Dr. Kim Wood

Well, I would say the mood's pretty excited because we're flying through a hurricane.

Like we're scientists, but we're also nerds.

And so like we're just excited to learn all these things.

And they'll often put instruments on these planes.

so that we can learn more about how they operate before we try to put them in space on a satellite.

Because getting them into space could be hundreds of millions of dollars, but anytime you go through an area with a strong updraft, so that's what's driving upward those thunderstorm-type clouds, you can get some real interesting experiences, like an updraft-downdraft couplet where you're very briefly weightless.

Oh, God.

So one thing I want to preface this with is there's kind of this stereotype that weather weenies are into weather from like as soon as they could walk.

And I want to encourage anyone who might hear this, if you're interested in weather and it starts when you're like 50 years old, we welcome you to it.

You don't have to be a weather weenie when you're a kid to be a weather weenie as an adult.

That said, I started getting interested in clouds when I was like eight years old.

But then when I was a teenager, I went to a local air show and they had a hurricane hunter crew there as like one of the exhibits.

And I wandered the plane and talked to the flight meteorologist.

And I was just like, this is so cool.

I'm going to go study physics and then atmospheric science.

And I guess I'm going to be a professor and teach other people about this too.

Yeah, absolutely great question.

So the spectrum of what constitutes a tropical cyclone encompasses pretty much everything you just listed.

So let's traverse sort of a typical life cycle of a storm that might brew in the Atlantic.

So over Africa, we have these systems that are called African easterly waves, which is a fancy name for globs of thunderstorms that are relatively organized.