NOAA’s entire hurricane hunter fleet is flying into Hurricane Edouard today. The NOAA43 P3 took off this morning around 8AM from St. Croix and is headed into Edouard. The NOAA49 G-IV jet took off at 9AM also from St. Croix and will fly over Edouard. We can’t forget about the NOAA42 P3 aircraft. It will take off around 11AM from Bermuda to also collect data in Hurricane Edouard. If the conditions are right, NOAA42 will launch unmanned aerial systems called Coyote. It is designed to fly around for about two hours close to the sea surface and measure temperature, pressure, and relative humidity near the surface. Below are the proposed flight tracks. 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. The hurricane weather symbol is the estimated storm position.
