Hugo: The Most Violent Flight in Hurricane History

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Off the Radar" – Episode: Hugo: The Most Violent Flight in Hurricane History

Podcast Information:

• Title: Off the Radar
• Host: Emily Gracey, National Weather Desk Meteorologist
• Episode: Hugo: The Most Violent Flight in Hurricane History
• Release Date: June 24, 2025
• Description: Emily Gracey delves deep into the harrowing account of Hurricane Hugo's most violent flight, featuring exclusive insights from Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Josh Wadler.

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1. Introduction to the Episode

Emily Gracey sets the stage by recounting a dramatic flight on September 15, 1989, where a NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft ventured directly into the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo. This mission would later be recognized as the most turbulent and dangerous flight in hurricane history.

Notable Quote:

"What happens next will go down as the most terrifying, most violent ride in Hurricane Hugo." – Emily Gracey [00:00]

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2. The Hugo Flight: Dr. Jeff Masters’ Account

a. Mission Preparation and Team Composition

Dr. Jeff Masters, a meteorologist aboard the flight, recounts the preparation and composition of the crew. The mission was designed to penetrate Hurricane Hugo at a dangerously low altitude of 1,500 feet to gather critical data on hurricane intensification at low levels.

Notable Quote:

"This mission was a particularly risky one in the planning stages... we had to fly as low as 1,500 feet to understand how a hurricane intensifies." – Dr. Jeff Masters [05:02]

b. Flight Progression and Initial Turbulence

The flight began with standard procedures until a radar failure forced the team to delay and fix the equipment. This delay prevented the crew from adequately assessing the storm's intensity, leading to critical misjudgments.

Notable Quote:

"We went into that storm thinking it was going to be a Category 3 storm based on satellite measurements... That was far too low to be going into this hurricane." – Dr. Jeff Masters [06:13]

c. Entering the Eyewall and Escalating Turbulence

Upon penetrating the eyewall, the crew experienced escalating wind speeds from Category 3 to Category 5, resulting in extreme turbulence. The aircraft endured severe g-forces, leading to structural damage and loss of control.

Notable Quote:

"We hit 5 1/2 g's of acceleration. The pilot lost control of the aircraft... It felt like the storm was speaking to me, saying, 'Foolish humans, you dare to risk my wrath.'" – Dr. Jeff Masters [14:40]

d. Emergency Maneuvers and Damage Control

Struggling to maintain control, the pilot made emergency maneuvers to exit the storm. Despite significant in-flight damage, including an engine fire, the crew managed to stabilize the aircraft and retreat from the hurricane's center.

Notable Quote:

"We were in straight and level flight in the center of the hurricane at 900ft, safe for the moment. So we had time to take stock of what kind of damage had happened and what we should do next." – Dr. Jeff Masters [16:29]

e. Aftermath and Impact on the Crew

Upon landing, the crew found minimal hurricane-related damage to the aircraft, though personal impacts were profound. The mission led to significant rule changes, prohibiting flights into hurricanes below 10,000 feet.

Notable Quote:

"Nobody has ever flown into even a Category 1 hurricane at an altitude less than 10,000ft since that flight. So there have been major rule changes made." – Dr. Jeff Masters [29:04]

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3. Measuring Hurricane Turbulence: Dr. Josh Wadler’s Insights

a. Development of the Bumpiness Index

Dr. Josh Wadler introduces a groundbreaking metric he developed to objectively measure hurricane-induced turbulence, termed the "Bumpiness Index." This index analyzes various motion types experienced during hurricane flights to rank turbulence severity.

Notable Quote:

"We came up with a metric to rank flights based on the available data from those flights." – Dr. Josh Wadler [34:35]

b. Application to Historical Flights

Using the Bumpiness Index, Dr. Wadler confirms that the Hurricane Hugo flight remains the most turbulent on record, significantly surpassing other notorious flights like Hurricane Ian.

Notable Quote:

"Hugo was like 30% worse than the next storm after that." – Dr. Josh Wadler [35:56]

c. Factors Contributing to Extreme Turbulence

Hurricane Hugo's flight experienced the highest front-back accelerations and significant vertical jumps, differentiating it from other turbulent flights that primarily involved lateral motions.

Notable Quote:

"They had the biggest front, back accelerations... and a pretty big vertical jump at the same time." – Dr. Josh Wadler [37:08]

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4. Human Factors and Future Implications

a. Impact on Aircraft and Crew Decision-Making

The intense turbulence impaired the crew's ability to make effective decisions under stress. Dr. Wadler emphasizes the importance of understanding cognitive responses to extreme turbulence to enhance safety protocols.

Notable Quote:

"At some point you're just so shook that your mind may not be making decisions as effectively as when you're calm." – Dr. Josh Wadler [43:09]

b. Future Research Directions

Dr. Wadler aims to further explore the cognitive impacts of turbulence on decision-making, hoping to develop guidelines to support crew safety during extreme weather encounters.

Notable Quote:

"We have to see how effective decision making is... maybe we need some sort of guidelines for decision making based off of turbulence quantities." – Dr. Josh Wadler [43:09]

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5. Conclusion

Emily Gracey wraps up the episode by reflecting on the profound experiences of Hurricane Hugo's flight and its lasting impact on hurricane research and pilot safety. She highlights the resilience of the crew and the advancements in measuring and understanding hurricane turbulence.

