All through this book we have talked about hurricane hunters. By now it is clear that the crew on the plane that goes into the storm at the risk of destruction of the craft and death to the men is not really “hunting” a hurricane. It is the exception rather than the rule when they discover a tropical storm. The first hint comes from some distant island or a ship in the gusty wind circle where the sea and the sky reveal ominous signs of trouble. Somewhere in a busy weather office a large outline map is being covered with figures and symbols. Long, curving lines across a panorama of weather take shape as the radios vibrate and the teletypewriters rattle with the international language of weathermen—the most co-operative people in the world’s family of nations. Hurricane hunting is done on these maps. Day after day, without any fanfare, the weathermen search the reports spread across this almost boundless region where hundreds of tropical storms could be in progress if nature chose to operate in such an eerie fashion. Even the experienced observers on islands and the alert officers on shipboard might not see the real implications in the weather messages they prepare. In the enormous reaches of the belt of trade winds, where the tremendous energy of the sun’s heat and the irresistible force of earth rotation dictate that the winds shall blow as steady breezes from the northeast, somebody might put in his report, for example, that there was a light wind coming from the southwest. That fact alone would be enough. In season, the weathermen would know, almost with certainty, that there was a tropical storm in the area. There are many things to watch for, in the array of elements at the surface, in the upper air, the clouds, sea swells, change of the barometer, faint earth tremors. A hint from this scattering of messages in the vast hurricane region starts the action. And the planes go out to investigate. This is an extraordinary procedure. Looking at it as an outgrowth of the insistent demands of citizens along the coasts in the hurricane region for warnings of these storms, as the population increased and property losses mounted, it seems that the flight of planes into these monstrous winds is justified only until a safer method can be found. All other aircraft are flown out of the threatened areas, obviously because the winds are destructive to planes on the ground. The lives of men and the safety of the plane in the air should not run a risk of being sacrificed if it can be avoided. Of course, it is argued by some men that there is a possibility that a method may be discovered to control hurricanes by the use of chemicals or some other plan requiring planes to fly into the centers. And it is true, also, that for the time being at least there is certain information that can be obtained in no other way.