area. It resulted from a moderate hurricane named Dolly, which came from
the vicinity of Puerto Rico on September 8 and moved toward Bermuda with
increasing intensity. On the tenth, aircraft in the center estimated the
highest winds at more than one hundred miles an hour, but on the
eleventh it weakened and passed directly over Bermuda. There were strong
gales at Bermuda, although the storm was diminishing in force so fast
that no serious damage resulted.
On the tenth an Air Force plane from Bermuda flew into the hurricane. A
Weather Bureau research man, Robert Simpson, went along to follow up on
some studies he was making of the circulation at high levels in tropical
storms. He reported:
"Dolly was an immature storm with most of the cloudiness concentrated in
the northern sector. On the south and west sides, clouds rose only to
around seven or eight thousand feet near the eye, except along the
spiral rain bands which encircled the eye. The plane first investigated
conditions at one thousand five hundred feet in the eye, where it was
observed that there was a huge mound of cloud near the center with a
moat or cloudless area which encircled this central cloud and separated
it from the walls of the eye."
After this low-level exploration, the plane climbed to 29,500 feet,
completing a spiral sounding in the eye. At this elevation or slightly
lower, a complete navigation of the storm area was made, with dropsondes
being released in strategic quarters, pressure and temperature gradients
being measured along the track of the plane. There were two outstanding
things observed during this flight at high levels: first, the sheer
beauty of the storm itself, which could be viewed in excellent
perspective, insofar as the cloud forms were geared to the wind
circulations over hundreds of miles surrounding the eye. The only
obstructions to vision at this elevation were the tall cloud walls which
rose from the northern side of the eye. The second was a strong cyclonic
circulation near thirty thousand feet over the eye itself which was
surprising. Most theorists had figured that the cyclonic circulation
would cease at high altitudes and possibly at very high levels become
anticyclonic.
Simpson continued:
"By the time the plane had returned to Bermuda it was evident that Dolly
was bearing down upon the island itself and that everything had to be
evacuated. All of the planes were flown out to the mainland and the
buildings battened down for the big blow. I spent most of the time in
the weather station with my eyes glued to the radar scope. As the storm
approached, and the winds rose, one rain band after another passed over
the station, each with evidence of a little more curvature than the
preceding band.
"Finally, the scope indicated a circle with a five-mile area free of any
radar echoes. It was bearing down directly upon Kindley Field. Oddly
enough the pressure had not begun to fall and the wind was holding
steady. Another odd thing was that during the reconnaissance the eye had
been twenty-five miles in diameter. However, this eye was only four to
five miles in diameter. The eye arrived, the rain stopped and then
resumed as the eye passed over the station, yet the pressure only
leveled off briefly and the wind only subsided slightly without
shifting. We had been tricked! This was not the real McCoy, it was a
false eye. Subsequently, two other false eyes appeared on the radar
scope and we had about decided that the storm had no organized central
circulation left when the real thing finally showed up on the scope,
still twenty-five miles in diameter."
In the reconnaissance of Hurricane Dolly, many feet of radar pictures
were made of the spiral bands of the storm. When it became clear that
all planes would have to be flown to the mainland because of the
approach of Dolly to Bermuda, the film pack used on the reconnaissance
was left in the plane so that additional pictures could be made on the
flight back to the mainland. Not only was this done, but also an
additional eye dropsonde was obtained during the trip to the mainland.
It was agreed that as soon as the plane returned to Bermuda after the
storm had passed, the film and additional records would be mailed to
Washington.
On its flight from the mainland while returning to Bermuda, the plane
exploded in mid-air 150 miles off the coast, near Savannah, Georgia. It
had the records, the radar film, the dropsondes taken in the eye, and
other data. In this case, the No. 4 engine had "run away," throwing its
prop, which struck Engine No. 3, and the latter exploded. The plane fell
out of control. Eight of the crew were rescued but none of the records
or data of the reconnaissance was saved. This plane, however, was not on
a storm mission at the time.
