Favorites
You don't appear to have any favorites yet, or your cookies may be disabled.
| Welcome to Weather Underground! Sign In or Create an Account. Edit my Page Preferences. | Other Wunders: Mobile - iPhone - Lite - Download |
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog |
 |
Last Updated: 1:09 PM GMT on July 10, 2009
— Last Comment: 10:02 AM GMT on July 12, 2009
The only Atlantic Hurricane Hunter flight to go down occurred on September 26, 1955. Snowcloud Five, a U.S. Navy P2V Neptune weather reconnaissance airplane flying out of Guantanamo, Cuba, was lost in Hurricane Janet, 300 miles southwest of Jamaica. Snowcloud Five was part of the Airborne Early Warning Squadron Four (VW-4), based at the Jacksonville, Florida Naval Air Station. Carrying a crew of nine and two reporters from the Toronto Daily Star, Snowcloud Five took off at 0630 local time, and performed its initial penetration into Janet at an altitude of 700 feet. At the time of the crash, Janet was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds. The aircraft sent back this transmission, then was never heard from again:
NAVY RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHT 5U93, OBSERVATION NUMBER FIVE, AT 1330 GMT (8:30AM EST), MONDAY, LOCATED AT LATITUDE 15.4 DEGREES N, LONGITUDE 78.2 DEGREES W. OBLIQUE AND HORIZONTAL VISIBILITY 3-10 MILES, ALTITUDE 700 FEET, FLIGHT WIND 050 DEGREES (NE) 45 KNOTS (52 MPH). PRESENT WEATHER LIGHT INTERMITTENT SHOWERS, PAST WEATHER SAME, OVERCAST AND SOME SCUD BELOW, SURFACE PRESSURE 1,003 MILLIBARS (29.62 INCHES), SURFACE WINDS 050 DEGREES (NE), 45 KNOTS (52 MPH). BEGINNING PENETRATION.  Figure 1. Snowcloud Five, the U.S. Navy P2V Neptune weather reconnaissance airplane that went down in Hurricane Janet of 1995. Image credit: navyhurricanehunters.com An intensive air and sea search operation combed a 300 by 200 mile region of the Caribbean for the airplane over the next five days. In all, sixty aircraft, seven ships, and three thousand personnel were involved. No trace of Snowcloud Five was ever found. A book called Stormchasers (David Toomey, 2002) provides a detailed story of the flight into Hurricane Janet and offers some insight as to what may have gone wrong. Dr. Hugh Willoughby, former director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division, speculated on the fate of Snowcloud Five in a review of Stormchasers that appeared in the February, 2003 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: "The enlisted aerographer's mate was left behind that day in order to accommodate the Toronto Daily Star reporter. This key crew member was normally responsible for keeping the pilots aware of altitude by calling out readings from the only radar altimeter on board, located at the aerologist's station. Without him, the aerologist, Lt. (jg) William Buck, had to do two demanding jobs: He had to simultaneously read the bouncing, flickering altimeter and peer down from his Plexiglas bubble in the nose to discern the wind from streaks of foam on the sea. It is easy to imagine how he might have lost control of the situation as he struggled to keep the airplane safely above the waves and flying perpendicular to the wind towards the eye." The crew members lost on the mission were: Lt. Cmdr. Grover B. Windham Jr. of Jacksonville, FL, Plane Commander LTjg Thomas R. Morgan of Orange Park, FL, Navigator LTjg George W. Herlong of Yukon, FL, Co-Pilot Aviation Electronics Technician Second Class Julius J. Mann, 22, of Canton, Ohio LTjg Thomas L. Greaney, 26, of Jacksonville, FL, Navigator Aviation Mechanic First Class J. P. Windham, Jr., 32 of Jacksonville, FL Airman Kenneth L. Klegg, 22, of Cranston, RI Aviation Electronics Man First Class Joseph F. Combs of Forest Park, NY Aerologist William A. Buck, of Jacksonville, FL Toronto Daily Star Reporter Alfred O. Tate Toronto Daily Star Photographer Douglas Cronk Robert Ballard, or other experts in finding sunken ships--I challenge you to find the wreckage of Snowcloud Five, and help bring to light the final fate of the only Atlantic Hurricane Hunter plane to go down in the line of duty!  Figure 2. Damage to the town of Corozal, Belize, after Hurricane Janet in 1955. Janet intensified to a Category 5 hurricane the day after Snowcloud Five went down, and hit the Yucatan Peninsula near the Belize/Mexico border with 175 mph winds, killing more than 500 people. Image credit: corozal.com. Sources: The book, Stormchasers (David Toomey, 2002) provides a detailed story of the flight into Hurricane Janet, and is a good read. Other sources: The Florida Times-Union Jacksonville, Wednesday, September 28, 1955: "Navy Plane Missing With 11 Local Men". Previous posts in this series: October 1, 1945 typhoon Typhoon Wilma, 1952 Typhoon Doris, 1953 The tropics remain quiet, with no threat areas and no models forecasting Atlantic tropical development over the next seven days. I'll have a new post on Monday. Jeff Masters
It's an El Niño year, which typically means that Atlantic hurricane activity will be reduced. But not all El Niño events are created equal when it comes to their impact on Atlantic hurricane activity. Over the past 150 years, hurricane damage has averaged $800 million/year in El Niño years and double that during La Niña years. The abnormal warming of the equatorial Eastern Pacific ocean waters in most El Niño events creates an atmospheric circulation pattern th...
Island in a Storm tells the riveting story of one of America's greatest hurricane disasters--the ravaging of Louisiana's Isle Derniere by the notorious Last Island Hurricane of 1856. If you haven't heard of Isle Derniere, there's a good reason why--the 13 - 18 foot storm surge of the Category 4 Last Island Hurricane completely submerged the 24-mile long, 5 to 6 foot high barrier island, which lay 5 miles off the central Louisiana coast. The resulting erosion by the ...
Atlantic tropical cyclone activity typically picks up a bit during the first half of July. Since the current active hurricane period began in 1995, seven of 14 years (50%) have had a named storm form during the first half of July. The busiest first half of July occurred in 2005, when three hurricanes formed. These included Hurricane Dennis and Hurricane Emily--the strongest hurricanes ever observed so early in the season. As seen in Figure 1, most of the early July ...
Hurricane track forecasts have improved by about 50% over the past twenty years, which has undoubtedly saved many lives and billions of dollars. These forecast improvements have primarily resulted from the investment made in hurricane research, which has been funded at approximately $50 million per year over that period. To me, it is unfathomable that our nation spends so little on scientific research that provides such an incredible value. The President's National ...
|
 About JeffMasters:
My Local Weather:
Recent Photos:
Previous Entries for 2009:
Recommended Links:
 |
Sponsored Links:
Real Estate Guide
Hot Travel Savings
Financial Advice
Organic Skin Care
Commercial Industrial Magnet Products
Online Dating
Tickets and Worldwide Attractions
College Students
|
Find the Weather for any City, State or ZIP Code, or Airport Code or Country:
Custom Weather Services
In addition to this website, we provide a number of free and professional weather services.
Advertise On This Site
Weather Underground has extensive targeting capabilities to fulfill all of your client's advertising needs.
|
  |
 |
About Us - Contact - Support - Employment - Press Releases - Terms of Service - Privacy Policy - WU Gear | : Top of Page : |
Copyright © 2009 Weather Underground, Inc.
|
Copyright © 2009 Weather Underground, Inc.
|
