Hurricane Hokies

During hurricane season, which typically lasts from June to November, you’ll find Rebecca Keller ‘18 and Thomas Smith ‘18 flying hurricane missions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Hunters.

“When I tell someone I'm a hurricane hunter, their first reaction is always like ‘you do what?’” Keller said. “I just explain that I'm the one who gathers the data in the back of the plane while we're flying through the storm.” 

The Hurricane Hunters help forecasters make accurate predictions during a hurricane and help hurricane researchers achieve a better understanding of storm processes, improving their forecast models. Smith first learned about the Hurricane Hunters while majoring in meteorology.

“One day, some guy visited our class dressed in a flight suit and told us about how he flew into hurricanes,” he recalled. “I was hooked. It's very easy for people to go throughout their lives and not really realize that this sort of job exists." 

Into the eye of the storm

During hurricane missions, Keller releases devices called dropwindsondes, each equipped with sensors to capture critical data on the storm, including pressure, humidity, temperature, wind direction, and wind speed. Deployed via parachute, dropwindsondes allow onboard meteorologists to immediately begin processing the data, which is transmitted to the National Hurricane Center for crucial prediction updates.

“During flights, we travel through the eyewall, which is the most dangerous and destructive part of a cyclone, until we find the storm’s center,” Keller said. “In the eye, we make eyewall passes to find the storm's center, where wind speeds drop to zero, allowing us to collect live data that is crucial for hurricane hunting. Scientists plan our flight tracks in advance, and we release up to 30 dropwindsondes per flight, guided by the flight director who tracks the storm and data points. Every piece of data is essential in predicting the hurricane's path and intensity.”

Initially, when a storm is forming, the forecast predicts conditions five days out, showing a large area of uncertainty regarding the storm's path. However, as more data is gathered, the "cone of uncertainty" becomes more refined, allowing for more accurate predictions of where the storm will make landfall and where the eye will hit. This allows meteorologists to identify a specific region where the hurricane is expected to make landfall. Giving residents time to evacuate and plan for devastating weather can save lives and is a direct impact of the work that Keller and Smith are doing.
 

Appreciation for aviation

For Keller, aviation and Virginia Tech were both familiar to her growing up. “My dad graduated from Virginia Tech in electrical engineering, and I grew up going to Virginia Tech football games,” she said. “That was the family tradition.” 

In high school, her interest in math and putting things together, along with a push from her parents, led her to pursue engineering. During her first year in the College of Engineering, she attended an aerospace interest meeting and knew immediately that’s what she wanted to do. 

“I was never a space kid,” Keller said. “My dad has his private pilot's license so I was exposed to aviation early on and loved it. It only made more sense for me to study it. During my senior year at the Engineering Expo, I had a few interviews with Navair and worked there after graduation.” Four years later, the Roanoke native saw a job advertisement for NOAA Hurricane Hunters and the rest is history. 

Smith, who received his degree from the College of Natural Resources and Environment, also had an early introduction to flight. “My dad was in the Air Force and is now an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration, so I was immersed in aviation from a young age,” he said.

Now, Keller and Smith get to combine their love of aviation with engineering in an exciting career hunting some of the country’s biggest storms.

As an aerospace engineer, Keller's role in hurricane hunting is to install equipment and make sure it is functioning properly to go on the aircraft. “It’s a lot of computer-aided design (CAD) modeling, making structural drawings, and structural analysis,” she said. “A lot of engineers work on certain parts of a project, but I have the ability to work on the entire project, from design, to analysis, to testing.” Once they’ve designed the equipment and approved it for airworthiness, the researchers then have to figure out how to test it.

“A great luxury that we have on hurricane flights is that we bring with us at least one or two meteorologists as flight directors,” explained Smith, who pilots the missions. They are able to speak with authority about what the crew should expect in terms of turbulence and space weather. “That's what you don't want when flying into a storm environment - to be surprised by anything.”

2024 Hurricane Season

This summer, Smith and Keller experienced first-hand the impact their work has on people living in the path of hurricanes.

“My home was flooded as a result of Hurricane Milton while I was away flying missions into the storm,” said Keller. “That experience made me even more proud of what we do. I was able to ensure my friends and my pets were safe and prepared because of the data that we were gathering and knowing that the storm was going to impact us.”

Hurricane Milton was also Keller’s first Category 5 mission. “I got to see what's called a stadium eye effect, which is when you  see an upward tunnel of clouds and then you see the sky,” she said. “It was so shockingly beautiful for something so destructive that I knew was heading toward our homes.” 

“It never gets old for me, sharing our career with other people who might not know that this profession exists or the uniqueness of the work that we do,” Smith said. “This time of year, it really hits home when we have Milton and Helene impacting our own backyards. Between takeoff, landing, and anytime in between, I know that the work that we're doing is so impactful.”

Hurricane Hunters in the off season

What does the rest of the year look like for these Hokies? Thomas averages about 354 flight hours per year, but when he’s not flying, he works as a program manager for the National Geodetic Survey on projects that include coastal mapping and emergency response.

“We maintain an online imagery catalog and can quickly share images with the public, often on the same day, without licensing concerns. This allows displaced residents to check and see if their homes or streets are flooded after a storm,” Smith said. “Recently, the Coast Guard used our imagery for helicopter landing points, and we collected data in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, helping the National Guard and other entities access the area quickly.”

Each season brings its own set of priorities.

“During the spring, our engineering team is often very busy preparing for a lot of things like aircraft projects, and then hurricane season comes,” said Keller. “During storm season, we're ‘all hands on deck’ supporting the mission. When we have free time, we try to keep our other projects going, so we have a wide range of things, from an engineering standpoint, that we get to do.”