The unexpected appearance of a small eye on the radar scope is not
uncommon. The Navy's instruction to its crews says: "During the final
minutes of the run-in, radar may prove to be more of a hindrance than a
help. There can be a number of open spots close to the true eye which
might appear as eyes on the radar screen. You should not chase these
false eyes!"
Out in the Pacific, the typhoon chasers say: "False eyes are often found
in weak storms and care must be taken not to confuse them with the true
eye of the typhoon. On the radar scope they may present an appearance
much like the true eye but will not remain on the scope for any length
of time. By continually scanning the suspected eye with several sweeps,
the radar observer will see that the false eyes are surrounded by fuzzy
cloud formations rather than a heavy ring of cloud characteristic of the
eye."
When Hurricane Carol of 1954 was approaching the New England Coast, the
last penetration was made by a Navy plane with Lieutenant Commander R.
W. Westover as pilot and Lieutenant C. W. Hines as co-pilot. On the way
into the storm circulation, Hines was telling Westover about his
family's experience in the New England hurricane of 1938. The family
residence was on Cape God. It was blown into the water and drifted until
it lodged against a bridge, obstructing navigation. Finally, it was
necessary to dynamite the wrecked house to clear the channel. The Hines
family rebuilt their home and took out hurricane insurance. They carried
the insurance until June 1, 1954, and then let it lapse.
As the recco plane flew into the center of Carol on August 30, the crew
was watching a Moore-McCormack ship in the stormy seas below and
sympathizing with the people on board who were suffering such rotten
weather, but Hines was saving his sympathy for his family on Cape Cod.
He was sure that Carol was going to blow their home into the water
again, and afterward he learned that it did.
Although Carol of 1954 received a great deal of publicity because of
death and destruction in New England, Westover, who also flew into
Hurricane Carol of 1953, says that it was a much more violent hurricane
than the one in 1954. The first Carol was so bad that only one low-level
penetration was attempted. His crew recorded pressure 929 millibars in
the center--about 26.80 inches--and they recorded 87½° drift. But
fortunately the earlier Carol remained out at sea throughout its course.
Hurricane Hazel, later in 1954, gave another Navy pilot, Lieutenant
Maxey P. Watson, an experience of the same kind that Lieutenant Hines
had. The storm was approaching the coast of South Carolina when Watson
flew his plane into it and he saw the center passing inland not far from
the town of Conway, which was his home.
Hazel was responsible for other unexpected incidents here and there
during its ravages from the Caribbean to the northeastern part of the
United States. One case was on a Navy plane commanded by Lieutenant G.
J. Rehe. Watson was the pilot on this trip, also. They took off from
Puerto Rico and flew into the storm as it was turning northward and
passing out of the Caribbean.
Up to that time, Hazel was not much of a storm. Westover flew into it
after it passed Grenada and found that it was not a well-organized
cyclone. Rehe had gone into it on the first penetration and reported
winds of eighty-five knots. Westover found the area almost cloudless but
ninety-knot winds in one area. However, after its northward motion
began, it was a very dangerous wind system, which was responsible for
the only injury to a Navy crewman in their many flights into this
particular hurricane.
Because of the severe turbulence that had developed quickly in Hazel,
all the crew members on this flight were fastened in with safety belts,
as is usual in such cases, but the photographer wanted to get up and
take a picture. So he got out of his safety belt and had another crew
member unfasten himself and hold him while he took the picture. In the
sudden very violent turbulence, both were thrown against the overhead.
On his descent, the photographer caught his arm between the cables and
the fuselage and broke his shoulder blade. The other crewman was knocked
unconscious.
Out in the Pacific, an Air Force pilot, Captain Leo S. Bielinski, had an
experience which induced him to go to great lengths of experiment and
ingenuity in an effort to find an easier way to track typhoons and
hurricanes. It was in May, 1950, when a typhoon called Doris was growing
to maturity while near the island of Truk and showed signs of changing
its path, threatening the base at Guam. On May 8, an RB-29, under the
command of Captain Cunningham, was sent out to penetrate the storm.
Bielinski went along.
