Photo by Michael Ventura
Hundreds of miles off the coast of New Jersey, pilot Mark Sweeney was flying blind. Thick gray clouds and driving rain blocked the view from the airplane as it hopped through intense 100 mph winds. Sweeney relied on the plane’s radar systems to chart a safe path as he charged toward the eye of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The harsh weather gave way to sunshine and near silence as the plane punched into the eye, Sweeney recalls. The bright sun projected the plane’s shadow onto the Atlantic Ocean some 10,000 feet below. Apart from a few stray clouds, the 20-person crew was alone inside the eye’s towering white funnel-shaped walls. At roughly 25 miles across, standard for a Category 2 hurricane, nearly all of Montgomery County could have fit inside.
Sweeney is one of 16 pilots and navigators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Now living in Silver Spring and working at the agency’s headquarters there, Sweeney has flown into dozens of storms over the past 11 years.
During hurricanes, crews take several nine- to 10-hour flights and scatter probes to collect data about a storm’s strength, speed and direction. This helps NOAA’s National Hurricane Center predict where the storm is headed, enabling it to establish accurate and credible evacuation zones, thereby minimizing damage and saving lives.
The flights are surprisingly safe, Sweeney says. Since the first hurricane hunting mission in 1943, the only fatal crash in the Atlantic Basin occurred in 1955, when a plane went down while investigating Hurricane Janet south of Jamaica; nine Navy crewmen and two Toronto Daily Star journalists died.
The eyewall of Hurricane Katrina as seen from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft. Photo courtesy of NOAA
Sweeney, now 43, was born in the Azores archipelago off the coast of Portugal, home to a Navy base where his father, a pilot, was stationed. His family later moved to Lansdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia not far from a Navy base. Sweeney remembers his father pointing out the Lockheed P-3 Orion, his old plane, as it flew overhead. Sweeney would fly the same model airplane after graduating from Cornell University, where he studied on a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship. While doing storm research projects for the Navy, he met NOAA trainees who told him about the agency’s work, including that its hurricane pilots fly modified P-3s. He applied and was hired in 2006.
Sweeney’s work schedule is predictably erratic. He can be called away at any moment, for days or even weeks. “You get used to being by yourself,” says Lauren Freeman, his girlfriend of four years. One late-July afternoon in 2014, Sweeney was called to the Caribbean to fly into Hurricane Bertha—missing the surprise party Freeman planned for his 40th birthday. His schedule complicates long-term arrangements, as well: Both want to get married, but Freeman, 37, says she’s still goading Sweeney to propose.
Sweeney serves as deputy chief of NOAA’s Remote Sensing Division, which is responsible for mapping U.S. shorelines down to every dock and boat ramp. He plans to return to hurricane hunting full time at the end of next year. After two years of mostly administrative work, it’s no secret he misses the skies. “I like the flying part better,” Sweeney says with a grin. “When we go out and fly, we can say, ‘We did this. It was worth something.’ I can see how it impacts other people.”
