Mission Plan :

N42RF will fly a NESDIS-tasked Ocean Winds mission into Hurricane Gustav in the central Gulf of Mexico. A figure-4 is planned with no modification for land, followed by maneuvers for Ocean Winds (NESDIS).

Mission Summary :

This flight was mostly a standard flight into a mature hurricane, with few surprises. Secondary wind maxima were seen in the flight-level data, but not in the SFMR surface wind speed data in the same locations early in the flight, but the secondary wind maximum developed later on at the surface. During each pass in the initial figure-4 pattern, we hunted for the center ofthe storm to do a center sonde drop. The aircraft was positioned to get to a certain point for the 2345 UTC QuickScat pass and then a 0222 UTC Ascat pass for the NESDIS group

During the mission, the storm was slowly strengthening, then the intensity leveled off toward the end. Two wind analyses and sets of superobs were sent from the aircraft.

Problems :

Due to illness, only inexperienced AOC technicians were on the flight. The radar wen down on a few occassions, and the technicians did not know how to bring it back up the first time, leading to a relatively long outage, luckily on a downwind pass. This did not affect the radar anlayses. Toward the end of the flight, two dropwindsondes reported late, but were otherwise okay.

Mission Data