For Meteorologists Nothing Beats Bad Weather
Sept. 18 -- The winds were gusting to 55 mph, huge waves were smashing over the boardwalk, rain had just started to pour down in sheets and Jan Dutton was exactly where he wanted to be — in the thick of it.
Dutton, a meteorologist with the online weather information service, WeatherBug.com, had parked right next to the boardwalk in Ocean City, Md., in a big white truck topped with an array of weather instruments. He, with another meteorologist and a technician had been eagerly recording the oncoming chaos of Hurricane Isabel.
When most residents flee the rage of oncoming storms, it is the meteorologist's duty — and often, passion — to head straight into it. Weather instruments can operate remotely, but as Dutton says, "nothing beats being there" when it comes to accurate forecasting.
Plus, you never know when your instruments are going to break down.
In fact, one of the instruments propped on top of the WeatherBug.com Dodge Durango had just stopped working — the one that measures wind speed — and Dutton had nearly broken his neck trying to replace it.
"It was a little slippery," Dutton said as he dried off from the venture. "At one point there was a really strong gust and I lost my balance and almost fell forward and did a face plant. Luckily, that didn't happen."
Flying Into the Eye
Besides the wind speed instrument (which Dutton managed to replace despite the gusts), weather trucks also host tools to measure temperature, wind direction, rain rate and barometric pressure.
He and the others had also been doing live radio reports for a local radio station during the graveyard shift — 12:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. — when most are getting a sensible night's sleep.
"We haven't really slept much for the last two days," he said.
Other weather people, like Harris Halverson, go to even greater extremes. Halverson is a pilot with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whose specialty is flying into the very place most pilots do their best to avoid — the center of the hurricane.
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