Notable Quote:

"This was the most turbulent hurricane hunter flight of all time... It gave me major Apollo 13 vibes, but there's also some great info in there on specifics from the flight and the hurricane." – Emily Gracey [32:53]

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Additional Notes:

• The episode excludes non-content sections such as advertisements and intros.
• The narrative flows seamlessly, offering a comprehensive understanding for listeners unfamiliar with the original podcast.
• Both Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Josh Wadler provide expert insights, enriched with firsthand experiences and recent research developments.

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Key Takeaways:

• The 1989 Hurricane Hugo flight remains a pivotal event in meteorological history due to its extreme turbulence and the lessons learned.
• Advances in measuring hurricane turbulence, like the Bumpiness Index, enhance our ability to quantify and respond to such natural phenomena.
• Understanding human cognitive responses to stress-induced turbulence is crucial for improving safety measures in future hurricane hunting missions.

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Transcript

[Emily Gracie]

September 15, 1989. A NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft is flying directly into the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo. Satellite data indicates that it's likely a Category 3 hurricane. The team makes a decision to gather the best data and enter the hurricane at a low altitude, just 1500ft. Getting close to the eye, they realize this was a mistake. What happens next will go down as the most terrifying, most violent ride. In Hurricane Hun.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

The nose is in a downdraft, the tail is in an updraft, and at the same time, the plane is skidding sideways because the wind is dropping off so quickly.

[Emily Gracie]

Today we're going off the radar and into the eye with one of the scientists that was on board this mission into Hurricane Hugo.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

The pilot lost control of the aircraft, and right at this moment, the number three engine burst into fire.

[Emily Gracie]

This is the story of that flight and the recent research behind measuring just how brutal it really was.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

This is a very primal feeling of nature's energies that humans should not be messing with.

[Emily Gracie]

I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey, and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do. Hurricane hunters are the unsung heroes of weather forecasting. These brave scientists and pilots fly directly into these dangerous storms, gathering critical data that helps protect millions of people. But on September 15, 1989, one crew pushed the boundaries of what was thought possible and nearly paid the ultimate price. Hurricane Hugo was a Beast, a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of over 160 mph. But what made this flight different wasn't just the storm's intensity. It was the altitude. At just 1500ft above the ocean, they were flying into the most turbulent part of the hurricane, where the storm's fury is at its most concentrated and where one strong downdraft could plunge an aircraft into the ocean. Today you'll hear from two meteorologists. First, we'll speak to Dr. Jeff Masters, who is actually on board that flight 36 years ago. His memory is impeccable. And you'll be on the edge of your seat when you hear his account of that day. Then we'll hear from Dr. Josh Wadler, who's developed a groundbreaking way to measure hurricane turbulence. And he'll explain exactly what made this flight the roughest ride in hurricane hunting history. But first, let's go back to September 15, 1989, and the flight that changed everything. Dr. Jeff Masters, thank you so much for talking to me about this today. I've read your account of this event and it is unbelievable. It is like reading a movie script. I was very captivated. And then there's been some new research lately that's led me to try to find somebody who is a part of this situation. So can you take me back to 1989 and tell me what you were doing then in that time period?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

I was flying with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters. I was a meteorologist assigned to one of their P3 weather research aircraft. These are big four engine turboprop aircraft that fly right into the eyes of hurricanes at relatively low altitude with the mission of providing data to the National Hurricane center in real time so they can make the best forecasts. And also for doing research. We carried research Scientists from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division on board and then after the mission, we would analyze the data and try and understand how to make better forecasts in the future.

[Emily Gracie]

Can I ask you kind of what stage of your career you were at at that point?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

I was young and indestructible. In my late 20s. I had just come out of master's degree school. I did a little teaching at the college level of weather forecasting. So this was kind of my first big job coming out of school, out of grad school, doing meteorology. And it was an exciting job because we'd fly all over the world studying the world's greatest storms. And I got to work with the world's greatest meteorologists. Some of the scientists were legends in their time. Like I worked with Theodore Fujita, inventor of the Fugita scale for tornadoes. And then he worked with all the world's top hurricane scientists as well.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so at that time, how many hurricanes approximately do you think you had flown into up until that point?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

I think this was my sixth hurricane over a four year period. But I'd also flown into a number of tropical storms and tropical depressions. But this was back in the 1980s. It was a relatively quiet period for hurricanes. If I had been flying this four year stint nowadays, I'm sure I would have had twice as many flights.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so tell me about that day and kind of the preparation of what was going on before you took flight into Hurricane Hugo.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

So we had two airplanes that were going to fly a research mission into Hurricane Hugo as it came across the Atlantic from its birthing grounds near the coast of Africa. We were based in Barbados, which is the first island that you can reasonably base out of to intercept A hurricane that's coming across the open Atlantic there. And we were going to be the first plane into the storm because there was nothing as far as land bases between Barbados and the coast of Africa that carries an element of risk with it because you don't have observations from the previous flight to tell you how bad this is going to be. You've only got satellite estimates. And that year, it turned out we didn't have very good satellite estimates because we only had one geostationary satellite in orbit, that the other one had failed that year. And that meant that they had to move the one existing one to an intermediate position where you're no longer getting as high quality of data over the Atlantic because that satellite's looking down at an oblique angle. And we went into that storm thinking it was going to be a Category 3 storm based on satellite measurements. There were no other hurricane hunter measurements to, you know, say yay or nay. That that was a good estimate.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so you're getting ready to take off. What's the crew look like? Who's on board? Are on board. Is there media on board at that point?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

