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At Dunion's disposal for the operation were two planes, their crews and hundreds of ocean-bound dropsondes to be released at different levels ranging from 3 to 8 miles high. "It was amazing," recalls Dunion. "In the jet, at about 45,000 feet, the air was so thick with the dust, it looked like San Francisco fog."

The data that accumulated as planes crisscrossed the eye of Helene dozens of times will keep him busy for years. "There's so much to look at," he says, "but I'm satisfied, and I think others are too, that the research is changing how we understand climate in the Caribbean."

TO BE AN EXPERT ON HURRICANES is one thing, but to be one and have Dunion's background is another. Whatever instinct he had in his youth to do weather stuff—which was sizeable since he used to tape his forecasts—got lost somewhere in high school in Norwich, Conn. At UNH, he studied geography. Only at the tail end of college did he realize he wanted to get back to weather, but when he looked at graduate schools, the requirements were daunting. He took social work jobs—something he found himself good at—and enrolled in night courses in Connecticut and later Miami, where his wife, Paige Chesley Dunion '92, was going to grad school. For months, he pursued one of the coveted internships at the nearby National Hurricane Center. "I told them I will change the toilet paper rolls if that's what it takes," he says. "Finally they said, 'OK, we'll take you.'" With an NHC internship and night school under his belt, he applied to graduate school and, in 1996, enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a top school in atmospheric science.

"KILL" DECALS: Orange stickers on the hull of a P-3 Orion turbo prop tell which hurricanes the plane has flown through.

"We once did a seminar where we looked at the research division and what our occupational skill set was," says Dunion. "The analysis showed that I was good at teaching, like social work, and I was like, 'Geez, I just left that.'" Most of the rest tested out like a conventional scientist who likes to work alone and crunch gobs of data. "I'm not really one of them—if you lock me in a room, I'll melt—but there are advantages to my background," he says. As Dunion's supervisors explain, his ability to draw others out is a big plus when it comes to creating better workplace chemistry. In the middle of a busy hurricane season, it's a stressful place and a good working environment on the ground, like in the air, is critical. "I have to be interacting, I don't really have a choice," Dunion says. "And when I do, that's when I get my ideas."

IT'S MID-AFTERNOON WHEN WE pull into the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, which is headquarters for NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center. The 4 p.m. mission launch, we learn, has been cancelled. When we walk into the massive hangar, it is as quiet as a cathedral with three large airplanes, a new G-IV Gulfstream and two P-3 Orion turbo prop behemoths in repose. We touch and tour—the decades-old P-3s have particular character, the interior a lot like old locker rooms, with stickers, mementoes and a talisman or two such as fuzzy dice. On the plane's exterior, there are swirling orange decals with each storm and its date: Katrina, Gilbert, Helene. Inside, the heat is terrific, almost stifling, a five-minute glimpse of what must be a soupy tropical steambath for the six or seven hours of a mission. The slick Gulfstream, which is used for high altitude reconnaissance, logs up to 4,000 miles each flight.

That we can't go is disappointing, but perhaps it's OK. For Dunion, the trip into a hurricane is like a pilgrimage to a sacred place. He says NOAA scientists have incredible difficulty explaining what it's like up there. You have to be there, you have to know and intimately understand the storm creature to fully appreciate the magnificence of crossing her borders. It's a private space. He takes another long look at the idle planes.

"When I went up for the first time, I really wasn't prepared," he says. "I got here, and everybody was running around on the tarmac like crazy, and it dawned on me that the reason why was because I'd tasked the plane for experiments. It was humbling, like, 'Wow.'"

Computer models predict the coming hurricane season will be a busy one. Each year the batting average of the hurricane scientists gets a little better in anticipating both the occurrence and severity of hurricanes. What keeps a young scientist motivated—especially one whose family lives in the hurricanes' well-traveled south Florida path—is trying to know everything there is to know about deadly storms. Already Dunion deeply understands one thing—that he's just getting started. ~

Todd Balf '83, a former senior editor for Outside magazine, writes for national publications and is the author of several books.

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