Hurricane Hunters are on a mission

This evening, the Florida panhandle and northwest interior coast are bracing for Hurricane Michael and thousands are evacuating as information is gathered from the storm barreling toward the Coast line.

Much of that life-saving information is collected in the sky by members of Keesler’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known as the Hurricane Hunters.

Most pilots do everything they can to avoid a storm. Keesler’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron flew straight into the eye of the hurricane several times. This was just after the first pass.

Captain Kelsie Carpenter said, “All that information gets bottled into my system here. I give it a check, make sure that it looks valid before I send it to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, and they take all that information and put it in their bottles and use it to fine tune their forecasts to make sure people are warned and have planned and make evacuations if they need to take place.”

It’s a job that Captain Michael Panasuk doesn’t take lightly. Up at the controls, he knows they are protecting those down below, including his family in Ocean Springs. “It’s an honor to be up here, collecting that kind of data. It not only goes out to people we don’t know on the coast, and Florida and Georgia, and Alabama. It’s going to be helpful for my family, and my wife, back at home, for evacuation purposes and what not.”

The information collected on Tuesday’s flight will be relayed to the National Hurricane Center in Miami to better pinpoint Michael’s intensity and track. “Every storm is different. They all have their unique characteristics,  so this storm, like a lot, the strongest and the worst weather is the northeast quadrant, but you just never know what to expect until you get into that storm. This storm has been extra bumpy, so to speak, as we get into the northeast quadrant.”