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Hurricane Hunters

One September morning, Captain Chad Gibson boarded an airplane in Mississippi.
A violent hurricane had been reported in Cuba. It was raining hard, and winds were over
110 miles per hour (177 kph). Gibson was planning to fly right through the storm.

Being caught in the middle of a storm was no problem for Gibson, because he is a
hurricane hunter. His job is to collect information about powerful storms. Most of this
information gets collected when the plane flies through the calm eye of the storm.
The pilots use a device called a dropsonde to record humidity,? temperature, and wind
speed. With this information, they determine the strength of a hurricane and where it is
heading. Then they send the information to weather forecasters.
After considering the data, the weather forecasters issue warnings about areas that
they expect to be affected. Sometimes, people in these areas have to prepare to be
evacuated.? Sometimes people do not want to be evacuated, but it is safer if they leave
the area. That way, they can avoid getting caught in dangerous situations.

The damage caused by past hurricanes has been considerable, but without the work
of the hurricane hunters, it would have been even worse. Pilots like Chad Gibson know
that their work can save lives. They don’t mind being asked to track dangerous storms.
As Gibson says, “It’s just a job. You know, a lawyer goes to his office. We get on our plane.”

1 eye of the storm: calm area in the center of a storm or hurricane
2 humidity: the amount of water in the air
8 evacuate: to move out of a place of danger for a period of time