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Pilots plunge into the eye of the storm

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By JAMIE PILARCZYK

jpilarczyk@tampatrib.com

Published: June 3, 2009

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE - With hurricane season beginning this month, the pilots at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are gearing up to dive into the eyes of these meteorological beasts.

And while this is what they are known for most, the team stays busy year-round.

Housed at MacDill Air Force Base, NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center provides services such as marine mammal tracking, nautical charting and air quality studies. The winter storm surveillance conducted in Japan, Hawaii and Alaska help with forecasting of the storms on the west coast and Midwest of the United States.

"From research to surveys to reconnaissance to air chemistry, what we're doing is supporting all of the NOAA missions," said James McFadden, chief of programs and projects staff.

A program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA is a scientific agency whose mission is "to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation's economic, social, and environmental needs," according to its Web site.

"Last April we did a major air chemistry study with NASA out of Anchorage, sampling green house gases. We just do a wide variety of things," McFadden said.

McFadden has worked with NOAA for more then 40 years and has a doctorate in meteorology. He supervises the air chemistry programs and is the project manager for the P-3 plane in hurricane season. He holds the world record for the number of times he has penetrated a hurricane: 564.

"People like to say it's 95 percent boredom, 5 percent sheer terror," McFadden said.

He has been on missions without contact with anyone for days. Now everything is done in real time with satellite phones and computers. Last year - the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30 - he blogged from the aircraft.

Originally based in Miami, the Aircraft Operations Center moved to Tampa in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew made a mess of Miami, Homestead and Florida City.

"MacDill Air Force Base provided the existing infrastructure and support to keep NOAA's Hurricane Hunter aircraft in Florida close to their area of operations in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico," said executive officer Don Aiken, who lives in Historic Hyde Park.

Lt. Cmdr. Al Girimonte, a NOAA pilot, served in the U.S. Navy for nine years before joining NOAA where he said less than half of the pilots have a military background. Lt. Cmdr. Kristie Twining, a NOAA corps officer, has a background in biology and was a ship captain before becoming a pilot.

Twining said right whale observations performed on her missions in the Cape Cod area influence regulations in the mammals' critical habitat area from the direction of shipping lanes to designation of fisheries. Her missions in Alaska track bowhead whales so that exploratory oil drilling doesn't disturb mothers and calves.

A staff of about 85 keep the center running with about 13 plane,s from large P-3 planes to smaller twin-engine turbo props, some housed at MacDill and some scattered throughout the country from California (coastal mapping) to Minneapolis (snow surveys) to Cape Cod (tracking right whales).

"We're a small nucleus of people who get the job done," McFadden said.

Reporter Jamie Pilarczyk can be reached at (813) 259-7661.

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