So we have a standard crew complement of two pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator, the flight meteorologist, which was my job. And then we had a radio operator and three or four flight engine or engineers, electronic engineers that take care of all the meteorological equipment like the Doppler radar and the probes that measure the wind temperature, pressure and so on, and somebody who's a dropsoned operator who actually drops probes that we fire out of the bottom of the aircraft that fall on parachutes to measure, you know, things as they go down. So in addition to that, we had scientists on board from Nose Hurricane Research Division. I think four or five of them were on board. That's pretty typical. And then we had one reporter, a young lady from the Barbados newspaper was on board. Usually we have a couple reporters, and the full complement is anywhere from 14 to 18 people.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so you take off. What's the beginning of this mission look like? Are you feeling good about it? Are you nervous? Where are you headed?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

We're wanting to fly out to the east, out over the open Atlantic towards the hurricane. But as soon as we take off, our main radar fails. And that's a bad thing because you want to get that data not only to, you know, do your research mission, but it's also a safety thing if you can't see where you're going so well, then it's not going to be as safe a mission. So we actually orbited for, I don't know, a good 20 minutes or so while our electronic technicians work to fix the radar. And, you know, we're feeling a little anxious at that point because we're not getting a good view of what the storm looks like on radar, which we really wanted to get to estimate its intensity and judge if we were making a safe mission or not. This mission was a particularly risky one in the planning stages. We were planning on going in at low altitude, 1500ft. Normally when you fly into a Hurricane, you're at 10,000ft, which is safer because usually the turbulence less strong up there. And if you do happen to hit a big downdraft, well, it's not going to be a danger to plunk you in the ocean. So we were going to fly at 1500ft, which we had gotten away with the previous week in another hurricane. And it was an important mission objective because in order to understand how a hurricane intensifies, you really need to look down at the low levels, the interaction with the ocean, which is where it draws its energy from. I mean, hurricanes are heat engines. They pull heat energy from the ocean, convert it to the kinetic energy, their winds. And unless you're understanding that interface down near the surface, you're not really going to be able to understand how the hurricane is ticking. So there we are orbiting at, you know, 1500ft. Wanted to go out to the hurricane and not being able to because the radar was broken. So we finally got the radar fixed, and then at that point, we were not given a lot of time really to reconsider what we were going to do. We were in a time crunch now because we spent a lot of time orbiting, trying to get the radar fixed. And as it turned out, we didn't really get a good look at what the radar was showing us of Hugo. If we had taken a longer period of time like we normally would have with a long ferry approach to the storm, watching the radar, we would have said, hmm, you know, we're approaching the storm from the southwest, where the radar is showing the strongest echoes are, and that's going to be the most intense part of the storm. You know, maybe if we'd had a little longer to consider that, we would not have flown in at such a low altitude. And as it turned out, that was far too low to be going into this hurricane.

[Emily Gracie]

So when the radar came back on and you saw that, but it was kind of too late to shift decisions. Did you feel uneasy at that point, or were you like, let's just go for it, let's do it.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

You know, I felt pretty confident even though I was a young guy, you know, in my 20s, and I've been flying for four years. So, you know, I had a pretty good base behind me. But I was flying with the world's greatest hurricane scientists, and they'd been through all this kind of stuff before, and I felt, you know, they're going to point out anything that is amiss here as far as safety goes. And then our chief pilot, he was a veteran of 20 plus years flying into hurricanes. So I felt a lot of confidence that, you know, any one of the three of us had the power to say, let's not do this at low altitude. And they did not. I did not. And we ended up going in at 1500ft, which was a mistake.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay. And you guys were not the only plane out there. Correct.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

We had our sister aircraft, the NOAA aircraft, called this piggy. We were riding on Kermit. They're named after Muppets characters. There was a third aircraft, it was an Air Force aircraft. They were a little further out. They were due to arrive in the storm about an hour after we got there.

[Emily Gracie]

So you approached the eyewall little faster than you would have liked. You're at 1500ft. What are you starting to experience on.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

The lead up to going into the eyewall? We penetrated through a spiral band which had about 80 mile per hour winds. We took some bumps, not very turbulent. I mean, I've had commercial flights about as turbulent as that. And when we popped out of the spiral band, we were in what's called a moat region where the winds were only about 50, 60 miles per hour. And that was what you would expect to see in a Category 3 hurricane. So we didn't have any indication at this point that it was anything other than what we were expecting, a Cat 3. We hit the eye wall at 1500ft, and then immediately the winds went up to Cat 3. And we thought, oh, that's a little bit fast to be getting Cat 3 winds within the first few seconds hitting the eye wall. So there's about a two minute time to penetrate through an eye wall. And as soon as you're in it, you are committed. That plane cannot maneuver much. You've got to gut it out and go into the calm eye before you can change plans. We were getting roughed up pretty good that first minute in the eye wall, and one of the scientists said to me, you know, hey, when we get to the calm eye, let's ascend to 5,000ft. This is too rough. And we were all heartily in agreement with that because pretty soon we started getting Cat 4 winds. You know, 140, 150 mile per hour winds. And you should not be in a Cat 4 hurricane at 1500ft. It's just too dangerous. And sure enough, now we're hitting zero GS of acceleration. We're hitting two GS of acceleration. This was really starting to be a serious situation.

