Under The Sun

As told to Alicia Zuckerman

It may not take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but when you’re living in a hurricane zone, it helps, don’t you think? As the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center at NOAA (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), Chris Landsea has been inside the guts of more than a few storms.  He tells Under the Sun what that’s like (not necessarily what you think), and about his snack of choice when the storm’s a-comin’.

C’mon, is Landsea your real name? It’s too good to be true. I’ve heard that there are a disproportionate number of dentists named Dennis.  And there’s the New York TV newsman, Gabe Pressman, the author, Francine Prose, and the poker champion Chris Moneymaker.  Do you think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Yes, “Landsea” is my family’s name, handed down for about three generations.  As far as we know, however, my immediate family are the only ones in the United States with the name.  Perhaps it was a bit of destiny for me to study/forecast hurricanes.  My wife and I did tinker with the idea of naming our first-born kid “Aaron” or “Erin”, depending on whether it would be a boy or a girl.  Then the baby’s name would have been pronounced:  “Air-an’-Land-Sea”, but we decided that we couldn’t do that to our kids.  So instead, we named them after retired Hurricanes [Elena and Mitchell].

So many of us South Floridians live on the coast, and there’s something wonderful about living on the water. But are we crazy?

Living in Miami is great, 99.9% of the time.  But that 0.1% — when a hurricane is threatening – has to be taken seriously, as hurricanes can cause tremendous destruction and hurt or kill people.  Fortunately, we live in an era when hurricanes don’t surprise us anymore, unlike what happened back in 1926 with the Great Miami Hurricane.  Today, we have incredible satellites helping watch the oceans, folks flying into hurricanes to measure exactly what’s going on, fantastic computer models to provide skillful guidance on about the hurricanes, and talented forecasters here at the National Hurricane Center giving the best prediction possible.  Folks in Miami (and elsewhere in the U.S. along the Atlantic and Gulf coast as well as our neighbors in the Caribbean) just have to prepare in advance:  board up one’s home/business and either shelter in place or evacuate away from the coast.

I’d much rather have hurricanes to contend with that have some predictability, instead of a threat like earthquakes that can’t be forecast in advance.

What’s your most memorable hurricane story?

CL:  The most incredible sight that I’ve ever seen is in the middle of a strong hurricane.  I’ve seen this a couple dozen times, from the comfort of NOAA’s Orion P3 Aircraft, operated by the folks at the Aircraft Operations Center in Tampa.  One might not believe this, but most hurricane flights are fairly boring. They last 10 hours, there are clouds above you and clouds below-so all you see is gray, and you don’t feel the winds swirling around the hurricane.

But what does get interesting is flying through the hurricane’s rainbands and the eyewall, which can get a bit turbulent. The eyewall is a donut-like ring of thunderstorms that surround the calm eye. The winds within the eyeall can reach as much as 200 mph at the flight level, but you can’t feel these aboard the plane. But what makes flying through the eyewall exhilarating and at times somewhat scary, are the turbulent updrafts and downdrafts that one hits. Those flying in the plane definitely feel these wind currents (and sometimes makes us reach for the air-sickness bags). These vertical winds may reach up to 50 mph either up or down, but are actually much weaker in general than what one would encounter flying through a continental supercell thunderstorm.

But once the plane gets into the calm eye of a hurricane like Andrew or Katrina, it is a place of powerful beauty: sunshine streams into the windows of the plane from a perfect circle of blue sky directly above the plane, surrounding the plane on all sides is the blackness of the eyewall’s thunderstorms, and directly below the plane peeking through the low clouds one can see the violent ocean with waves sometimes 60 feet high crashing into one another. The partial vacuum of the hurricane’s eye (where one tenth of the atmosphere is gone) is like nothing else on earth. I would much rather experience a hurricane this way – from the safety of a plane-than being on the ground and having the hurricane’s full fury hit without protection.

What’s your favorite hurricane survival food?

My favorite food after a hurricane would have to be guacamole–because we usually take all of our avocados off of our tree (before the hurricane gets here).  We don’t want dozens of these things becoming airborne grenades.

What are the three words that best describe the experience of living in South Florida?

Outdoors, diversity, and fruit.

Outdoors: whether it’s canoeing in the Everglades, hiking the Florida Trail, snorkeling the reefs in the Keys or deep sea fishing off of Fowey Rocks.

Diversity: I’m on a Men’s Water Polo team affiliated with Florida International University.  Our team reflects so much of the diversity of who calls Miami home:  an Argentinean, a Croat, a Syrian, a couple Brazilians, an Uruguayan, a Serb, a Turk, a Californian (where is that?), and a Hungarian coach.  Most of the time-like Miami-we even get along well.

Fruit: It’s amazing what one can grow here.  In our backyard, we’ve got banana, mango, lychee, tropical raspberry, avocado, star fruit, black sapote, sapodilla, and–my favorite–monstera deliciosa!