Robbie Hood is a NASA atmospheric scientist and hurricane hunter, stationed at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She is among a very select group, being one of only a few women who fly into hurricanes on hurricane hunter missions for NASA. Robbie also manages other scientists and projects as a project director and lead researcher. Her work on rainfall and other precipitation events in hurricanes and tropical storms has led Robbie to develop instrumentation that satellites can use to measure the amount of water and ice in the clouds of storms.
Growing up in Neosho, Missouri and Picayune, Mississippi, Robbie saw the unimaginable damage that storms can cause. While living in Mississippi she survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, a Category 5 hurricane that killed 259 people. Five years later in Missouri in 1974 she was in her hometown of Neosho when a tornado struck there.
Robbie started her college career with an associate’s degree in physics from Crowder College, then earned a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science from the University of Missouri in Columbia. In graduate school, Robbie completed a master’s degree in physical meteorology from Florida State University.
Today she uses satellites and aircraft to research precipitation in thunderstorms and hurricanes. Robbie works with engineers to develop, calibrate, and refine the tools that can gather critical weather data which then helps emergency planners save lives. Being able to calibrate satellite data to the data gathered in actual hurricane hunter flights allows Robbie to make valuable use of even more satellite data from places where planes that monitor tropical storms and hurricanes cannot fly.
Robbie is very passionate about her research and developing new technologies to improve the data she collects. She leads a working group at NASA that has designed and implemented passive microwave instrumentation sensors to observe precipitation and ocean winds. Her team has conducted research in many places around the world including Australia, Brazil, Alaska, the Marshall Islands, Costa Rica, and the coastal regions of the United States.
Robbie also works closely with her hurricane hunter colleagues at the Hurricane Research Division at NOAA. Most recently she worked with Jason Dunion (Mission 4 Host Researcher) on a research project to investigate the origins and development of Atlantic hurricanes.
Robbie plans to continue her research and to lead field campaigns at NASA. Her goal is to bring critical data-gathering capability to other areas of the world that are impacted by the devastation of tropical storms and hurricanes. The lives of many more people worldwide can be protected and saved using the technology and understanding of severe weather that Robbie is helping to develop.