Kayleigh Addington “chased” her first tropical storm in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy barreled past her home state of Virginia and battered the northeast coast of the U.S.
As other families moved inland, Addington’s parents booked a hotel room in a deserted Virginia Beach, allowing the 8th grader to get closer to the storm and witness its power firsthand.
“I was able to go out and on the boardwalk and just experience the winds and the blowing sand,” recalled Addington, who continued chasing storms along the east coast well into her college years. “It’s something I’d never seen before.”
Storms and meteorology have captured Addington’s imagination since she watched news footage of Hurricane Katrina at 6 years old. She has spent much of the last decade studying tropical cyclones, first as an undergraduate and master’s student in Virginia and now as a doctoral candidate at Mississippi State University in Starkville.
By examining interactions between various ocean and atmospheric forces, she and her lab at MSU’s Department of Geosciences aim to deepen understanding of the factors that contribute to hurricane intensity, helping forecast models better predict their size and power and reduce their ultimate toll. Their work is part of a larger Office of Naval Research study investigating the “air-sea interface” under tropical cyclones.
“In recent years, storms have been more likely to rapidly intensify, which current models don’t handle particularly well,” Addington explained. “(Our) research now is focused on how we can improve these models to better understand why these storms are intensifying … with the hope of protecting lives and property.”
Addington was able to take her storm chasing to literal new heights earlier this year thanks to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which invited her to join a research flight tracking Tropical Storm Imelda across the Caribbean. The excursion was thrilling for Addington, who spent her childhood and teenage years dreaming of unraveling the mysteries of hurricanes.
“I never really swayed from wanting to do meteorology,” she said. “Ever since Katrina, I was just captivated by it.”
A Flight of a Lifetime
Addington described her recent reconnaissance flight with NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters team as a “surreal” experience. On a Sunday afternoon in late September, she and roughly 15 other crew members boarded a plane at the agency’s Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida, and set off south toward Tropical Storm Imelda.
Over the next six hours, Addington watched in awe as the crew maneuvered the aircraft in and around the storm, measuring characteristics like air pressure and wind speed at strategic intervals. Addington was seated in the plane’s cockpit, giving her an unencumbered view of the cloud formations that would later become the storm’s eyewall.
“You could see the swirling of the clouds where the eyewall would be,” Addington said, recalling how turbulence buffeted the aircraft as it neared the storm’s center. “It was very surreal to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m actually seeing this.’”
Throughout the flight, NOAA scientists collected data on Imelda using dropsondes—cylindrical devices that aircrafts release into storms to measure atmospheric conditions like temperature, air pressure and moisture. Addington is using dropsonde data from past hurricanes to advance her current research at MSU, and she relished watching the crew deploy the instruments and take measurements of the storm in real time.
“When you actually get to see how it’s done and applied, it gives you a whole new appreciation,” explained Dr. Johna Rudzin, Addington’s doctoral advisor and an associate professor of geosciences at MSU. “It might actually spawn ideas that you might not have even thought about because you’re physically seeing it happen.”
Though Addington was just an observer on the September flight, she hopes to play a more active role in similar missions down the road. She described working with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters as a dream opportunity moving forward, highlighting the daring and resourcefulness of the crew and the bravery required to chase storms of Sandy’s magnitude.
“The folks that do that are awesome,” she said. “I can’t describe it.”
Strengthening Disaster Preparedness
Addington may aspire to become a Hurricane Hunter later on in her career, but she has no plans to abandon her research after finishing at MSU. She is preparing to defend her dissertation in the spring, and she is eyeing postdoctoral and faculty positions that would allow her to keep investigating uncertainties in hurricane forecasting.
“I would definitely like to stay involved in research,” she said, adding that she hopes to introduce new variables that could lead to improvements in hurricane modeling.
Addington’s desire to build on her current work is indicative of the dedication she has shown at MSU, Rudzin said. Since the pair began working together in 2023, Rudzin says she has watched Addington become increasingly self-sufficient and approach her research in new, creative ways.
“I’ve really seen that blossom over the last year and a half,” Rudzin explained. “One of my favorite parts about what I do is … planting the seed of an idea, and then the students take that idea and make it their own.”
With climate change increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters, Addington feels her work at MSU has taken on a greater urgency. She hopes her research can help close knowledge gaps and reduce uncertainties in hurricane modeling, giving coastal communities in Mississippi and elsewhere information that could save lives and infrastructure.
“(I) definitely want to relate this all back to disaster preparedness (and) coast resiliency,” she said, highlighting the elevated threat these storms pose to the dense populations along the U.S. coast.
Beyond its importance and applicability, Addington is delighted by the prospect of fashioning a career out of her passion. She has continued chasing storms on her own since her family followed Hurricane Sandy to Virginia Beach, and she can’t wait to track others in a professional capacity.
“Immersing myself in that kind of environment (is) something that I’ve always loved,” she said, noting that something clicked into place while chasing Sandy all those years ago. “(It) really confirmed that, yes, this is what I want to do.”
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