Jack Parrish has been a Flight Director (Meteorologist) aboard the NOAA WP-3D aircraft since 1983, and last year completed his 20^th hurricane season flying for NOAA. During that period, he has entered the hurricane’s eye 400 times.

Mr. Parrish has participated in most of the major research projects flown by AOC as Flight Director and often Project Manager, and in most of the major hurricanes flown as well. The WP-3D aircraft have been used to study recent intense hurricanes such as Floyd, Georges, Mitch, Bertha, Fran, and Opal, as well as historical storms Andrew, Gilbert, Hugo, and Allen. Much of this hurricane research has concentrated on inner storm dynamics in the most intense winds and thunderstorms of the hurricane core, remote sensing of the surface wind field and energetics, and the use of dropsondes to better detect the surrounding steering flow for better landfall forecasts.

Before joining the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center (AOC), he worked for three years at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division in Miami, flying as a WP-3D radar scientist and conducting research on the effects of hurricanes at landfall. This research helped break new ground on the winds at landfall and inland flooding due to precipitation. This position immediately followed completion of a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Florida State University in 1980. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard for four years starting in 1971, as a radar specialist aboard ocean-going Coast Guard Cutters.

Mr. Parrish has traveled globally with fellow NOAA flight crewmembers to support environmental research in places such as Guadalcanal, Austria, Okinawa, Australia, Peru, and numerous Arctic sites. On May 1, 2000, he assumed the project management of NOAA’s newest flying laboratory, the Gulfstream G-IV SP high altitude jet.