Eye of the hurricane

Flying through last year’s Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, however, was an experience on an altogether different scale. Black, one of the 53rd’s 20 airborne weather officers, happened to be at his aerial post, within Dorian’s eye, when the monster storm crashed into the Bahamas. The readings he’d been taking from aloft and at sea level were so intense that he’d been double and triple checking the numbers; they were almost too graphic to be believed.

Gazing down from the eye, Black saw waves crashing onto the Bahamian shoreline. He’d already spent hours measuring the strength of wind and seas, and he understood in an instant the devastation to come.

“It’s a very disturbing feeling,” Black says. “You just hope that everyone is listening to emergency managers and listening to the National Hurricane Center and paying attention to the forecasts and were as prepared as possible.”

Now that the world is gripped by the ravages of a pandemic, Black delivers a similar message: Pay heed to the experts. In a time when ordinary trips to the hardware store become logistical hurdles, Black cautions, weather preparations should be considered at every opportunity.

As with all forms of severe weather, those who ignore warnings endanger not only themselves, but also their neighbors and emergency response teams forced to care for them, whether  they are  firefighters searching through devastated homes or doctors and nurses exposing themselves to a deadly virus.

“It’s a team effort. It really is,” Black says. “Everyone has to play their role and do their part. The big takeaway is to always be prepared, and now is the time that people need to be thinking about that, especially with everything else going on. It’s a good time not to lose focus that hurricane season—and even tornado season, for people in Kansas—is here, more or less, and we all need to be prepared. You never know what kind of season it’s going to be.”