An official website of the United States government
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Hurricane Hunters “Roll Out” for 2025 Atlantic hurricane season

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Marnee A.C. Losurdo
  • 403rd Wing
KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  

As part of the “Roll Out,” the Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron and 403rd Wing maintenance and support personnel based at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., prepositioned aircraft parts, tools, and communication systems at Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, May 12-19 in preparation for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.

This enables the Hurricane Hunters to rapidly respond once tasked with investigating tropical systems.

“Our area of operation spans from just west of Hawaii to the middle of the Atlantic,” said Lt. Col. Jeff Mitchell, 53rd WRS mission commander for the deployment. “Staging at St. Croix puts us closer to where Atlantic hurricanes tend to form, giving us the head start we need when every hour counts.”

The Hurricane Hunters are the only Department of Defense unit that flies directly into tropical storms and hurricanes to gather critical atmospheric data. These Reserve Citizen Airmen play a vital role in storm forecasting by collecting information that satellites cannot provide.

“Satellites are useful, but they can’t measure the minimum sea level pressure inside a hurricane, or the structure and wind data we gather by flying directly into the eye,” said Mitchell. “That data helps the National Hurricane Center make more accurate forecasts—forecasts that save lives and property.”

Flying aboard WC-130J Super Hercules aircraft, 53rd WRS crews conduct both low-level investigations, flying between 500 and 1,500 feet, and “fix” missions at up to 10,000 feet. During fix missions, aircrews typically penetrate the eye of a storm two to four times, releasing instruments called dropsondes that measure temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure from the aircraft to the ocean surface.

“People often ask us what it’s like to fly into a hurricane,” said Lt. Col. Ryan Rickert, 53rd WRS chief aerial reconnaissance weather officer. “It’s intense—but we know that every pass through the storm means better data for the National Hurricane Center forecasters and better warning for people in harm’s way.”

The data collected by the 53rd WRS is transmitted in real-time to the National Hurricane Center and assimilated into many computer models that try to predict a storm’s track and intensity. The information helps government officials and emergency managers make timely decisions about evacuations and preparations.

The Hurricane Hunters typically fly more storm missions in the Atlantic than the Pacific, where storms are more likely to veer westward out to sea, said Rickert.

According to Colorado State University Meteorologist Phillip Klotzbach, who released the first Atlantic hurricane season forecast, this year is projected to be above average with 17 named storms, with nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes. However, regardless of the forecast it only takes one devastating hurricane to make it a bad season for a community, according to Mitchell, which is why their mission is so important.

“Forecasting hurricanes is like solving a complex puzzle,” said Rickert. “Every piece of data helps, and without the measurements we gather, that picture would be incomplete.”

As the 2025 hurricane season begins June 1, the 53rd WRS stands ready to fly into the world’s most dangerous storms—armed not just with aircraft and technology, but with a mission to safeguard communities across the Atlantic and beyond.