At that time Leo had a fine wrist watch in which he took much pride. A
man in uniform has few things that are different from the other men, but
Leo secured an expression of individuality through a wrist watch. He
bought a very special one for a hundred dollars and admits that he
frequently looked at it when he really didn't care what time it was.
On this first trip into Doris, everything went smoothly. The crew
members were instructed to land at Iwo Jima, when another plane would
take over. But before landing they found that the hydraulic system
needed repairs. Cunningham brought the plane down skillfully and they
worked all night making repairs with parts salvaged from another plane
on the field. The plans were changed and they were assigned to the next
mission. The next morning they were airborne again for another
penetration. This confirmed the northwest movement of Doris, which would
take the most violent winds away from Guam, so they returned to Iwo
Jima, well worn-out by two successive flights and thinking about a
little rest, when Commander Cunningham received the following message:
"Unable to get relief; request you make afternoon fix." So the same crew
turned around and started the third mission. The other two flights into
this storm had been uneventful, they were tired, and Leo didn't bother
to fasten his safety belt.
_Wham!_ Suddenly he found himself floating in the air around the
cockpit. Before he could get his bearings, he was thrown violently
against a bulkhead and slowly came to the realization that the bits of
junk dangling in his face were the remains of his hundred-dollar wrist
watch. This bothered Bielinski more than a broken arm or a twisted
vertebrae. He started studying typhoons with a determination to find a
better way to keep track of them. The results are described in Chapter
17.
In other ways the unexpected can be serious. One experience is cited by
Captain Ed Vrable, who was navigator on a flight into a hurricane in
1953. After a careful approach, the aircraft suddenly popped into the
eye, but it was only about eight miles in diameter. It was not easy to
circle a superfortress in this small eye. At one point, the turning arc
was a little too broad and the aircraft edged out into the winds on the
border. It was instantly tossed back into the eye, almost upside down,
and he had the worst fright of his career in the reconnaissance
business. But the pilots made a skillful descent until they managed to
get the plane into the correct attitude and finished the flight.
In Hurricane Edna, in 1954, a crew of hunters in a WB-29, in command of
Captain Charles C. Whitney, had an unexpected duty. They had spent part
of the morning and the afternoon of September 14 in the eye of the
hurricane. They flew in tight little circles, dodging the
wing-shuddering winds on the periphery. Because the Weather Bureau
forecasters were afraid of a repetition of a sudden speed-up like that
of Hurricane Carol two weeks before, they had asked for a continuous
watch. Captain Whitney and his crew were in there for nine hours.
And then, with gas getting low, they ran into the unexpected. Some
eleven hours after take-off from Bermuda, the aircraft picked up a radio
message that the Nantucket lightship, torn from her moorings by terrific
winds, was adrift and at Edna's mercy. The WB-29 plunged into
145-mile-an-hour winds in search of the vessel.
Picking up the lightship by radar, the weather plane shepherded the
hopelessly lost ship, remaining overhead until a Coast Guard rescue
plane arrived.
Waves seventy feet high seemed to toss the stricken vessel into the air
to meet the low-flying aircraft pressed down by Edna's raging winds. It
felt, the crew said later, as if the plane were dancing on her tail.
With the arrival of the relief plane, the WB-29 turned landward. After
sixteen hours in the air, and with the gas gauge hitting the low side of
the dial, the weather plane made a landing at Dover, Delaware.
According to the Air Force, "This flight was one of the most dramatic
missions in peacetime Air Force history."
_15._ FIGHTING HAIL AND HURRICANES
"_I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain
And laugh as I pass in thunder._"
--Hebert
At first thought, most people would say that fighting hail has nothing
to do with hunting hurricanes, but in one instance it did. It is an
interesting story which shows how men will take risks in trying to
control the weather. The story ends with one man giving up his life in a
sensational adventure with a mysterious conclusion.
Destructive storms are not very frequent in any one place but most
people are under the impression that they are. They are apt to remember
bad weather and forget about the good. Losses of life and property and
failures of plans and business enterprises are caused by storms or the
wrong kind of weather and such things are impressed on their memories.
