I have a great deal of respect for those who fly on Hurricane Hunter aircraft into Hurricanes. They do important work to provide good information with the goal of keeping us as safe as possible from hurricanes.
I found a nice article by Matthew Cappuci, a regular contributor to the Washington Post and a Meteorologist with the weather app “MyRadar. He flew on “Kermit”, a NOAA hurricane hunter, on a mission flying through Hurricane Melissa. There were 19 people onboard Kermit, pilots, flight engineers, and researchers. Here is an excerpt from Cappuci’s October 27th article on the Washington Post (this article is a gift that expires in ten days on or about November 8th, for those coming on after November 8th I hope that you will still have free access to this article). Here is an excerpt from Cappuci's article to give you an idea of what it was like on Kermit:
Winds in the eyewall reach ridiculous speeds; over the open ocean, winds were gusting 140 mph or more. Eventually, all the rising air in an eyewall collides with the ceiling of the lower atmosphere; we call that the tropopause. Some of the air bounces against that ceiling, curling downward. It sinks (subsides), warms up and dries out. That punches out an oasis of calm: the eye. …
And then it happened. We emerged from the mist. A fingernail moon hung overhead in the deep twilight. I pressed my face against the glass. My jaw dropped.
I was sitting in the middle of a 10-mile-wide stadium of the gods. On all sides, hulking thunderstorms towered high above me — yet, directly overhead, the stars twinkled. With the faint glow offered by the moon, I could see brushstroke-like striations as the clouds in the eyewall swung around the eye at breakneck speeds. But, for a moment, I was in an oasis of calm.
My prayers are with all those affected by Hurricane Melissa as she struck Cuba and Jamaica, see this report from CBS News for more information.
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