UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2003

Departments

Around the Pond

Features

Experiencing Jeff Corwin

Drawing on the past

Clean-up at the old Davis Mine

Around the Pond

Speaking of the weather

Marietta Pritchard ’73G




	STORM CHASERS: Beth Kerr and Dani Esteban in the eye of Isabel

MOST OF US, WHEN FACED with the prospect of encountering a hurricane, are inclined to board up the windows or head for the hills. Electrical engineering graduate students Beth Kerr and Dani Esteban have been doing just the opposite. They have been flying directly into and through some of the largest hurricanes on record.

In mid-September, the two flew several times through Isabel, an enormous storm that had produced record winds of nearly 125 miles an hour. Based first in St. Croix and then in Tampa, the students were operating two instruments designed and built in the university’s Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory: a microwave radiometer, which measures surface wind speed and rain rate; and a vertically profiling Doppler radar, which maps wind fields inside the hurricane. Part of a team of about 20 scientists, they are contributing to two research projects. One is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studying radar characteristics of the ocean surface during strong winds. The other is an Office of Naval Research study looking at air-sea interaction under the same conditions.

Flying in a government-owned four-engine turboprop plane with room for 20 passengers, the students can expect a rough ride between the outer edge of the hurricane and through the “eye-wall” at the rim of the eye. But once inside the eye, says Kerr, “the weather is calm and there is no turbulence.”

Engineering faculty member and director of the laboratory Stephen Frasier says, “This is just the kind of research experience that distinguishes our program. This year’s flights, in particular, are producing groundbreaking results for the hurricane research community.” The hope is that this knowledge will bring better forecasting and greater safety for those affected by nature’s big winds.

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