When rain is needed, it may fail altogether or come in such quantities
that fields and roads are washed out and there are floods in the rivers.
A thunderstorm brings rain but sometimes hail comes with it, destroying
crops and damaging property.
People have tried to overcome these bad effects of the weather in many
ways. Irrigation has long been practiced in regions with scanty
rainfall. Air conditioning affords relief from excessive heat. In many
other ways, some foolish and some dangerous, men have tried to influence
the weather. An interesting case of this kind which appealed to the
imagination of people in many countries started near the beginning of
the present century. It was an international battle against hail. Its
origin was in the vineyards of Italy. Hail had done great damage there
year after year, and finally an Italian got the idea that he might
destroy hailstorms by shooting into them when they were just beginning.
In those years, cannon were used in battle. Loaded with big charges of
gunpowder, these cannon hurled solid, heavy balls at enemy cities,
forts, fleets, and troops. In time of peace, there were many of these
old cannon around, serving no useful purpose, and the Italian had no
trouble in getting one to try on hailstorms. But he was not permitted to
use a cannon ball. It might have crashed into a neighbor's house or
killed somebody in the vineyards. So he loaded it with gunpowder and
fired it at the storm cloud, hoping it would create a disturbance in the
atmosphere and weaken the hailstorm.
It is an amazing fact that the vineyard of this Italian was damaged far
less by hail than those of any of his neighbors, and the next year
others tried firing a cannon with similar success. They became expert at
it and learned how to load a cannon so that it cast a big, whirling
smoke ring into the thunderstorm cloud. The news spread to other
countries and in two or three years there was a lot of hail shooting in
different parts of the world. So they held an international
hail-shooting congress where they exchanged ideas and narrated their
experiences. By the time the second world congress on hail was held, a
great deal of uncertainty had developed. It seemed that the first hail
shooters had begun work at a time when it just happened that there was
much less than the usual amount of hail. Also, there were explosions and
people were hurt. One man was killed and another had an arm blown off.
After a few years, all the hail shooting ceased.
Even today, there is a good deal of mystery about the formation of hail
and many people think there are ways of preventing it or causing the
storm to make little hailstones instead of big ones and thus having much
less destruction. Hail causes many millions of dollars worth of damage
every year in the United States and almost any effort to reduce the
losses seems to be justified.
Scientists believe that hailstones are very small in the beginning but
grow in size as they go up and down several times in the thunderstorm
clouds. Even in hot weather, it is very cold in the top layers of one of
these great clouds. Raindrops freeze and in falling gather more water or
snow in these high regions. Soon they are caught in rising air currents
and carried up into freezing temperatures again. On each trip up and
down, another layer of water or snow gathers on the outside and is
frozen. At last the multi-layered stones become so heavy that they fall
to the ground, in spite of rising currents, and as they leave the cloud
they come down with great rapidity and may beat crops to the ground,
batter automobiles, break glass and bruise and sometimes kill livestock.
A hailstone the size of a baseball falling many thousands of feet is a
very dangerous thing.
For many years after the hail-shooting experiments, it was thought that
nothing could be done about it except to carry hail insurance. Then,
shortly after World War II, scientists of the General Electric Company
announced that they had conducted some successful experiments in
controlling the weather and this led to efforts to control rainfall,
prevent hail, and stop hurricanes.
The man who started this new effort at weather control was Vincent
Schaefer. He observed the weather on top of Mt. Washington, in New
Hampshire, a place where it is very cold and windy in winter. The
observatory is fastened to the solid rock of the mountain top by steel
cables, to keep it from being blown off. Vast quantities of ice
accumulate on the building. Snow comes down in great quantities at times
but is generally carried by high winds which have reached terrific
speed, on one occasion going up to 231 miles an hour. Conditions there
are in some respects like the weather in the top of a big thunderstorm.
