LAKELAND, Fla.—They didn’t need to chase this storm, hunt this hurricane, it was already there—bigger and badder than anything seen before at this time of year, this far out in the Atlantic.
Cmdr. Brett Copare knew he was flying into history on June 30 as he steered the P-3 Orion “Kermit” nose-first into a churning wall of towering thunderheads ringing a 450-mile maelstrom that was but a radar flyspeck 48 hours earlier.
“Before we got out there, it was already a Cat 4,” he said, recalling being “awe-struck” and thinking, “A storm this big, this fast … this is unique.”
That flight of unwelcome discovery was one of dozens made by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aircrews in tracking the Atlantic’s first-ever June category 4 and 5 hurricane as Beryl launched its 6,000-mile, two-week romp from Cabo Verde to Vermont….