[Emily Gracie]

And it just kept getting worse too. Right. Because things started to go wrong on the aircraft while you're going through this.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

So now the winds are starting to increase even more. We're starting to see 160, 170, 180 mile per hour winds. This is a Cat 5, and you should never be that low in a Cat 5. Extremely dangerous. That plane had done it once before in a hurricane in 1980, Hurricane Allen. And it was a damaging affair. I mean, that plane took damage during that penetration. So we're not wanting to be there at all. The intercom grows very quiet. You know, we're all hooked into an online intercom and we're not hearing anything. And you could feel the pilots are working really hard fighting off those updrafts and downdrafts. There's a tremendous amount of wind shear going on. And if you understand wind shear, it's just a sharp change in speed or direction of the wind on the fuselage of the aircraft. And if you have that, you get a torquing motion which tends to make it buck around. So we're getting that both in the vertical and the horizontal. You know, the horizontal winds are gusting, the vertical winds are gusting. We're seeing 20 mile per hour updrafts, 20 mile per hour downdrafts. That's a lot of turbulence. And things are flying around inside the cabin in a more serious fashion. We're almost at the edge of the eye. It starts to lighten up out there. So, you know, the eye is where it's calm and the sun is shining. So we're seeing the lighter air, and I'm thinking, hallelujah. You know, we got away with it. We penetrated the eye wall of a Cat 5 hurricane at 1500ft and did not take any serious damage.

[Emily Gracie]

Was that the case, though?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

No. Right as we reach the edge of the eye, we hit the most incredible turbulence a Hurricane hunter aircraft has ever survived. We hit a 45 mile an hour updraft, followed by a 25 mile an hour downdraft followed by a 20 mile per hour updraft. And at that same time, the horizontal winds went from 185 miles per hour to 55 miles per hour. This was seven seconds. And if you think about that, the forces acting on the fuselage of that aircraft are pretty unbelievable. I mean, that the nose is in a downdraft, the tail is in an updraft, and at the same time, the plane is skidding sideways because the wind is dropping off so quickly. So we hit 5 1/2 g's of acceleration. The pilot lost control of the aircraft. The 200 pound life raft broke loose, hit the ceiling, bent a metal bar up there. We had a computer break loose, tear a gash in the ceiling. We had all the knives and forks and cans from the soda chest in the back in the galley flying loose. Engineer's tool chest broke open and there's hammers flying around inside the cabin. It's a miracle nobody got injured from all the flying stuff in there. And right at this moment, the number three engine bursts into fire. And I hear that over the income, we have fire coming out of number three. And now we're sinking down at a pretty sharp angle, you know, down towards the ocean. Pilot is not in control of the aircraft at that moment. We break into the calm eye. And the pilot pulls us out of the dive at 900ft, and he pulls a lever to extinguish the fire in a number three engine. And there we are at 900ft in the eye of Hurricane Hugo, looking all around us, disoriented and not knowing exactly where we were and what we should do.

[Emily Gracie]

So you're looking out the window, the ocean is 900ft away.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Yeah, that's. You feel like you're in a prison. I mean, you're surrounded on all sides by these 30,000 foot high walls of impenetrable white cumulonimbus clouds. It felt to me like the storm was speaking to me, saying, you know, foolish humans, you dare to risk my wrath, you may be destroyed by me. You know, it's just a very primal feeling of nature's energies that humans should not be messing with. We were seeing right in front of us a wall of dark clouds. And we weren't sure. Is that the eye wall or are those harmless, you know, scud clouds in the eye? We didn't want to penetrate the eyewall again with only three engines working. So the pilot put us in this very sharp bank angle to keep us from hitting what he thought was the eyewall. And as it turned out, it was not the eye wall. We were off to one side, we'd not come out into the eye right in the center. And he was trying to do a turn inside the eye to keep us in there in an impossible space to maneuver in. It turned out as he banked the plane over it, the other engine on the wing that was now missing its buddy engine started to go in the red zone. We were taxing it too much, so he had to lighten up the bank angle. And that actually put us into the eye wall again, just right at the very edge of it. We put a wing into it. We started getting bounced around, and he said, you know, okay, we can't do that. We got to risk burning out that other engine on the wing, Missing the engine, you know, put that needle back in the red zone. And, you know, he let it operate there for a few seconds. And then finally we completed the turn. He straightened us out, and we were in straight and level flight in the center of the hurricane at 900ft, safe for the moment. So we had time to take stock of what kind of damage had happened and what we should do next.

[Emily Gracie]