One of the peculiar things that happens up there on Mt. Washington and
in the top of a thunderstorm is the formation of liquid water droplets,
which are colder than freezing but they do not turn to ice. These
droplets are said to be supercooled. Schaefer found in his experiments
at General Electric that a small pellet of dry ice, the size of a pea,
when dropped into air containing a cloud of supercooled water droplets
could produce untold billions of small ice nuclei. So he carried some
dry ice up in an airplane and dropped it into the top of a cloud with
supercooled water droplets, and a trail of snow was seen falling from
the bottom of the cloud. Many others tried the same experiment and some
had similar results. The snow turned to rain as it came down to warmer
levels, and the process was called "rainmaking."
There is one disturbing fact. Before dry ice will work on a cloud, it
must be very near the point of making rain without any outside help. But
many of the rainmakers believe that dry ice makes more rain fall or
causes it to fall sooner than it would otherwise. Thus, as the cloud
moves along, the rainmaker may be able to cause a shower in a certain
place, whereas the cloud might have moved far away before it began to
rain. In this story the important point is that some of the
experimenters believe that dry ice or some other chemical will cause the
rain to fall but will make it much less likely that nature's process
will develop to the point of producing hail.
The news of all this rainmaking in the West aroused intense interest on
the part of a young man named Gordon Clouser. He thought he might be
able to prevent hail, and if he succeeded, he might stop tornadoes. In
the Midwest there is an old story about a farmer who knocked the life
out of a tornado by hitting it with a two-by-four. On hearing this
story, many people have gotten the idea that the government might
destroy a tornado by gunfire. More recently there have been serious
proposals that these vicious local storms with funnel clouds and violent
winds be destroyed by guided missiles. There is no evidence that any of
the plans offered so far would be successful in breaking up hailstorms
or tornadoes, but they are extremely small when compared with
hurricanes, and the government has received thousands of proposals that
these great storms be wiped out or rendered harmless by gunfire.
Behind most of the suggestions for killing hurricanes is the idea that
they begin as small whirls in the atmosphere and go through early stages
of growth to the size of a tornado or a thunderstorm, and if they could
be hit with great force in a vital place while small, they might die
out. On this assumption, there have been a great many proposals that the
Navy send battleships into the hurricane area to search for incipient
hurricanes and fire broadsides into them. No test of this kind has been
made for two reasons. The hurricane region is so large that the entire
Navy would be insufficient for such a patrol. On the other hand, there
is not a shred of evidence that hurricanes begin as small storms like
tornadoes or thunderstorms. Actually, they seem to develop as mildly
disturbed weather over an area of thousands of square miles. The experts
say that shooting at the weather in such a large region would certainly
be futile. After the World War II, the atom bomb stimulated some new
ideas and thousands of letters were written to the government about
knocking a hurricane out with an atom bomb at the right time and place.
When the New Mexico atom bomb was exploded, the weather was bad, with
rain in torrents, strong winds, lightning and thunder. Afterward, the
weather was much better and this led to a lot of speculation. The fact
is, however, that the scientists waited until the weather improved
before they exploded the bomb; hence neither the bad weather nor the
improvement could be attributed to the explosion.
Before the tests at Bikini in 1946 and Eniwetok in 1948, the scientists
received numerous letters, warning them that the explosions would start
storms and might cause a typhoon. But the effects of explosions of this
kind are soon over, while the forces that maintain a hurricane or
typhoon must be applied continuously day and night for a week or two, to
keep one of these big tropical storms going in full fury. One of the
scientists who witnessed these tests estimated that it would take a
thousand atomic bombs at any moment to equal the energy of motion in a
hurricane. No scientist has figured what would happen if one thousand
atomic bombs were exploded at one time in a storm area!
After a year or two of rainmaking with dry ice and another chemical,
silver iodide, the conviction grew that it would be possible to kill a
hurricane by dropping some of this material in a vital spot. Some of the
bolder students of weather control actually tried it. One of them was
Gordon Clouser. Just what he did when he flew into the storm and what
happened to it afterward make a mystery, for he gave his life in the
effort. It is a good example of the fearless activities of the hurricane
hunters.