NOAA Hurricane Hunters collect North Atlantic ocean winds data
NOAA Flight Director and Meteorologist Ian Sears at his station aboard NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion N43RF on a flight out of Halifax, Nova Scotia as part of a NOAA Satellite and Information Service project to validate satellite data.
NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion N43RF, also known as "Miss Piggy," departed its Tampa, Florida home base on Jan. 12, 2016 for Halifax, Nova Scotia, to support a NOAA Satellite and Information Service project, called "Ocean Winds," to validate satellite measurements of ocean surface wind speeds using equipment on board the aircraft as they fly through hurricane-force winter storms in the North Atlantic. These missions are carefully timed with satellite overpasses to provide valuable information that will aid in design of future observing systems and improve data sets for weather forecast models.
