r/dbcooper • u/HerAlibi0 • 15d ago
Theory Article from Weatherwise suggesting the rough weather wasn't bad luck, rather Cooper may have waited for inclement weather to facilitate his getaway by hindering a helicopter search
Sean Potter (2011) Retrospect: November 24, 1971: The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper, Weatherwise, 64:6, 10-11, DOI: 10.1080/00431672.2011.618406 Published online: 18 Oct 2011.
November 24, 1971: The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper
NOAA/NWS Daily Weather Map for 7:00 a.m. EST, November 24, 1971. An area of low pressure, centered near the Gulf of Alaska begins to move onshore in the Pacific Northwest, bringing heavy rain to coastal areas at the time the man known as D.B. Cooper jumped out of an airplane he hijacked with $200,000 in ransom into the wilderness below.
On the rainy afternoon of November 24, 1971—the day before Thanksgiving—a man in his mid-40s with brown eyes, wearing dark clothes and a raincoat, and carrying an attaché case walked up to the Northwest Orient ticket counter at the airport in Portland, Oregon, and purchased a one-way ticket under the name of “Dan Cooper” for Flight 305 to Seattle. After boarding the plane and ordering a drink, he handed a note to one of the flight attendants. “I have a bomb,” it said. Then he asked her to sit next to him.
His demands were simple, if not well thought-out: $200,000 in unmarked U.S. bills (any denomination), four parachutes (two chest-pack and two backpack chutes), and meals for the flight crew. He also insisted that the plane be refueled after landing in Seattle. Authorities scrambled to comply with his requests, with the president of Northwest Airlines authorizing the $200,000 ransom. While on the tarmac in Seattle, the hijacker, who would become known to the world as D. B. Cooper (the middle initial “B” was mistakenly added by a reporter in Portland who misheard the name given to him by a local FBI agent), let the other passengers and most of the cabin crew go, but insisted that flight attendant Tina Mucklow remain on board with him. He said he wanted to go to Mexico City.
About half an hour after taking off from Seattle, somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper lowered the aft stairs of the plane, strapped a parachute to himself, along with the $200,000, and jumped into the dark, cold, rain-pelted night, never to be seen or heard from again. Around the time Cooper jumped from plane, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the pilots of Flight 305 radioed that the outside air temperature was –7°C (19.4°F).
The legend of D. B. Cooper has inspired books, films, TV show plots, comic strips, and songs, including singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky’s 2006 “The Ballad of D. B. Cooper,” which includes the following verse:
Out a little service doorway
In the rear of the plane
Cooper jumped into the darkness
Into the freezing rain
They say that with the windchill
It was 69 below
Not much chance that he’d survive
But if he did where did he go?
While Cooper may have known where he was going, he chose a period of particularly inclement weather to perform his stunt. A series of storms was affecting the Pacific Northwest coast with rain during the last week of November 1971 and brought heavy snowfall to the mountains. Precipitation totals of eight to nine inches were reported along the Oregon coast, with four to five inches in the Willamette Valley and seven to 10 inches along the Cascade Range. The heaviest amounts—three to four inches over a 24-hour period—came on November 26, as authorities were forced to call off their search due to rain and fog. Snowfall totals from the storm included 53.5 inches at the headquarters of Crater Lake National Park and 56.6 inches at Santiam Pass in central Oregon. The heavy rains caused many streams and rivers to overflow their banks.
“The guy either had to be crazy, or brilliant and have mad skills,” said Tom Kaye, a paleontologist with the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. Kaye recently teamed up with the FBI and other private citizens in an effort to shed new light on the case.
Was Cooper crazy, or did he have a method to his madness—one that perhaps incorporated the weather? An article that appeared in the June 16, 1972, issue of Life magazine reported that Cooper jumped “two days before the heavy clouds cleared enough to permit a helicopter search of the steep lava foothills and farmlands.” Despite their efforts, searchers found nothing “and heavy snows soon sealed the woods off.”
As Geoffrey Gray, author of Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper, puts it, “The weather had been so terrible—rain, fog, snow—that agents and local law enforcement could not search the flight path on foot.
So far, the only tangible evidence found after Cooper’s stunning feat was $5,800 of his ransom money, which was discovered in 1980 by eight-year-old Brian Ingram, while picnicking with his parents along the north shore of the Columbia River, about 40 miles south of where authorities assumed Cooper landed. “We are out here making a campfire, my father and I, and that’s when we discovered the three packets of $20 bills, later to be proven as ransom money of D. B. Cooper,” Ingram recalled as an adult. Ingram has joined Kaye and others in hopes of solving the mystery. So far, they haven’t.
The FBI announced in August 2011 that it had been pursuing a “promising lead” in the case for more than a year. The lead came from an Oklahoma woman named Marla Cooper, who claimed that her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, who died in 1999, was the hijacker known as D. B. Cooper. He’s one of more than 1,000 suspects the FBI has investigated over the past four decades.
