We traveled deep into the lush mountains of Puerto Rico to Toro
Verde to take on the Monster, the longest zipline in America!
Come fly through the air with us on seven exciting ziplines,
then get vertical and fly headfirst up to 95 miles an hour on the Monster (8,300
feet) and the Beast (4,745 feet)! Leave your fear of flying behind and
join the birds at 380 meters above the ground.
Toro Verde also offers other activities, including bicycling
on a zipline and several climbing walls, and several restaurants with awesome
views of the mountains and the screaming zipliners.. Advance tickets are
required.
We tried to go inside a Hurricane Hunter airplane! Alas, the
rest of western Puerto Rico did, too.
NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
and the U.S. Air Force Reserve hosted a series of events this spring in
preparation for hurricane season in Mexico and the Caribbean, to help people
prepare for upcoming storms. They brought their big Hurricane Hunter plane to
Aguadilla, about an hour from our Cabo Rojo home, and we headed north excited
by the prospect of seeing the inside of the Air Force Reserve Command’s WC-130J
“Hurricane Hunter” aircraft and learning how scientists collect data about
hurricanes.
What we got was something completely different, a street
fair atmosphere of rescue workers, local communities, and emergency
preparedness info -- and a 1/2-mile long line to get inside the Hurricane
Hunter aircraft. The National Hurricane Center held the event so that hurricane
specialists could educate residents of vulnerable communities and discuss
hurricane preparedness, resilience, and how they can become “weather-ready.”
The Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June through
November. The areas covered include the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean Sea.
Here is some valuable information from the NOAA website:
“During hurricanes, military air crews fly state-of-the-art
WC-130J aircraft directly into the core of the storm to gather critical data
for forecasting a hurricane’s intensity and landfall. The data are sent in real
time via satellite from the aircraft directly to the NHC for analysis and use
by hurricane forecasters.
“During the 2022 hurricane season, the 53rd Weather
Reconnaissance Squadron flew 109 missions into 13 named storms in the Atlantic
and east Pacific basins, including Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in the Atlantic
and Hurricanes Agatha, Kay, Orlene, and Roslyn in the east Pacific.
“The NOAA Hurricane Hunters, stationed at the Aircraft
Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida, also fly missions into tropical
cyclones to gather data to support storm forecasts and research. Their Lockheed
WP-3D Orion and Gulfstream IV-SP aircraft are piloted by NOAA Commissioned
Corps officers and crewed by NOAA meteorologists, technicians, and
researchers.”
