The NOAA43 hurricane hunter aircraft is set to take off at 2PM Eastern (1800 UTC) from MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, FL for an eight hour mission. The data collected on this and all other flights go into the computer forecast models to improve the prediction of Matthew’s track and intensity. 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.
