Tropical Storm Arlene formed Friday afternoon after hurricane hunters determined Tropical Depression 2 had strengthened.

This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Arlene was located 265 miles west of Fort Myers, Florida, and 340 miles north-northwest of the western tip of Cuba as of 2 p.m. Friday.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was moving south at 5 mph.

"Although the storm has strengthened slightly, we still expect Arlene to weaken soon due to increasing wind shear and dry air, and no change has been made to the forecast," the National Hurricane Center said.

Arlene is headed south and won't directly impact the states, though Florida will have rainfall related to the storm.

Rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches with localized higher amounts up to 5 inches are possible through Saturday across portions of the central and southern Florida Peninsula.

Arlene is the first named storm of the year. We had a subtropical system develop in the northern Atlantic back in January.

MIAMI —

Maria Torres' passion for weather began at a young age. She and her family left San Juan, Puerto Rico and moved to Miami, Florida over 25 years ago.

"I remember back in 1989, it was my first experience going into Hurricane Hugo when it hit Puerto Rico," said Torres. "It was a Category 3 hurricane."

Torres attended Braddock High School in Miami, Florida, where she was a part of the ESOL Program that helped her learn how to speak English.

Her love of atmospheric science led her to Florida State University where she received her bachelor's degree in meteorology. Torres was also the first person in her family to attend college and get a degree.

"It's a big accomplishment and I feel that it was a push for my cousins from both sides of the family to be able to say 'hey if she can do it we can do it as well,'" Torres said.

Torres interned with the federal government while attending college. This experience helped her land her first job at the National Weather Service as a forecaster in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Torres eventually took another job within the National Weather Service and moved to Brownsville, Texas, which is close to the border.

"During the time that I was there in South Texas, projects I tried to get with the community is to build better relationships with them," Torres said. "Having a Hispanic person that could speak to them in their language, was a way to build better trust with the community and educate them in the process of showing what are the watches and warnings and what do they mean, what are the different hazards that could affect the area and how can they be prepared for it."

After the Lonestar State, Torres, her husband, and her son moved back to the Magic City for another role at the National Weather Service in Miami.

"Once I got to Miami, it was, 'Get ready!'" said Torres. "I moved back to Miami in 2016 and I had to deal with Hurricane Matthew. That was my first one here as a forecaster."

Now, Torres is now the new bilingual public affairs officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"I'm really proud of carrying that culture with me and sharing that through my son and the family that we have here in Florida," said Torres. "I carry those deep roots within me, and they define who I am. I carry that through my career as well."

The second half of hurricane season is here and there have already been 15 named storms to keep hurricane hunters busy. But have you ever noticed hurricane hunters' flight patterns shown by meteorologists on TV look like random, odd shapes?

Those seemingly random flight patterns may look like boxes or stars, but they serve specific purposes for each individual storm.

We ended 2020 with a record-breaking 30 named storms in the Atlantic basin and if this season is anything like last year, we have a long way to go.

Hurricane hunters don't fly away from these storms like commercial airlines do. They fly directly into them, but they don't just fly into and around the storms randomly. There is a method to the madness.

There are two distinctive groups of hurricane hunters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force Reserve (USAF). Both organizations fly missions into tropical disturbances in order to record invaluable data used by forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

For Hurricane hunters, there are two main types of missions flown, fixed and invest.

Fixed missions

Fixed missions are designated for systems that meet tropical cyclone qualifications, such as tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes. The main objectives are to mark the center of circulation, monitor winds speeds and pressure changes and other variables that are tricky for satellites in space to measure in full detail.

For fixed missions, 'Alpha' is the most common flight pattern used to collect data in a tropical cyclone.

"The Alpha pattern is the standard profile we fly for fix missions so it's the one people are most familiar with seeing from us," Maj. Jeremy DeHart, meteorologist and aerial reconnaissance weather officer with the Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, said. "The pattern consists of two legs flown at intercardinal directions, and when complete, looks a lot like the Greek Alpha symbol when including the crossleg."

Cardinal directions are the standard points on a compass: north, south, east, and west. Intercardinal directions are the diagonal points in between: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest.

Interestingly, the bigger, stronger storms tend to be the "easier" ones to fly in.

"From my perspective as the onboard meteorologist, the Alpha pattern is the "easiest" to fly. Because we normally fly those on stronger storms, there's not a lot of question where the storm center is," DeHart said. "The flights can be rough of course, but at the end of the day we just go fly through the storm center, collect the data, and send it to NHC."

Invest missions

The primary objective of an invest mission is to determine if a system meets the definition of a tropical cyclone; storms that do not yet have a name or any real tropical structure characteristics.

For invest missions, the NHC will often send estimated coordinates of where they believe the center of circulation is, which is where the missions will target for their starting point.

