When a hurricane barrels toward Florida, pilots with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationor NOAA fly their jets into the storm.
The jets are nicknamed “hurricane hunters,” and the information they collect helps with forecasts and evacuation orders.
The planes are housed at MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, but not for long. The base is evicting them.
Now, they’re looking for a new home.
On a sunny day in May, one of NOAA’s hurricane hunters is on display at the Naples Municipal Airport.
It’s there as part of a hurricane awareness tour to get people prepared for the season, which began June 1.
Standing next to the jet in a blue jumpsuit is Michael Silah. He’s commanding officer at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center.
A former Navy pilot, Silah's been with NOAA since 2002.
He said the storms are challenging to fly because they can change every day.
“Even a storm that you flew for several days like [Hurricane] Katrina, where we flew for a week, changes almost every time you fly and every time you make a pass through the storm,” Silah said.
Crew members use the jets to help track storms.
The hurricane hunters drop sensors into the storm while on a mission. They take in data like humidity, wind speed and temperature.
The planes have operated out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa for more than 20 years. But, this hurricane season will be their last there.
Silah said MacDill Air Force Base notified NOAA in February that they were evicting the hurricane hunters. They have until June 2017 to leave.
“We got a little bit of time, but not much,” he said.
A representative wrote in an email that the base is evicting NOAA’s planes because it expects to house more of its own aircraft there in a few years.
Now, NOAA is looking for a new home for its planes.
Silah said the search is being done in two phases. The first phase involves finding somewhere to house the planes for the next five years that’s within 50 miles of MacDill.
“That’s really to protect the work force. These are highly skilled employees so losing them would be very damaging for us,” he said. “In an effort to keep our workforce together, we’re going to look local first and that should be about for the next five years and in that time we're going to look more broadly to find us a long-term home.”
Silah said there’s value in staying in the same region.
“It’s nice to work out of a place that gives us access to the gulf when we fly gulf storms,” he said. “It gives us access to the Caribbean when we fly Caribbean storms. Tampa really is perfect for that and so we hope to stay in that area.”
Since the Air Force Base made the call earlier this year, federal lawmakers have also been trying to figure out where to put the hurricane hunters.
Rep. David Jolly represents Pinellas County. He first hoped to keep the NOAA planes at MacDill by building a new center there. But, that would require some funding jujitsu because NOAA and MacDill operate under different agencies.
“That might be a long-term solution to have them remain at MacDill perhaps after this next five year contract. That would require construction. Inter-agency construction dollars,” he said.
As NOAA plans its next steps, Jolly said he wants the planes to stay local.
“It is a regional asset for us both in terms of protecting the public, in terms of public safety but in terms of 100 plus employees who work at NOAA,” he said, “Ensuring that their lives are not disrupted and also the economic footprint of having NOAA here.”
NOAA operates under the U.S. Department of Commerce. Jolly said he’s met with its secretary to discuss the topic, and visited potential new locations for the planes.
Jolly said he would like to see the hurricane hunters move next to St. Pete-Clearwater Airport, which has both ramp and runway space.
“NOAA could almost move in today,” he said. “Tampa International Airport has some of that but not all of it, but in the course of the year they probably could arrange to accommodate those three important criteria”
NOAA’s Michael Silah said they hope to announce the planes’ new location around December.
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