Transcript:

Here's a program from our archives.Ever thought about flying into a hurricane? Well some scientists regularly do just that to gain a better understanding of how these major storm systems work. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Every year researchers fly planes right into the heart of hurricanes. One of these hearty souls is Chris Landsea, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Landsea: We take the aircraft that we have and fly them right through the cetnter of the hurricanes, to get a better look and try to understand how they form, how they develop into a full-fledged hurricane, what are the factors involved in steering the storms, we need to understand that a bit better. There's a lot of unanswered questions, and these planes are great tools for us to get right in the middle of the storm -- we have wonderful radars that map out the precipitation structure, so its a needed project that we're involved with every year. The winds in a major hurricane are strong -- over 111 miles per hour, and the plane is seriously buffetted as it approaches the heart of the storm. Landsea: In the middle of a well-developed hurricane you have the eyewall which is the ring of thunderstorms, and inside that you have the clear eye. And when you're in the eyewall you're bounced along and you have to be strapped in with these big harnesses to make sure you don't go flying around the plane, and then you break into the eye itself, and its completely calm, and if it's daytime out, if you look up you can see a circle of blue sky surrounded by black thunderstorms on all sides, and then if you look down, you can actually see the ocean surface, a mile of two below you, and its just frothing with huge waves -- 40-60 ft. waves. And that to me is just spectacular -- visually seeing the middle of a hurricane -- there's just nothing like it in the world. We've been listening to a program from our archives. If you want to hear more, check out our podcast.