NOAA’s P-3 hurricane hunter aircraft will fly a Tail Doppler Radar (TDR) operational mission into Tropical Storm Erika. The P3 will depart at 2:00AM local time from Barbados and fly an eight hour mission that will land in MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, FL. This flight is operationally tasked by NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). EMC has requested this flight into Erika. The Doppler radar data collected during this will be transmitted in near realtime to NOAA’s hurricane weather forecast model. The dots on the flight track (shown in green) represent the aircraft turn points. The red dots in the figure show the locations that launch weather balloons twice a day while the purple dots are the locations that launch balloons once a day.
