The NOAA42 P3 aircraft begins a series of flights into Hurricane Irma. This flight tasked by NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center departed from Barbados around 3 PM (1900 UTC) to fly into Hurricane Irma. The data from this eight-hour flight will go into the numerical weather prediction models. Below is the proposed flight track. The dots on the flight track (shown in green) represent the aircraft turn points. The aircraft will release Airborne Expendable Bathythermographs (AXBTs) at points 7-13 to measure how warm the ocean is where Irma is headed. This will help the models learn how much fuel is available for Irma’s intensity. 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.
