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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 1960)
O MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFORD, ORE. ' MONDAY, OCTOBER 9. 1969 Destructive Hurricane Donna Gave Research Pro ject Valuable Data By JOSEPH L. MYLER Washington-IUPD-Donna was the most vicious hurricane in U.S. history but it was npt al together an ill wind. f i i It gave the weather ' bu reau's national hurricane re search project (NHRP) more information about tropical storms than all the other hur ricanes studied since the proj ect started is 1956. On the basis o this and pre viously gleaned information; project officials say they are encouraged to believe man eventually will learn how to control these whirling mon sters of destruction spawned annually by nature. The NHRP was established ' ' ''' IE0TROVEGTI BASEBOARD HEAT Dealers Line Up To Serve You Look For the ELECTROYECTOR Truck in Medford Electrovector Baseboard Heal Is " Clean Comfortable Economical lectrdnic Service 'MEDFORD'S EXCLUSIVE ELECTROVECTOR DEALER. ! 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ROGUE ELECTRIC SERVICE 961 Shafer Lane - Medford - SP 2-6603' , .RUSH ELECTRIC COMPANY ' 1023 S Riverside - Medford - SP 2-4960 1 TROWBRIDGE & FLYNN 214 West Main - M.Cl'ord - SP 3-6241 YOW'S HEATING, AIR CONDITIONING & SHEET METAL ' 1729 N Riverside - Medford - SP 2-0 WIRE YOUR HOME FOR MODERN, LOW-COST ELECTRIC HEAT ON COPCO's WRE-ON-TIME PLAN..: MAKE BUDGET PAYMENTS AT LOW INTEREST RATES... ASK YOUR LEAGUE DEALER OR COPCO SERVICE OFFICE. (NOT FIRE) as a result of hurricane disas ters in 1954 and 1955. For its first year of operation, 1956, Congress gave the project $750,000. Current spending is at the rate of about $2.5 mil lion a year, Hurricane research already has paid off In improved fore cast and warning methods, Donna was never out of sight by radar from the moment it was spotted in the Atlantic Sept. 2 to the time it blew it self out over New England 11 days later, o Two four-engined DC6 fly ing laboratories of the hurri cane project and cooperating research aircraft of the Air Force and Navy flew dozens of fact-finding missions into Donna s heart. Automatic instruments pho tographed the storm, took temperature, pressure and hu m i d i t y readings, recorded wind speed and direction, measured water droplet size and distribution, and noted icing rates. . . According to Robert John son, coordinator of the weath er bureau's hurricane and se vere local storm research projects, "this was the best documented storm , we ever had." Simultaneous Flights For the first time the NHRP's airplanes were able to conduct "three-dimension al" investigation of a giant hurricane by making simulta neous flights through it at different altitudes. On Wednesday, Sept. 7, one of the four - engined craft drove into Donna at 8,000 feet while another rocked through at 12,000 feet. They encountered winds of 172.5 miles. an hour near the eye of the storm. Winds of more than 115 miles an hour .whirled over an area extending 25 miles outward from the storm center. The big planes flew pre arranged x-shaped and box patterns through and around the storm taking readings and pictures for future analysis. Soth were buffeted violently and one was struck by light ning and pounded by hail. Neither was seriously dam aged, but hail so eroded the surface of one radar dome that it had to be repainted. In one of the past hurricane sea sons, lightning stitched a row of holes in the leading edge of a wing as neatly as a machine drill could have done it. The wing had to be patched. Robert C. Gentry! head of the hurricane project at Ml ami, reported after a , trip through Donna that it was the most intense storm he had ever been in. The flying labs normally carry 10 men-weatlier scien tists, electronic technicians to keep the instruments work ing, and the flight crew: Each has its own electrical genera tor to supply power for the radar ancCother equipment. The big payoff from NHRP research will come in future years when information gath ered over several seasons fi nally adds up to broad under standing of the forces which create and drive hurricanes. What NHRP is shooting for ultimately is knowledge that will make hurricane control possible. But there have been imme diate benefits, too. Using hur ricane information collected at Miami, the Travelers Insur ance Co. devised a statistical forecast system which was put to the test with Donna. It came up with 36-hour forecasts which Coordinator Johnson described . as "spec tacular." The system predict ed the curve northward through Florida which Donna made after sweeping through the Keys. It also forecast the speedup in forward movement as the hurricane left Florida on its way up the coast to New England. Its momentum jumped from 10 to 45 miles an hour. . Whether this system will prove similarly successful with future ' hurricanes re mains to be seen. Too Early To Discuss Control Johnson said it is too early to- discuss ideas the weather bureau is developing on how to control hurricanes. But lie said research results to date have produced "some encour aging results." A giant hurricane is a 500- bilhon horsepower engine ca pable in a single day of lift ing two billion tons of water from the ocean and dumping it back in the form of torren tial rains. Every second it dis charges power equal to sever al atomic bombs. In less than an hour it spends energy nreatcr than all the electricity this country could produce in five decades. . . ... So, smashing a hurricane or even pushing it around would take some doing. Scientists believe that the best approach would be to kill hurricanes in the womb by destroying the weather patterns which produce them. 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