And it's not unusual to hang out in the eye and, like, regroup after a tough penetration.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right after tough penetration, it does happen. It is very uncommon to hang out in the eye, though. Normally you want to fly straight through, find the center, mark the center for the National Hurricane center, and then fly directly through the other side. It's pretty unusual to orbit inside the eye, which is what we were doing. And you have to do that, though, if you take damage or suspect you've taken damage. And we could see on the other engine on the wing that lost the engine. We had some damage to that engine. There was something hanging down from the number four engine swinging. And we figured out finally it was a rubber boot called a de icing boot, which is there to protect the engine from icing. It was swinging there, and if it was going to tear loose and get caught in the propeller, we had the risk of losing that engine. So that was the first thing we saw that was of concern. And we saw also from the G meter, we'd taken five and a half GS, and we knew that six GS was the maximum limit for that plane. So we were concerned there was other damage to the aircraft. So we contacted both of the other aircraft that were in the vicinity. Our sister aircraft was pretty far out. They weren't going to be able to make it to us for another 45 minutes. But the Air Force aircraft was right at the edge of the eye wall. They were getting ready to make their penetration in at 10,000ft. And we asked them for help and they said, okay, you know, after we do our penetration, we will spiral down to your altitude and come check you out and look for damage. And we're actually at this time trying to spiral higher. Our mission is to get as high as possible to exit the storm because there's less turbulence at higher altitudes and you know, less chance of a downdraft taking you into the ocean. In order to spiral higher, we are dumping fuel. So we dumped half of our load of fuel into the ocean, shut off all of our electronics to, you know, avoid having a spark ignite the fuel while we're doing that. And at the same time we're checking out all our scientific probes. We carried, you know, a thousand pounds or so of buoys that would go in the ocean to measure ocean temperatures, Atmospheric probes that would fall on parachutes to measure the temperature, pressure, wind and humidity. Those all went out into the ocean. Very well sampled eye. And so as we're, we're spiraling higher, we're also having to encounter the twin problems over at a pretty sharp bank angle. It's hard to climb when you're banked over. It's a tiny eye, it's 10 miles diameter. A big plane like that can't climb well in a bank angle that steep, maybe 20 or degrees or so. Also, it's an area of low pressure. You've got less lift if you've got a lower density atmosphere. Atmospheric pressure is about 10% lower than normal because it's a Category 5 hurricane. So at the end of all this, you know, lightening the load and orbiting to try and get higher, we were only able to get to 6,000ft. That plane can normally get to 25,000ft in that straight and level flight, but we were stuck at 6,000 and that was where we were going to have to exit the hurricane. So the air force airplane spirals down to 6,000ft and the two pilots do this remarkable close flyby in the 10 mile wide diameter of a Category 5 hurricane. You know, they flew, I don't know, a few hundred feet of us to check us out for damage. And you know, the pilot said, well, you know, we didn't see any obvious damage other than that propeller boot in your number four engine dangling down. And so we said, okay, thank you very much. Will you do us another favor? Stay at our altitude and find us a soft spot to get out of this hurricane. They said, okay. They proceeded to leave the eye of the hurricane at 6,000ft and went out through the east side. And they kept an open intercom while they were doing that so we could listen to their, you know, chatter. They got hammered. You know, they took two GS, zero GS. They're getting bounced around. They had severe turbulence, too. And they said, yeah, I don't think you want to go out the east eye wall. They circled around and said, you know, we'll try the west eye wall now. We've actually been in the storm for the eye for 45 minutes or so. We're getting a little low on fuel. We dumped out so much fuel that now we've got only maybe an hour reserve if we turn around now to get to base. So we tell, you know, the Air Force, you know, you better find us a soft spot pretty soon, or, you know, we're just going to be forced to leave regardless. So they went out through the west eye wall, punched into the storm again and said, you know, that was rough. You don't want to do that. They looked at their radar and said, you know, look at that. Look at the north eye wall. It looks like there's a bit of a easing of the echoes there. We're going to try going out that way. And we looked at our radar and said, you know, sure enough, it doesn't look too bad that way. Give it a whirl. So they punched out through the north eye wall and they reported, yeah, we still had Cat 5 winds. They were 185 miles per hour, gusting almost to 200. But the turbulence wasn't bad. For whatever reason, those updrafts and downdrafts there are less significant. So at this point, we didn't have much choice. We were low on fuel, we had to make a break for it, or we were just going to splash in the ocean. And, you know, the pilot leveled us out from our orbit, and two minutes later, we were penetrating through the eye wall of Hurricane Hugo. And son of a gun, if the Air Force pilot wasn't right, those updrafts and downdrafts were pretty minimal. I mean, no worse than that spiral band we hit early in the flight. And after two minutes, we popped out into the clear and we winged our way home to Barbados.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so let's go back to when you were in the eye and what you, as the team were doing. I know, you know, the pilots were trying to figure out how they're going to get out of there. What was everybody else on the plane doing? Are you, you know, like, looking at the Radar, are you trying to help make that decision? Are you cleaning up stuff that's been flying around?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Yeah. The main thing we had to do is make sure that we were going to be safe to penetrate the eyewall again, which meant cleaning up the cabin. So we stowed away all the loose gear and tied it down real good this time. Much better than we had in particular, that 200 pound life raft we didn't want to see flying around anymore. The head was. The bathroom was a disaster. We just took everything that we couldn't figure out what to do with and tossed it in there and said, nobody's going to use the bathroom the rest of this flight. A couple of our engineers had to coordinate the fuel dumping operation. They have to actually monitor out the window watching as the fuel's coming out to make sure that that's going according to plan. The radio operator was busy talking to the National Hurricane center, to our home base in Miami, inform, informing them what's going on. And I actually had to put together a report of the data we'd taken so far and sent that to the National Hurricane center to let them know, well, you know, this is a cat 5. Now, ignore what those satellite estimates were saying. This is a Cat 5. Sustained winds at the surface of 160 miles per hour, central pressure of 908 millibars. And you know, I sent that message off. So we're busy doing all those things while we're orbiting the eye for that one hour total that we were in the eye.