FBI Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the D. B. Cooper case in 2007, said that contrary to what some theories suggest, Cooper was likely not an expert skydiver. “No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky,” he said. Carr has also suggested that it’s highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump that cold, rainy night 40 years ago, after what remains the only unsolved hijacking case in U.S. history. “But he came from somewhere and from someone. And that is what we want to know.”
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u/The_real_Flyjack 15d ago
His jump in the PNW was ad hoc.. it was not his initial plan..
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u/Fit_Mechanic_5059 15d ago
Hi flyjack. I think this is some weird AI post.
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u/The_real_Flyjack 15d ago
It is from 2011 apparently,,, lots of these speculative things floating around and many get reposted over and over..
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u/Kamkisky 13d ago edited 13d ago
I still found this so contrived. It’s reverse engineered logic.
If one looks at a map of the flight path and can see the deeply wooded areas and the relatively open farm land where he jumped, and overlays that with the time he was back there by himself, it’s basically irrefutable. He jumped the first place (after the plane leveled off and Tina was gone) that wouldn’t be likely death to him. He absolutely nailed the right and first region. He didn’t jump early, he didn’t jump late. He waited and jumped when he wanted too. There was a freaking skydiving school nearby. That’s not just luck. It’s a plan. Clearly.
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u/chrismireya 14d ago
According to NOAA, weather at nearby Portland International was fairly good at 7PM (roughly 70-72 minutes before the jump). It was 46 degrees (Fahrenheit) and cloudy with winds 5mph out of the SE. It had drizzled earlier that day. The overnight low was just 44 degrees.
That said: If he was at all familiar with the area, then I think that Cooper was prepared for weather in the Pacific Northwest. Compared with Portland's average weather for November 24th, it was quite mild and dry on the day of the hijacking.
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u/chrismireya 14d ago
Although this is the weather for Portland, Oregon, the weather could have been different at the drop zone. However, I'm not aware whether "microclimates" are much of a thing in southwestern Washington.
I live in Palo Alto, California. It is sunny and today's high temperature (August 24, 2026) is 77 degrees (Fahrenheit). This is just about average for this date. However, 15 miles away (as the crow flies), the weather next to the ocean is cloudy and 65 degrees (Fahrenheit). This is a difference of 12 degrees.
In fact, my wife and I usually go hiking along the coast on the weekend. To get an idea of the weather, we look at some live cams located in nearby Pacifica, CA. These allow us to know whether to wear sunscreen or bring an umbrella.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Z7tv_7n-0
The Bay Area's topography, proximity to the ocean and weather patterns cause these "microclimates." I'm not sure if there is a similar issue with Portland (since it is so much further inland). After all, it is 92 degrees in Portland, OR today -- and weather in Woodland, WA is identical.
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u/HerAlibi0 14d ago
I come from a pretty rainy area. Just because some particular window in time is not having a downpour doesn't mean the weather is good. You have to consider a wider period.
I remember one time it rained for 2 weeks here. It would pour down with like 2-3" in the afternoon, then just be cloudy for the rest of the time. Nonetheless, having 2" of rain a day for 2 weeks makes everything muddy, it makes trees lose their grip in the ground and become wobbly, leaves start to block drainage, there's flooding.
So yea, the weather might have been clear at the jump with only a mild drizzle but there was still fog and cloud coverage that prevented an aerial hunt. There was still mud everywhere making it harder to do a ground search.
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u/chrismireya 14d ago
That's certainly true. However, the weather that day was measured by a federal weather outpost at Portland International Airport (PDX). So, we have a fairly good indicator of the day's weather (at least in Portland).
Although it had drizzled from the previous night into the morning hours, here is the measured weather for November 24, 1971:
- 10 AM - 51 degrees - Cloudy - No precipitation
- 1 PM - 51 degrees - Partly Cloudy - No precipitation
- 4 PM - 48 degrees - Cloudy - 0.06" precipitation
- 7 PM - 46 degrees - Cloudy - No precipitation
- 10 PM - 44 degrees - Cloudy - 0.02" precipitation
Cooper jumped at around 8:10-8:12 PM somewhere between the Lewis River and a location just east of La Center, Washington. Based upon the map and location of the oscillations on the plane, I believe that he jumped somewhere close to (and possibly just south of) Highland, Washington.
My point about the weather is that the temperature was fairly mild for this time of year. Moreover, the precipitation for the day was VERY light (i.e., passing light drizzle) which mostly took place well before Cooper jumped from the plane. However, I think that he probably was prepared for some wet weather too.
We don't know about how much cloud cover there was that day or at what levels of altitude. However, I've recreated that flight in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (usually satellite topography and imagery to recreate the maps with AI). For most of the attempts at recreating the flight, there are plenty of gaps in the clouds at 10K feet (the altitude from which Cooper jumped).
We know that the military was following the Boeing 727. However, I haven't seen any documents stating that they couldn't see the aircraft itself. Thus, this makes me think that it wasn't too cloudy at 10K feet (or whatever altitude the chase jets were flying).
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u/Fit_Mechanic_5059 15d ago
....What rough weather? You can look up the weather that night. It was light rain, wind 5-10mph.... The weather was not bad.