{"id":44882,"date":"2019-09-27T17:23:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T21:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44882"},"modified":"2019-09-27T17:24:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T21:24:02","slug":"noaa-plane-headed-to-hurricane-lorenzo-diverted-for-search-and-rescue-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/09\/noaa-plane-headed-to-hurricane-lorenzo-diverted-for-search-and-rescue-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"NOAA Plane Headed to Hurricane Lorenzo Diverted for Search and Rescue Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An NOAA research plane heading (P-3 aircraft, which is known as Miss Piggy) out to collect data on record-breaking Hurricane Lorenzo in the eastern Atlantic Ocean was diverted to search for a boat in distress dangerously close to the monster storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“At\nthe request of the U.S Coast Guard, NOAA 43 \u2026 was asked to investigate the last\nknown positions of search and rescue satellite hits for the vessel,”\nJonathan Shannon, a spokesman for NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations,\ntold The Gazette Team<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon said the P-3 aircraft, which is known as Miss Piggy, was searching for a tugboat called Bourbon Rhode. The plane had taken off Friday morning from Barbados. It left the search area and was on its way back to Barbados by around 5 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nboat sent a distress call<\/a> on Thursday morning,\naccording to a report on the ship tracker website FleetMon. It was en route\nfrom Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to Georgetown, Guyana. The report said\nthe boat was taking on water and 14 crewmen needed rescue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nwas no immediate word on the condition of the boat or the crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NOAA\naircraft flight path from Barbados to the area where the tugboat Bourbon Rhode\nwas believed to be located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A press release<\/a> from the company that\noperates the tugboat confirmed that report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In\nparticularly adverse weather conditions, the 14 crew members are facing a water\ningress in the rear part of the vessel,” the release said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based\non coordinates, the boat may have been caught up in the hurricane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tug appeared to have been at least within 120 miles from the center of Lorenzo Thursday morning and may have been as close as 65 to 70 miles from the rapidly intensifying hurricane, according to the location of the distress signal reported by FleetMon and National Hurricane Center advisories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nNOAA plane’s involvement came to light during the mission, when a satellite\nphoto of the plane’s odd zig-zagging and circling path caught the attention of\na watcher on Twitter, who theorized that something must have gone wrong with\nthe flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon\nsaid he didn’t know how often Hurricane Hunter planes were called on to assist\nin such missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This\nwas a research mission, so it was not an operation mission for helping to\nassist the forecast, so I believe we had a little more flexibility” to\ndivert the plane, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An NOAA research plane heading (P-3 aircraft, which is known as Miss Piggy) out to collect data on record-breaking Hurricane Lorenzo in the eastern Atlantic Ocean was diverted to search… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}