Peter Dodge's final flight: Hurricane scientist gets burial at sea into Milton's eye

The late hurricane scientist Peter Dodge can rest for eternity knowing he got to take his final flight through a historic hurricane this week.

On Tuesday, meteorologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave Dodge what they called a burial at sea, dropping the longtime federal scientist's ashes into the eye of Hurricane Milton, which is expected to bring catastrophic damage to Florida after making landfall late Wednesday.

During his prolific career, Dodge went on dozens of hurricane flights, in which scientists measure air pressure, wave height on the surface of the ocean, wind speed and other factors to help everyday people learn about and prepare for storms. A typical hurricane flight will pass through the eye of a storm a handful of times, said Jeff Masters, a longtime meteorologist. Dodge completed 386 "eye penetrations," or pennies for short, during his career, he said.

“He did 386 eye penetrations while he was alive and his 387th was last night," Masters said.

Dodge, a mathematician and scientist who measured hurricane characteristics to help create more accurate forecasts, was a delightfully curious person and enjoyed topics aside from science, colleagues said.

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He was 72 when he died after suffering a stroke in 2023, his sister Shelley Dodge told USA TODAY.

For most of his career, Dodge was a radar scientist with NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Florida. Dodge also served in the Peace Corps in Nepal during the 1970s.

Masters, who went on several flights with Dodge, said he believes this is only the fourth time since the 1970s that a meteorologist's ashes have been dropped into the eye of a hurricane.

Dodge's final flight through Milton

NOAA scientists, who call themselves "hurricane hunters," had a ceremony for Dodge's cremated remains on the Tuesday flight through Milton, which flew into the storm's eye in only one minute. That's about 3 to 4 minutes less than usual, due to the storm's gargantuan size and relatively small eye, said Kathryn Sellwood, who worked with Dodge and helped drop his ashes.

“This was a really busy flight because it’s a very powerful hurricane, and it’s expected to make landfall in an area where it will have a very large impact," Sellwood told USA TODAY.

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Dodge's sister, Shelley Dodge, said her brother developed an eye condition later in life that prevented him from going on hurricane flights toward the end of his career. Now, Shelley Dodge said, he finally got to go on that last adventure.

"They honored him because he always wanted to go back up in the plane,” said Shelley Dodge, a lawyer based in Longmont, Colorado.

Because Dodge was such a beloved NOAA staff member, Shelley Dodge said, some of his colleagues were alongside family at his death bed. Storm chasers began planning Dodge's final flight the day he died in March of 2023, she told USA TODAY.

"The people loved him, and one person came up to me and said, 'We will make sure he has his last flight,'" Shelley Dodge said, speaking through tears.

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'He understood hurricanes'

During his more than 40 years of government service, Dodge focused his research on how rain cells behave while part of a hurricane, according to his sister.

“He understood hurricanes better or as good as anyone alive," Masters told USA TODAY.

Masters and Dodge were on a fateful scientific mission through Hurricane Hugo in 1989 where engine problems put their lives at risk.

On Tuesday evening, about 300 miles southwest of Florida, 20 people onboard the scientific flight dropped a cylindrical tube called a drop sonde into the eye of Hurricane Milton after reading a poem titled "Peace, my heart," by Rabindranath Tagore.

"The line that really stood out to everyone in the poem is, 'Let the flight through the sky end with folding of wings over the nest,'" Sellwood said, reading from a folded paper copy of the poem.

For Shelley Dodge, it was an honor her brother deserved.

“That was the part of his job that he loved the most, that he talked about the most," she said. “That’s what was so beautiful about what they did for Peter yesterday, is they made sure he was dropped through the eye.”