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Today\u2019s guest is Frank Marks, legendary NOAA meteorologist and tropical cyclone expert. Since the 1980s, he\u2019s flown 10,000 hours on NOAA\u2019s P3 Orion aircraft, including through many, many hurricanes. Marks, who now leads NOAA\u2019s Hurricane Research Division, clearly enjoys learning. He shares some of his favorite experiences with us. The P3 Orion Marks discusses the P3 aircraft capabilities and describes flying into his first hurricane, Hurricane Alan. After that ride, he explains, seeing the data coming in through all the instruments, he was hooked. He discusses early experiments trying to understand the nature of the hurricane eyewall replacement cycle. The Doppler revolution In 1981, another highlight for Marks was the addition of Doppler radar to the P3 aircraft, which he describes as a revolutionary technique for understanding the three-dimensional structure of storms. Marks details the ways that Doppler, which he calls a \u201cCAT scan of the wind,\u201d improved scientific understanding of hurricanes. A watershed for meteorologists, Doppler data helped scientists figure out storm structure and how they work. He recalls the enthusiasm with which he and his colleagues \u201cdid some of the best science ever.\u201d Surviving Hugo One of Marks\u2019s scariest experiences, complete with a P3 engine on fire, involves flying into category 5 Hurricane Hugo at 1,500 feet. It wasn\u2019t exactly planned, he explains, to fly that low into wind speeds over 150 MPH. He describes the miscalculations, the incredible view \u2014 and how the crew survived the experience. \u201cThe data was incredible,\u201d he says, \u201cAnd it was a labor of love to analyze.\u201d Rainfall climatology Over and over, Marks says, serendipity played a role in his work. He describes working with a NASA team interested in tropical storms called the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a satellite system that examined storms around the globe. By chance he stopped to chat with the TRMM chief scientist, and he ended up volunteering to analyze the TRMM hurricane data \u2014 which had yet to be examined. That, in turn, led to a project that used TRMM to devise global climatology for 700 tropical systems. Connecting to TACC In 2008, after a series of active and damaging hurricane seasons, NOAA formed a committee to improve forecasts, which became the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project that Marks now leads. By chance, the team was offered 1 million hours on the newly available Texas Advanced Computer Center \u2013 an opportunity to put the new system through its paces. Marks describes the challenge of feeding large weather datasets to the models on the TACC system. Fortunately, the data scientist on his team made it all work. That pioneering experiment laid the groundwork for today\u2019s weather scientists to use supercomputers like TACC for accurate and real-time hurricane forecasts.