NOAA’s P-3 hurricane hunter aircraft is ready to fly again. The P-3 will fly a Tail Doppler Radar (TDR) operational mission into Tropical Storm Kate. It will depart at 2:00PM local time from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL and fly a seven hour mission. This flight is operationally tasked by NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). This means that EMC has requested this flight into Kate. The Doppler radar data collected during this flight will be transmitted in near realtime to NOAA’s hurricane weather forecast model. The data is then ingested into the model to improve the model’s intensity and track forecasts. 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.