[Emily Gracie]

When you say 3G is 4G's, the plane can only sustain 6G's. Can you explain to people what that means scientifically?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

So G force is, you know, one G is the force of gravity. If you're zero GS, that means you're weightless. So you can, you know, add either in the up or down direction the force of gravity to tell you what the forces you're experiencing are. And planes are built to handle a lot of G forces in the down direction because you expect hard landings. Okay, so in the down direction, we hit a g loading of 5 1/2 g's in the nose. Now, as it turned out, when the flight was over and we looked at the data, there were some data we couldn't look at during flight. In the wings, the G meters, there were only recording about 2G. So I don't think we really pushed the limits of that plane structural integrity because where the wings are attached, that's where you really care. It was just the nose that was Flipping around at such high G forces, we were rotating around the center of gravity of the plane, which is where the wings are attached, and then in the nose and the tail were just oscillating wildly around that point. But that's kind of dangerous to have, you know, five and a half GS there. Pilots often will black out at five G's or six G's. You hear about fighter pilots, you know, experimental fighter jet pilots. That's getting to be blackout territory.

[Emily Gracie]

Gotcha. Okay, when you got back to Barbados and you got off the plane, what, what did you see? Did you notice anything about the aircraft that was surprising?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

We couldn't see anything wrong with the aircraft at all. We had a bit of an exciting landing because the, the pilot was having trouble compensating for the missing number three engine, you know, hitting the brakes too hard, causing a bit of a cloud of smoke to come up. They had all the emergency vehicles out there for us ready in case there was a accident upon landing, but they weren't needed. So they all went home and everybody got out and did their mental versions of kissing the ground. And that was my last flight with the hurricane hunters.

[Emily Gracie]

You never flew again?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

No, I mean, I was willing to fly again that season, but you know, we just had our. That plane was taken out of commission. It was not going to fly again until it was subject to an extremely thorough analysis to see if it had sustained any structural damage from that flight.

[Emily Gracie]

What about other people that were on the flight? What was their reaction?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

There were two other people that never flew again on that flight. I was the third. One of our electronic engineers who'd been flying for 20 years, never flew again. Our radio operator, also a 20 year veteran, said, I'm not flying again. The rest of those people on that flight did end up flying again, some of them not that season. Because we were down to one plane. We'd taken one out of commission and it was not that busy of a season.

[Emily Gracie]

The flying of 1500ft into a category 5 hurricane, would that ever happen again? Has that ever been proposed again?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Nobody has ever flown into even a Category 1 hurricane at an altitude less than 10,000ft since that flight. So there have been major rule changes made where you cannot fly into a hurricane at less than 10,000ft. Doesn't matter how strong a hurricane. Not gonna happen.

[Emily Gracie]

I read in your article, or I got the sense from reading your article that there was some self doubt and some self criticism and blaming. I know there were a lot of people making this decision, but the weight of what went On. Did you feel that?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was not happy with failing my job from the number one, you know, most important aspect, safety. I mean, that should be number one. It's easy to get complacent in any job, I think. And certainly we got overly complacent. You know, hurricanes are not to be trifled with. They are unpredictable, they're extremely dangerous. And I used to tell people the most dangerous part of my day was driving to work in the morning. And that was often the case. But you just can't take that for granted. Routine flights are the norm. But you do get, you know, every few years, one of these. The hurricane hunters haven't had anything like this since, but they've had a few doozies and they've had to abort missions on two occasions I'm aware of since the Hurricane Hugo flight.

[Emily Gracie]

Did you think that you were going to die during that flight?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

There are, I gave it about a 1 in 3 chance, something like that. And just passionate. You know, I thought that our guys would pull through because they were so good, our pilots and our flight engineers and so on. And you know, I was confident in the plane too, and it did pull through. And when they did do that final reckoning of the damage, they sent the plane to what's called scheduled depot level maintenance where they stripped it down to its bare frame. They X rayed every single rivet on the plane, did a thorough analysis, took the engines off, went over the engines with a fine tooth comb. There was no hurricane related damage to that plane other than that number three engine which burst into flame. And the fuel controller on that engine failed and caused the wrong air fuel mix which made it explode into flame. We think that was the only hurricane related damage that that plane incurred. So those planes are tough. Still flying to this day.

[Emily Gracie]

That makes me feel a lot better about flying on the Southwest flight.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Yeah, I mean, I'll be flying with my wife and we'll be hitting some turbulence and she'll grab my arm with her, you know, fingers a little white. I'm like, oh, come on, this is no big deal. Planes are tough. They're built to handle this. And it's true, planes are extremely tough. I've seen a video where they took a commercial jetliner and they took its wings and they did not snap off until they were nearly touching as they bent it over the back of the fuselage so they can bend, you know, more than 45 degrees. But when you look out the window and you see those wings flexing, it is A nerve wracking thing, but they're built to flex. Planes are tough.

[Emily Gracie]

Did it surprise you at all when this recent article came out saying that this flight was the most turbulent hurricane hunter flight of all time?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Oh, not a bit, not a bit. I mean, I was on another flight where we hit three GS and that was rough, but Hugo was in another dimension and really if you're going to get worse than that, you're not going to come back.