However, invest missions by nature have to be a bit more flexible for flight patterns, simply because there are so many unknowns with these types of storms.

"We never know what we're going to find, yet we always have to be thinking two or three steps ahead. So that really makes us need to think about the meteorology [in each particular storm]," DeHart said. "Is it a closed low or an open wave? Maybe it's closed but just elongated? Is it battling shear? Are there several smaller swirls competing to be the main circulation center? Weak storms and invests can be very tricky and require a lot of thinking on our toes."

Air Force Hurricane Hunters have a variety of flight patterns to choose from for invest missions: X, Delta, and Box, just to name a few.

DeHart explains the missions are ideal for the weaker, more uncertain storms. While the X pattern may resemble the Alpha pattern, it is flown at much lower altitudes, usually around 500 to 1,000 feet.

"Once a system becomes a tropical storm or hurricane, the hurricane hunters begin flying at higher altitudes, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 feet depending on the severity of the storm," said Jessica Kendziorek, public affairs operations chief with the USAF 403rd Wing.

Flight levels for the Delta and Box patterns are usually at or below 5,000 ft absolute altitude.

"The Delta and Box patterns are similar in that we'll fly around the periphery of the forecast center seeing if we can observe winds in all four quadrants of the storm that would indicate a closed circulation. If we find a closed circulation, we can confidently go [find] the center; if not, we'll continue the mission in 'invest mode,'" DeHart said.

NOAA focuses on research

NOAA Hurricane Hunters also fly operational fixed and invest missions (though the names may be different), but they usually have more research-oriented objectives. They fly many unique flight patterns, with different types of aircraft, depending on what type of mission is assigned.

Hurricane hunters also fly a third type of mission, which the Air Force rarely flies, according to DeHart, called synoptic missions.

For fixed missions, NOAA often flies a Figure 4, Rotated Figure 4 pattern, or a Butterfly pattern.

"The Butterfly and Figure 4 patterns flown by the WP-3D through the storm are typically the ones used to [find] the center of circulation," said Jonathan Shannon, public affairs specialist for the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.

The Rotated Figure 4 pattern is as it sounds; the Figure 4 pattern turned on the side.

"The goal with every flight is to gather data all around the center of the storm, and those patterns allow us to efficiently fly through a storm's various quadrants," Nick Underwood, NOAA Hurricane Hunter, said. "This data helps with predicting a storm's intensity, as well as determining exactly where the center is."

For invest missions, the Lawnmower and Square Spiral patterns are flown, to determine if there are actual tropical characteristics associated with the area in which they are investigating.

"The Lawnmower Pattern allows us to map out a large area when we don't have a center to aim for," Paul Flaherty, science branch chief at NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, said. "Once we are able to map a full circulation (usually by finding a west wind), we'll shift back to Figure 4's based on that newly identified center position."

The Square Spiral pattern is a survey mission meant to supply observations on the structure and characteristics including information about the vortex center, if it exists.

There is a unique third type of mission flight pattern, often used to sample the surrounding atmosphere which helps forecasters know the direction the storm is likely to go.

The Star pattern focuses on a scan of the outer edges of the system. The closely related Star-2 pattern also does an outer span of the system, while also adding in a circumference loop near the center of circulation.

Recently, NOAA's Gulfstream IV flew a Star-2 pattern around Hurricane Larry, to investigate outflow patterns from the storm and better determine where the storm was headed.

"The flight pattern you'll typically see from our Gulfstream IV is a circumnavigation of the storm itself, as well as sampling of the atmosphere around and ahead of the storm," Underwood said. "This data helps with predicting the storm's track."

Regardless of which entity is flying, the operational missions are the backbone for the National Hurricane Center, tasked with providing essential life-saving information about a storm.

The NHC takes the data and uses it to issue guidance and advisories to the public, so people know whether Elsa or Ida or Nicholas are still tropical storms or have become hurricanes.

The second tropical storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has formed hundreds of miles off the mid-Atlantic coast.

On Monday evening, the National Hurricane Center upgraded Bill to a tropical storm. It's currently churning out in the Atlantic Ocean with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, as of 7 a.m. ET Tuesday.

When storms over the Atlantic begin to organize into a rotating system around a central "eye," and sustained wind speeds in the storm reach 39 mph, it's classified as a tropical storm. Once wind speeds in the system reach 74 mph, it becomes a hurricane.

Tropical Storm Bill is not expected to make landfall in the U.S., according to the National Hurricane Center's projections on Monday. The agency expects Bill to take a sharp turn northwest and eventually make landfall in Newfoundland on Wednesday afternoon.

One other storm has reached tropical storm status in 2021. Ana formed as a tropical storm in the Atlantic, where it circled for several days before breaking up in late May.