Stormchasers: The Hurricane Hunters and Their Fateful Flight into Hurricane Janet

by David M. Toomey

Fifty years after Isaac's Storm, a riveting story of the first Hurricane Hunters, and the one crew who paid the ultimate price. "In a virtual age when tempests are monitored by global positioning and The Weather Channel, Stormchasers reminds us that our first understanding of hurricanes was directly built on the risks and sacrifices of living, breathing heroes," writes Hampton Sides (author of Ghost Soldiers ).

In September 1955, Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and a crew of eight flew out of Guantánamo Bay into the eye of Hurricane Janet swirling in the Caribbean: a routine weather reconnaissance mission from which they never returned. In the wake of World War II, the Air Force and the Navy had discovered a new civilian arena where daring pilots could test their courage and skill. These Hurricane Hunters flew into raging storms to gauge their strength and predict their paths. Without computer, global positioning, or satellite support, they relied on rudimentary radar systems to locate the hurricane's eye and estimated the drift of their aircraft by looking at windblown waves below. Drawing from Navy documents and interviews with members of the squadron and relatives of the crew, Stormchasers reconstructs the ill-fated mission of Windham's crew from preflight checks to the chilling moment of their final transmission. 8 b/w photographs

Genres: History, Nonfiction

324 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2002

Reviews

[Maria V. Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often I'll read a non-fiction - some for research for my writing projects, but some just because they're interesting to me. I have a BS degree in Meteorology so the title of this one caught my eye. This book looks at the early days of weather forecasting and meteorology as well as that flight into Janet. That was in 1955 and I'm amazed at how brave those men were to fly into a storm of that scale and intensity! And they still do it!! It's vital to know more about the storms and where they're headed. I know people complain about the weather forecasts, but when they started really figuring out hurricanes, the number of people that died went from an average of 400 per storm to 4! Of course there have been exceptions - Hurricane Katrina is one tragic example.

It's interesting that the year of Katrina - 2005 - was also the year we had 4 other category 5 storms hit the US. I remember thinking that it's a shame we can't harness all that power - a hurricane can generate enough energy in one hour to fuel the world for one day! That's what sparked the idea for my Stormdancers in my Study and Glass books - they can bottle that energy in glass orbs (using magic) and use it to fuel their factories.

Anyway - I really enjoyed this book. I do wish it had better photos/graphics. There's lots of talk about Janet's path - and the paths' other major hurricanes and I would have liked to seen it - I guess I can google it now, but it's not the same.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a rather interesting book on how aerial reconnaissance began but it was a good read on how weather prediction itself started.

Inter spaced between chapters about weather prediction was the story about Snowcloud Five, the fateful mission. Toomey wrote those chapters as how any other hurricane penetration mission would have unfolded. You can easily picture the buffeting aircraft and her crew trying to carrying out their tasks. It isn't until the end when Toomey plays out the most likely scenarios for what happened that it drives home that these men did not return home.

Anyone who has an interest in aviation and weather should read this book.

[Dan Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about as jumbled as the sea in a hurricane. It kept jumping back and forward in time trying to simultaneously tell the story of Hurricane science and discover and the story of the doomed flight. At times I just skipped whole sections until it went back to the story of the storm chasers. Very interesting subject but poorly delivered in my opinion.