Does Cuba let the U.S. conduct hurricane reconnaissance flights over its territory?

[whitetho]

Every year the US. Air Force sends hurricane hunter aircraft into the center of tropical storms to take detailed measurements. With Ike now approaching Cuba, I was wondering if that country allows the hurricane flights over its territory.

[RyJae]

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2008-08-30-hurricane-hunter_N.htm

The storm’s circulation is already counter-clockwise, but no well-formed eye is apparent yet, Ragusa said. The Hunter’s target is the western tip of Jamaica. We have to fly over Cuba to get there, and the State Department has to secure overflight permission from the Cuban government to do it

So I imagine it works like that for all hurricanes?
ETA: Meant to quote not italicize.

[R.P.McMurphy]

So I’ve heard, and I will stand corrected if I’m wrong, but the Cubans are the most experienced at tracking hurricanes. It is the shame of our policy towards Cuba that we don’t use them and cooperate with them on hurricane tracking and preparation.

[Xema]

@Spartydog

It is the shame of our policy towards Cuba that we don’t use them and cooperate with them on hurricane tracking and preparation.

Without getting into the issue of US policy toward Cuba, is there something lacking in the way we track hurricanes by satellite?

[NinetyWt]

Here is an imageshowing the location of hurricane hunters near Cuba, gathering data for hurricane Ike. The land form at the bottom of the page is Cuba. Link may not be good for long; I think it’s updated after each HH mission.

IIRC the little flag-shaped indicators on the photo show where they have a data point.

[R.P.McMurphy]

@Xema

Without getting into the issue of US policy toward Cuba, is there something lacking in the way we track hurricanes by satellite?

IANA weatherman but I have also been told, and am willing to be corrected, that accurately predicting the weather can be highly dependent on local knowledge. In other words, you can feed all of the same data to two different weather predictors and the one with local knowledge and experience will more often be right.

Hurricane tracking is not a matter of looking at images. They are very unpredictable. For instance, look at this tracking image of tropical storm Hanna:

http://hurricane.terrapin.com/ATL-08A/ctrack.html Actually, this track is overly simplistic but look at how it circles around itself.

Watch the Weather Channel. The computer simulations come up with a variety of predicted paths that are widely divergent.

It’s like asking why race cars aren’t controlled by computers to keep human drivers from being killed and injured. After all, they have the real time images. The answer is that the computer controls and the images are not developed to the point of being sufficient to surpass human assessment.

Back to the OP. The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been so antagonistic that I would be highly surprised, actually dumbfounded, if Cuba was allowing any U.S. aircraft other than scheduled passenger flights over its airspace. Do you think that the U.S. government is allowing Cuban storm tracking aircraft to fly over Florida and Puerto Rico?

[RyJae]

@Spartydog

Back to the OP. The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been so antagonistic that I would be highly surprised, actually dumbfounded, if Cuba was allowing any U.S. aircraft other than scheduled passenger flights over its airspace. Do you think that the U.S. government is allowing Cuban storm tracking aircraft to fly over Florida and Puerto Rico?

According to the news article they just have to ask permission.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2008-08-30-hurricane-hunter_N.htm

The storm’s circulation is already counter-clockwise, but no well-formed eye is apparent yet, Ragusa said. The Hunter’s target is the western tip of Jamaica. We have to fly over Cuba to get there, and the State Department has to secure overflight permission from the Cuban government to do it

1:25 p.m.: The flight

The Hurricane Hunter flies for about two hours, straight across the olive-green landscape of Cuba. The plane cuts between the cities of Cabaiguan and Moron, just skirting the city of Ciego De Avila.

[Martini_Enfield]

Anyone else think that “Hurricane Hunter” sounds like a WWII British Aircraft?

I have this vision of people in RAF flying gear piloting Hawker Hurricane aircraft, diving into storms from the sun, guns firing, and saying things like “Take that, you bally storm!” and “No low pressure system for you tonight, Fritz!”

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Bloody good banter, old chap!