Tag Archives: NOAA

Hurricane Hunters Back In Town

I was heading back from south of Seattle when I was surprised to find out that the NOAA WP-3D Orion, Kermit, was at Boeing Field.  It had come in the day before but I hadn’t heard about it.  I was planning to stop for lunch so why not go to BFI?  Just after I got there, I saw a prop start turning on the number one engine.  However, after running it up, they shut down again.  I was dreading that they were going to go tech and the plane wouldn’t move.

Fortunately, whatever they were concerned about wasn’t too much of an issue.  A little while later, while I was still eating my lunch, I looked up to see two engines running.  This looked more promising.  Sure enough they taxied shortly afterwards.  The nice news was that they crossed the runway to taxiway bravo so we got a good look at them.  A while later it was their turn for departure and they came my way.  The nice thing about a four engined prop is that they didn’t climb too rapidly so a good angle on them.  It was pretty overcast so not ideal light but the dark colors show up better without too contrasty light.

NOAA Back In Town

A couple of years ago, a NOAA Gulfstream was operating in the area for a while and I managed to get some shots of it that were shared in this post.  That Gulfstream had a couple of interested radomes fitted.  Another part of the NOAA fleet is a WP-3D Orion.  It also has some interesting radomes and antennae installed.  It is based in Florida – there are usually storms to follow on that side of the country.  However, the Pacific has its share of storms too and NOAA studies them as well.

Consequently, NOAA recently deployed the WP-3D to Alaska to pay attention to some weather activity out in the ocean.  They staged it through Boeing Field to split the journey up there in two.  I was waiting for it when it arrived.  The conditions had been pretty overcast but, with a late in the day arrival, the cloud cover was starting to break up and the sun popped out just in time for its arrival.  An interesting airframe with a nice color scheme.  It headed on the following day but I couldn’t be there for that.

NOAA Gulfstream

The appearance of a Gulfstream GIV is not something that would normally be sufficiently unusual to justify a trip out.  However, this GIV was a bit unusual.  It belongs to NOAA and they use it for tracking weather systems.  It was operating out of Paine Field and I only got to see it once.  It would launch and head out over the Pacific for six or seven hours before coming back. The return was always in the evening after dark so never an opportunity to get a shot.  The rear radar installation is pretty conspicuous.  However, the nose radar is also a modification.  The radome is a different shape and the additional air data sensors around the radome may either be because of the change of shape or could be related to its mission.

Sadly, it departed to Florida before I could get a chance to see it on the ground.  It would have been nice to see it close up (or even in halfway decent weather – not something I was given this time around) but that was not to be on this occasion.