[Emily Gracie]

Hurricane Hugo went on to smash through the Caribbean and the southeastern United States, killing 67 people and causing billions in damage. On a personal note, my husband was a child living in Charleston, South Carolina at the time Hugo made landfall very close to his home. His family evacuated, as did many Charleston residents. They knew because of information coming from the hurricane hunters that this was a major hurricane capable of destruction. They returned to their flood damaged home days later, but they were safe. As Jeff mentioned, this was his last flight with the hurricane hunters. The airplane itself spent a month in Barbados undergoing structural integrity checks before it could even fly back to Florida for a three month maintenance overhaul. Remarkably, the engineers found almost no hurricane related damage. This particular aircraft, NOAA 42, also lovingly referred to as Kermit, is still flying into hurricanes today. So how do you actually measure something as such subjective as the roughest ride ever? How do you quantify the human experience of being thrown around by forces greater than gravity? That's where our next guest comes in. Dr. Josh Wadler has developed a revolutionary metric for measuring hurricane turbulence. He's analyzed decades of hurricane hunter flights and his research confirms what we just heard. The Hurricane Hugo flight really was the most turbulent on record. Dr. Josh Wadler, let's talk about Hugo and let's talk about this bumpiness factor because this is something you came up with in recent years. Can you tell me where this stemmed from?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So we were on a flight into Hurricane ian back in 2022, which was a Category 5 storm at the time. And it was just an insanely turbulent flight. The plane was bouncing back and forth and we were just like, what's going on? And so, you know, we had our mission, we met all objectives and on the ferry back to base we were all like, was that the worst mission you've ever been on? And you know, we're all talking and, but it's hard to compare years to years, you know, long time in between. And so I was like, we're scientists, let's try to figure it out. And so we came up with a metric to rank flights based on the available data from those flights.

[Emily Gracie]

So that first round, you were right. Like, Ian was bad, right?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Yeah. Ian was the worst flight since 2004, which is the farthest back we can go from regularly posted data.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, and what does this take into account? Like, what kind of metrics are you looking at here?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So it takes into account six different types of motions. Motions front, back, side, side, up, down, like most people would think a turbulence, you think up, down. It also includes rotations of the aircraft. So you could think of the aircraft like pitching up, like for takeoff or pitching down for landing. It could rotate side to side. It can rotate other directions. So there's three different types of rotations. Pitch, roll. Yeah.

[Emily Gracie]

And did it look at the whole entire flight or like specific moments in each of these flights?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So the way we rank storms was the worst moment of the flight. So we did analyze all components of the flight with the exception of of takeoff and landing.

[Emily Gracie]

What kind of scale are we talking about here?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

It's a. It's a pretty small scale. I think the highest number was like seven. So ranked zero to seven. And Hugo was like 30 worse than Ian, which was like 30% worse than the next storm after that. So they do get separated based on severity. And then. And then after that, they kind of clump together from different missions.

[Emily Gracie]

So you mentioned Ian and how that stood out to you. Had you been on a flight before that?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Yes, I have been flying since 2017.

[Emily Gracie]

Have you been on a flight since that?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

I have. And actually last year we were on a. On a flight into Hurricane Milton that went viral as well for. For the turbulence.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so let's talk about Hugo and what made this particular flight so bad? We heard the story from Jeff and, you know, the experience sounds terrifying, but what made it different as far as that one big mom.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So if I look back at the data, the biggest thing was they had the biggest front, back accelerations. So that's. That was a big thing. And that makes sense. Losing an engine, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna accelerate pretty quickly in terms of your velocity. And they also had a pretty big vertical jump at the same time. And so those two things combined made it the worst ranked flight because a lot of flights have one big movement, whether it's a vertical movement or side to side movement or something like that.

[Emily Gracie]

When did that movement take place? Because when he told the story, there was a moment when they first kind of penetrated the eye that he said they came within 900ft of the ocean. Was it that moment?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

I believe so.

[Emily Gracie]

Yes. But then before that, there were these other moments where he said they just were like up and then down and then up and then down. But that is a different motion than what you experienced in Ian.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Right, Right. And so in Ian, actually, of the top five storms in the bumpiness index, em was the lowest in terms of vertical. And so, you know, most people think of vertical, most vertical turbulence.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

You hit a big updraft, you go up. You hit a big downdraft, you go down. And we really didn't experience too much of that in Ian. It was a lot of like lateral side to side motions, which I'd never experienced before and haven't experienced since. It was, it was, it was, it was pretty scary.

[Emily Gracie]

And is it just strictly wind speed? Does this help you learn more about the hurricane itself and what it's doing?

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Yeah.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So what we think we went through is what's called, what's called the meso vortex. Sometimes you see these in strong hurricanes on radar that kind of look like little. People call them fingers, people call them scallops, there's no universal term for them. But you can kind of see things on the inner edge of the eye wall in radar. And so they're basically like tornadoes within the vortex is the way I like to describe them. That's not a technical description of them, but it's a, it's, you know, reasonable.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Way to picture it.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

And so we were going, very likely going through one of those, we've learned in recent years kind of how to see them on radar and try to avoid them. And in fact, they did avoid one purposefully last year in Helene, I believe, right before landfall.

[Emily Gracie]

What about Milton? You know, we saw what it looked like on camera in the cockpit. What made that one different Milton was.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Was big vertical jumps. And so, for example, the person next to me, a good friend of mine who was also on the Ian flight, had an energy drink that hit the ceiling of the, of the aircraft. And, you know, stuff like that. The aircraft was just a mess afterwards because everything went flying that wasn't locked down. So, you know, sometimes we get reminded that we have to strap things down in a hurricane.

[Emily Gracie]

What's interesting about this too, is that you rank each place on the plane a little differently. So I'm wondering, you know, in these flights like Hugo, where there's a lot of up and down, where is the worst place to be on the plane? Where's the best place to be?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So for front, back, side, side and up, down motions, everyone on the plane gets them exactly the same Right. Imagine playing going up and down. Everyone gets it the same. It's the rotations that. That really add or take away from the experience. And so those would be farthest away from the center of the plane, so either the cockpit or the very back. And so you can imagine an aircraft going up and pitching up.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So then the front of the aircraft gets it twice as worse, basically. And then it would be mellower in the back.

