Get coffee. I mean it – you’re not going to be able to cut away from this story.
My friend Dr Jeff Masters has alluded to this event many times, but I’ve never heard him tell the whole story as he does here.
In 1989, Jeff was a young meteorologist on NOAA’s hurricane hunting team, guiding the P-3 aircraft into and out of hurricanes and winter storms.
As Jeff relates, it was his dream job, until, very suddenly, it wasn’t.
In September of that year, the team flew into Hurricane Hugo east of Barbados, which they believed, due to insufficient satellite data, was a Category 3 storm, and approachable at a relatively low 1500 foot altitude.
Hugo turned out to be an angry and murderous Cat 5.
Jeff’s story is as vivid an illustration as one can find about the courage and professionalism of the NOAA teams that help protect our coastal populations, the risks that they take, and what it means to have incomplete data about potentially monstrous storms.
These are the same teams that have now been targeted by the science-wreckers of DOGE, to blind the world to the increasing impacts of climate change.
Jeff’s presentation was part of the recent “100 Hour” Livestream from scientists sounding the alarm about the deadly effects of the Republican war on science, now in full control of the Federal Government.
I’ve posted at least one clip from the marathon, I’m unable to find the full stream, if that is still available. Anyone that has a link, let me know.
Very good contribution from Jeff Masters, a well-organized presentation in terms of both narration and images.
That said, with me being already familiar with jargon and terminology, I found it very watchable at 1.5x speed.