Cleared for take-off, checklist complete.
-Take-off power set. Power checks. -Oh shit.
Okay! Next stop hurricane Sam.
-Wake it up please. -Yeah.
So we took off from St. Croix and flying out here about 700 miles.
We're gonna be dropping down 10,000 feet
and going through the middle of it so…
We're gonna fly through the middle of it?
Yeah, right in the meat of it.
Yeah we-- That's some heavy precip.
Holy shit.
You might want to sit down with the camera.
Woah! Fuck!
This right here is our dropsonde. It's uh, you know,
it's a scientific weather instrument that we use, it collects wind,
uh, pressure, temperature, humidity.
It's collecting data from the hurricane and you shoot it out into the ocean.
-Out the bottom of this tube right here. -Wow.
So actually I'm gonna have you open it up here.
So yeah, stuff that in there.
-There you go. -Oh! There we go. Woo! Heavy.
That was it.
-And here's the data coming in already. -Yeah.
So that's what the… the humidity, the temperature of the air,
-the pressure, all that. -Yes sir.
I always assume like, you know, you're-- Okay, you're
watching TV and you're seeing here's where the hurricane is,
that they were doing that through satellite or radar or something.
But you do-- This like the movie Armageddon, it's
like, we gotta send a team into the storm
to find the exact-- That's the only way we know where the storm really is.
And then when you find it, you have to drop a payload into the center of it.
-And you do that multiple times a day? -I guess so.
-When there's a hurricane? -I mean, we're not,
blowing up the hurricane.
You're almost blowing up the hurricane!
The aircraft is really the only way you're going to be able to get to find out
the exact details of what's going on.
We're also collecting weather information all around the storm
and sending that information to the Hurricane Center.
so it tells them a lot of information. It tells them what--
How big is the wind field around the hurricane so they can issue warnings.
I mean, indirectly we're saving lives or helping save lives
-Yeah. -through emergency network, and
hurricane forecast is putting those warnings out there.
We are deep in Sam's belly now.
Sam ain't happy we're here, let me tell ya.
Okay, we're about to break in.
And we're in the eye.
Oh my God!
Oh my fucking God.
This is so beautiful, holy shit.
It's just like you're in, you're in these like…
You're in clouds, you're in white clouds, and then suddenly you break through
and it's completely, like, clear, you can see all the way down to the ocean,
it's beautiful!
A lot of us live on the Gulf Coast or we have families that do,
what we do directly helps them make the decisions that they need to make
as the storm moves into their area.
Like, you're literally flying into one of the most powerful natural events on earth
and you're getting to see it in a way that
no one else on earth does, I mean, it's
such a privilege to be up here.
What does it feel like to you to do this, like every day?
It's a privilege to have this job. Millions of people feel the effects
of what we do in improving the forecast and it helps them to make
safe and correct decisions of what to do ahead of storms.
-And so we're very lucky that -Yeah.
the job makes it easy for us to, uh, see what we do
-and, and it benefits the public. -Yeah.
Well, Mark, it has been such a privilege being up here.
-Thank you so much for having us. -Yeah. It's been great having you, Adam.
Incredible.
Okay, I'm a little nauseous. I'm very happy to have my feet back on the ground.
Let's head to the National Hurricane Center to see
what the scientists there do with the data that this plane collects.