Does Fiona have you wondering what it’s like to be a hurricane hunter? | Across the Sky podcast

Hurricane Fiona regained strength and is now a Category 4 storm after hitting Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and then the Turks and Caicos Islands. 

With a storm moving north in the Atlantic Ocean, you may be wondering what it’s like to be a hurricane hunter.

This summer the Across the Sky podcast hosted Warren Madden, who leads the Air Force’s Chief Aerial Recon Coordination of All Hurricanes (aka CAR-CAH) at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, for a special two-part series that looked at hurricane hunting.

In this first episode of a two-part series, Madden provided background on how he got interested into weather and meteorology, and explained how aircraft can be used during hurricane season.

In this second episode, Madden talked about the lightning he saw flying into Hurricane Rita and other aspects of his career.

Madden was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Air Force in 1985, worked on the air as a meteorologist in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1990s, and joined the Hurricane Hunters of the Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron in 1998.

Before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2012, he flew into some of the most historic hurricanes on record: Floyd, Ivan, Rita and Wilma.

About the Across the Sky podcast

The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:

Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises’ Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.