Hurricane Hunter

Atmospheric physicist Bill Pekny who also trained in meteorology had a pretty rock 'n' roll beginning to his career. The workforce started for me with the Navy hurricane hunters back in 1969, where I was a radar meteorologist. I was a crew member. I wasn't piloting the aircraft. I was on a low level info- monitor aircraft. There's five pilots, four engines, three tails with a couple of radars, one on the top and bottom. We flew at a thousand feet above the surface of the sea, out to these hurricanes. And then in a race track pattern, at a thousand feet, a thousand feet. I'm not talking about 10000 feet or 30000 feet, but thousand feet is the landing pattern at most airports. So we're doing that for 12 to 15 hours through the rain bands, cutting into the eye wall, turning around in the eye walls that go back and forth. And what an aircraft doing this for 12 plus hours is is very hot and wet on these aircraft. And this is back in 1969. We're wearing flight suits, is very hot and wet on those aircraft. That was the bad side of it. Bumpiness you have the severe turbulence did occur, especially cutting through and into and out of the eye wall. But these Navy pilots are absolutely spectacular. My station on the aircraft that was sitting in front of a radar screen with a camera bolted to it, always be able to see how close they were staying that thousand feet through the worst of the turbulence, the worst they ever did was as low as plus or minus 100 feet.