Climate security

How Soviet and American hurricane fliers set aside Cold War politics for science

On a September night in 1988, Hurricane Gilbert rampaged across Jamaica as a Category-5 storm headed toward Mexico and possibly the United States.

Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center at the time, recalls in an email that he had gone home to catch a little sleep and returned early the next morning, Sept. 13, to find himself in the middle of a dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union over “hurricane hunters” flying into Gilbert.

“We had gone overnight without any hurricane hunter flights into the storm,” Sheets said, because Soviet aircraft flying out of Cuba had apparently registered flight plans with the Houston Federal Aviation Administration Center.