Dr. Kim Wood

And the closer you are to the surface, the more friction is going to slow those winds down.

Well, they might have fallen out of the sky back in the 1940s.

Okay.

These hurricane hunters, if you hear about the Air Force or NOAA, they're flying at about three kilometers above the Earth's surface.

And so they're low enough that they are getting really into the heart of the storm as far as vertically where the strong winds are.

But they're high enough that, you know, they're not going to run into the ground.

So they are well equipped with radar and other instruments.

They can navigate.

They've got expert pilots on board.

They have experts.

scientists on board and all sorts of folks with experience in running these instruments, dropping drop sands, which are the opposite of what we put on weather balloons.

They get a little parachute, they drop out of the plane, and then they take measurements as they fall down to the ocean surface below.

But

The folks on there tend to be a range of veterans with lots of, when I say veterans, like having many years of piloting experience, but also meteorologists who have spent a lot of time in the classroom and beyond studying how hurricanes work.

Back in 2010, I got to do that on the NASA DC-8.

So we were at way up beyond 30,000 feet.

So way above the level that you would fly in a typical hurricane hunter.

But I flew through Hurricane Carl in 2010 as it was rapidly intensifying.

And yeah, it's bumpy.

I was very happy to have a four-point harness kind of seatbelt.