Diary of a mad hurricane: A view from the eye of the storm
For several days as Hurricane Katrina first threatened and pounded the Gulf Coast, then flooded New Orleans, dozens of government agencies and private researchers helped predict, resist, and recover from the storm. In a series of timelines, U.S. News staffers detail the activities of:
FEMA officials: On paper, feds gave an upbeat analysis;
Climate researchers: Experts feared the worst;
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: 'It all started crashing pretty fast';
The Army's 82nd Airborne Division: A waiting game;
The Coast Guard: 'Hoisting up every vulnerable-looking thing;
The National Guard: 'We did respond with amazing speed';
State and local emergency officials: Getting through the storm;
and airborne storm chasers: A view from the eye.
Here, the storm chasers' story:
Maj. Rich Henning's eyes dart back and forth from the two computer screens in front of him to the window of his WC-130J, a cargo plane modified to fly into hurricanes. Through the window, he sees a wall of water engulfing the plane, slamming down heavily like a giant, unending car wash. On the computer screens he sees a radar image of the storm he's flying through and readouts on the hurricane's wind speed and pressure—a measure of its strength. A little less than two hours earlier, at 2:30 a.m. CDT, the crew of five U.S. Air Force reservists from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron had taken off from Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi under the mission name "Teal 64," named, like other hurricane-chasing missions, after a bird. The assignment: fly into the eye of Katrina.
As Teal 64 approaches the wall of wind and clouds that surround the hurricane's eye, turbulence is too mild a term to describe what Henning is feeling. A veteran of 11 hurricane seasons, Henning had flown into Ivan when it was at its top strength off Cuba last summer. But this was something different. Now, 8,500 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, the turboprop pushes through the eye wall. Katrina lashes back, slamming down the plane with a force that was impossible for the pilot, Maj. Greg McHenry, to counteract. Behind the flight deck, Henning experiences something akin to the sensation of an elevator suddenly dropping. The floor feels as if it's falling out beneath him. When his lunch sack and equipment bag begin floating upward, he knows he is experiencing the weightlessness of negative G's.
From another computer terminal nearby, Master Sgt. Jay Latham ejects a weather instrument called a dropsonde from a tube on the plane's belly. The dropsonde hurtles through the winds of the storm, sending back data to Henning's computers, which relay it by satellite to the National Hurricane Center. The dropsonde records winds of 191 mph around the airplane and more than 200 mph in the strongest part of the eye wall.
As the plane enters the eye, a new barrage of numbers flashes across the computer screen and Henning is filled with dread. Three hours earlier, another Air Force team had measured Katrina's pressure at 935 millibars—meaning it was a Category 4 storm. The lower the pressure, the stronger the hurricane. Now, the pressure has dropped again.
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