active development.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow, that sounds complicated.
Sandy Winnefeld: So this is one of those stump the stars questions. You know, what is something about hurricane hunting that would most surprise our listeners? What would sort of shock them to know?
LCDR Christopher Wood: So I think the more intense the storm is does not necessarily mean the rougher the ride. You know, a category 5 tends to– I've had some passes through category 5 that were basically, you're kind of like, “Wait, we're already done?” You know, you hardly notice that you went through the eye wall because it was just smooth. But by the same token, every time you fly through the eye of the hurricane, it's going to be different. So just because it was easy this time doesn't mean it's going to be the same experience next time. And so it could be smooth one time, and then it could be absolute, some of the roughest passes you've had the next time. These storms are constantly evolving, changing, and the dynamics and just the way the thermodynamics and everything on them work is that they're constantly in a state of flux, and so they change every time. But by that, the storms that are still developing and strengthening, the category 1s, the tropical storms, category 2s, tend to be very unpredictable, and that leads to a lot of turbulence. And just because you're in clear air in a hurricane doesn't mean that it's not going to be bumpy. A lot of this dry air starts to mix and cause a lot of turbulence as well. And so that can be surprising and definitely catch you off guard. So just because you're not in a thunderstorm or in a cloud doesn't mean that it's going to be smooth.
Sandy Winnefeld: So did you ever land after a mission, Chris, and say, you know, I'm kind of glad that one's over?
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yeah, more than once you're kind of like, wow, I'm really kind of happy this is over. My first time thinking that was during Ian, which was one of my first. It was during my first season, it was making landfall into central Florida, so it was impacting home as well. But one of the things that maybe folks don't realize is that hurricanes are not just uniform storms themselves, they also have storms inside of themselves. So Ian was a prime example of where we're going through the eyewall, and we encountered some mesocyclones that the radars couldn't pick up, and they couldn't pick them up because of attenuation. So we weren't able to see as far as we wanted to be able to see. And it definitely rocked the plane a good bit. It was definitely pretty dynamic and scary for a lot of the folks on board, just because instead of doing just the standard up and down, we were taking a lot of side loads, which are generally unexpected in a thunderstorm and so it was just a really, really rough ride. But we managed to get through it, reevaluated, went back in for another pass, and it was making landfall. So we decided to wave off and go back to our safe location, which was not in Florida.
Sandy Winnefeld: I can really relate to Ian. I'm building a house in Florida, and the eye wall of that storm stalled over right where this house is for five hours. And so it was just devastating to Sanibel Island.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Yes.
Sandy Winnefeld: And literally there was a house on this property that just was no longer there. It was such a devastating hurricane. It's terrible.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Anybody who lives on a coastline could be impacted by a hurricane. And in fact, as we saw with Helene this year, even folks that are well inland can definitely have devastating effects from these hurricanes. So it's important to not only just pay attention to what's going on, but also make sure that you're listening to any sort of the advisories or your local emergency managers to make sure that you can make the right and safe decision, because you don't have to be on the coast to have your house gone from a storm.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, absolutely. I lived in Houston for 16 years and saw a few fun hurricanes down there. So we're going to wind down. But, you know, you commented that you guys are hiring and you're looking for people. So for the young people out there who are discovering that the NOAA Corps is a thing from this podcast, what advice would you give them to prepare for such a career like this?
LCDR Christopher Wood: So the advice that I would give to somebody who wants to possibly fly through hurricanes or, you know, sail on any of our ships or anything else like that is, number one, go to college. It's a requirement to do what we're doing. Everybody is, as I mentioned, a commissioned officer. And so just like the Army, Navy, Air Force, etc., you got to have a college degree to do that. We do look for people who are capable of interfacing with the scientific community. And so as a consequence of that, we do want folks to have a fairly strong background in STEM fields. So take those science classes, don't be afraid to take a programming class and math classes and stuff like that, and kind of get those that baseline knowledge built up and available so that not only can you just apply for us if that's your end goal, but also find your passion in those fields as well, so that even if this doesn't end up being your thing later on down the line, you still have something that you're excited and passionate about to kind of fall back on and to do the work for. So that would be my first two pieces of advice, like, go to college, major in something that you're excited about, and take some science classes alongside of that. And then if after all of that, you're like, I still want to do this. You know, leadership opportunities, of course, are always great. We're looking for people who can interface well with the community. So opportunities for public speaking and stuff like that that can really help make you well rounded are most definitely going to be beneficial to anybody who's looking to join and do what we do.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow. So I got to tell you, I got a healthy respect for what you're doing. This has been really fascinating for me and I know for Sandra as well. It only goes to show that, yes, there are people in the federal government who are doing really important work.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And cool stuff.
Sandy Winnefeld: And cool stuff. So thanks for what you're doing. Be safe out there. And I'll be thinking of you when I'm going through a car wash next time.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Absolutely.
Sandy Winnefeld: But also as the hurricane season in 2025 ramps up, so be safe out there. And thanks so much for being with us on this podcast.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Thank you.
LCDR Christopher Wood: Thank you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was hurricane hunter pilot Lieutenant Commander Christopher Wood. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Culligan for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance. Learn more culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And please pass our podcast around to your friends. And we'll see you soon with another fun episode of The Adrenaline Zone.