[Emily Gracie]

You know, I talked to Dan Tyson last year and I brought that up, and he said that he didn't think that, at least in what he's experienced, he thought the back of the plane was the worst spot to be as far as turbulence. But I'm wondering too, if that has to do with control. Like, if you can see and you're in control of the aircraft, do you think there's less turbulence? And if you're in the back and you have no control, maybe it feels worse than it is.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Yeah, I think. I think that's what it is. Exactly. I've talked to pilots before on the P3 that. That have mimicked that exact same sentiment that, you know, when they're off duty, sitting in the back, they're worried, but when they're in the. In the, in the cockpit, they're totally. They're like, oh, we got this under control. So I believe that's the sentiment. You know, there are other effects, too, that are not in bumpiness. So, for example, I believe the back tends to be a little more vibrational than the front. And so, you know, over time, that wears you out a little more. There could also be some temperature differences between the front and the back. And so that may not necessarily reflect in terms of absolute bumpiness, but you might feel that a little more.

[Emily Gracie]

So there's a whole human factor involved here. Was that taken into account?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

It was not. We considered actually a queasiness index as well, but we did not quantify cabin temperature, which to me is absolutely required. Right. For the same turbulence. If it's 100 degrees, it's going to feel a lot worse than if it's much colder. Right. And so absent of that, I didn't think I could come up with a reasonable queasiness index.

[Emily Gracie]

Gotcha. Okay, so remind me, what number was ian?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Ian was 6.04.

[Emily Gracie]

And Hugo?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Hugo was 7.86. So it was Hugo, 7.86, Ian 6.04. And then the third was Irma, which was 4.50. And then they get pretty close together down the rankings.

[Emily Gracie]

So you were on the second Worst flight of all time.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

I was on the second worst flight of all time.

[Emily Gracie]

And just so that people can kind of quantify this in their brains, let's say you're on an a commercial aircraft and you're, you know, going through kind of turbulent weather, maybe a thunderstorm nearby. What might that be on the scale?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Probably a pretty small number.

[Emily Gracie]

How low?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Probably on the order of one. You know, we've all been there on commercial aircraft where people next to you are kind of freaking out, and I'm just. I'm just sitting there like there's nothing.

[Emily Gracie]

All right, what's next? What are you going to do next? Are you going to continue to kind of dive into these numbers and study more hurricanes? Is there practical use for this down the road?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Yeah, definitely practical use. I'd like to understand how humans respond to turbulence cognitively. You know, it's my belief that at some point you're just so shook that your, your mind may not be making decisions as effectively as when you're calm. Right.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Try to.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Try to make decisions while you're in the middle of a roller coaster.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

It's kind of. It's kind of hard.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

And so maybe we need some sort of guidelines for decision making based off of turbulence quantities. We have it for the aircraft.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Right.

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

If the aircraft hits three GS, a vertical acceleration and has to return to base for inspection, that's. That's a requirement of the Hurricane Hunter. You know, I could think of something similar from. From a human factor standpoint.

[Emily Gracie]

Wow, this is really cool stuff. Like, have you. Are you talking at all to, like, the therapists, like psychiatrists about this and decision making based on this sort of stress?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

Yeah, I've talked to some human factors folks. I mean, like, what I want to do is see how effective decision making is. And, and the, the most objective way to do that is like, math problems. And so you give someone a math problem, a sheet like you would in elementary school, you solve some multiplication tables just sitting calm, and then put someone on a shake table, basically, and then make them do the same thing and see how. How the results change. It's my guess at this point, we haven't done this yet, but it's my guess that it's kind of like a step function up to a certain amount of turbulence, then there's no issue. And then all of a sudden it's like, this is a problem. And so that's. That. That would be my expectation, but I don't know what that threshold would be or I haven't proven that yet.

[Emily Gracie]

Have you learned anything by watching the media folks that are on these flights, like their first flight ever, how they respond?

[Dr. Josh Wadler]

So there was a media person on the Ian flight. It was actually the first launch of our next generation uas, which is the reason I was there and he was having the time of his life.

[Dr. Jeff Masters]

Off.

[Emily Gracie]

The Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday morning. Thank you to Dr. Jeff Masters and Dr. Josh Wadler for joining me today. If you want to hear more of Jeff's story from Hugo, check out his blog post on the topic. It's on Weather Underground. It's pretty intense. It gave me major Apollo 13 vibes, but there's also some great info in there on specifics from the flight and the hurricane. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Pull Petrus for his help with today's episode. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day. Are you feeling stuck in your career or lacking employment at the moment? Experiencing symptoms of job dissatisfaction? You might be suffering from a common condition known as a career stagnation. But don't worry, there's a solution. Monster.com Monster.com offers a comprehensive suite of career boosting tools designed just for you. Our free resume review and AI Interview prep tool will help you stand out from the crowd. Need more guidance? Dive into our career advice articles for expert tips and insights. And don't forget to check out our salary tools to ensure you're getting paid what you're worth. Side effects may include a new job, increase confidence, and a brighter future. Consult monster.com today and take the first step towards your new career. Ready for your next job opportunity? Visit monster.com now.