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Hurricane hunters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had a bumpy ride when they flew a plane into the massive Category 5 Hurricane Milton as it approached Florida’s western coast.
Video of the Tuesday flight showed NOAA researchers with the agency’s Commissioned Officers Corps holding onto the aircraft interior as the storm’s 155mph (249kph) winds buffetted the plane. Outside, only the wing of the plane was visible against the dark gray clouds of the storm.
The crew of the “Miss Piggy” was flying into the giant storm to collect data to improve forecasts and broaden their understanding of the storm.
“This data will then be sent to the National Hurricane Center and into the weather models to help us pinpoint this tack forecast,” Sofia de Solo, a NOAA flight director, told Flying Magazine.
She said the data is “extra important this time around, being that the hurricane is expected to hit a highly populous and highly vulnerable region that just got hit by Hurricane Helene.”
Tampa is especially vulnerable to storm surges due to the gentle sloping Gulf of Mexico seafloor along Florida’s western coast.
The NOAA said its planes — “Miss Piggy” and “Kermit” — are used for “grueling” 8-10 hour missions.
“Slicing through the eyeball of a hurricane, buffeted by howling winds, blinding rain and violent updrafts and downdrafts before entering the relative calm of the storm’s eye, NOAA’s two Lockheed WP-3D Orion four-engine turboprop aircraft, affectionately nicknamed ‘Kermit’ and ‘Miss Piggy’, probe every wind and pressure change, repeating the often grueling experience again and again during the course of an 8-10 hour mission,” the NOAA website explained.
The agency said that the planes’ tails are equipped with Doppler radar and lower fuselage radar systems, which “scan the storm vertically and horizontally, giving scientists and forecasters a real-time look at the storm.”
“The P-3s can also deploy probes called bathythermographs that measure the temperature of the sea,” the NOAA said.
At one point in the video, the hurricane jostles the plane so severely that equipment — and one researcher’s phone and wallet — get tossed around the interior of the plane.
While that degree of turbulence would likely leave typical airline passengers ready to tweet at a customer service agent, the researchers seem to be having a good time.
Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm.
