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FLYING INTO THE EYE OF A HURRICANE
A monster storm with 150-mile- (241-kilometer-) an-hour winds churns west across the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami have tracked it for days using satellite images. Now they're worried it may threaten the United States. It's time for the "hurricane hunters" to go to work!
All ships and airplanes have been warned away from this monster. But two four-engine airplanes, each carrying a flight crew and several scientists, now head toward the storm. Their mission? To collect data inside the hurricane that will tell meteorologists where the storm is going, when it will get there, and how violent it will be.
The planes—nicknamed Kermit and Miss Piggy—take off from Florida and the Caribbean. They fly east over the Atlantic into skies that grow increasingly dark and stormy. Suddenly they disappear inside the clouds—one plane fairly close to the sea surface, and the other much higher in the system.
As the planes struggle toward the eye, the pilots fight intense updrafts and downdrafts. The hurricane pelts the planes with rain and hail. Static electricity builds up and then discharges with a flash and a loud bang, causing the crew's hair to literally stand on end.
"About the last 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 kilometers) we get into the eye wall," says Greg Bast, a flight engineer, whose job it is to keep the plane's systems operating properly. "That's where we get banged around a lot."
"It's like you're on a roller coaster going down, and then getting shot back up again," adds Philip Kenul, a pilot. "You just have to make sure that when you drop, you don't run out of air and hit the ocean!"
Photograph at top courtesy NOAA
Video courtesy National Geographic Television
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Check out a video showing hurricane damage.
HURRICANE PHOTOS
A MIGHTY WIND
A tropical storm has winds of 39 to 73 miles (63 to 117 kilometers) an hour. Higher winds mean it's a hurricane.
DRY DOCK
A hurricane can last for more than two weeks as it travels across the ocean and up a coastline.
MAKING WAVES
Hurricanes are most likely to form June through November. The height of the season is September.
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