NORFOLK, Va. — Kids and adults enjoyed the day walking through and around a hangar at the Norfolk International Airport. Experts from the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, and emergency management departments taught the Hampton Roads community about the importance of hurricane preparedness.
Jeff Orrock of the National Weather Service office in Wakefield knows this event is just the beginning phase for hurricane safety.
"It's planting the seed about preparedness and what hurricanes really mean in our area, and how serious we have to take them year to year," he said.
This event is a part of an East Coast Hurricane Awareness Tour. Norfolk is the third stop, after making appearances in Maine and New York.
One main attraction of the tour: the hurricane hunter aircraft! These are the planes that fly around hurricanes.
Once a tropical system forms, the hurricane hunters deploy drop sondes, a weather instrument used to collect critical data for the Hurricane Center. That information is disseminated to the public so we can track the intensity of a storm.
The director of the National Hurricane Center, Michael Brennan, believes that communication between the hurricane hunters down to broadcast meteorologists plays an important role in hurricane preparedness.
"During the season, it's all about the messaging and getting information out about the storms that are out there," Brennan said. "And again, getting that information, communicating clearly, working with our partners in the media so that everyone is hearing information from those trusted sources with the information they have."
The tour will next head to Charleston, South Carolina, to provide hurricane preparedness information.