Hurricane Hunter who flew into Ian shares his story and the team’s critical mission

It’s a high-flying job. From the looks of it, you also need a strong stomach and a hearty sense of adventure to be a Hurricane Hunter.

They fly directly into the world’s worst weather to “help forecasters make accurate predictions during a hurricane and help hurricane researchers better understand storm processes, improving their forecast models.”

They fly straight into the howling winds, blinding rain, and severe air currents before entering the relative calm of the storm’s eye.

Nick Underwood has flown missions directly into many storms as an aerospace engineer for NOAA Hurricane Hunters.

“Jose, Maria, Nate, Florence,” he recalled to WINK News Reporter Liz Biro. “Going towards Fort Myers – worst flight I’ve been on in my eight years of doing this.”

You guessed it. Underwood is talking about flying into Hurricane Ian. He shared some video from that flight with Biro.

“The turbulence was intense, the lightning outside was intense,” added Underwood. “There was just a lot going on.”

Lightning flashed outside as beds flew off their bunks inside.

“But all the while, we’re flying through the storm collecting the important scientific data that we need to better forecast where the storm’s gonna go, how strong it’s gonna be,” he explained.

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Underwood was inside Kermit, a WP-3D Orion Aircraft. With permission from Jim Henson Productions, NOAA names its aircraft after various Muppet characters, according to the military.

“The last few years, we’ve been launching drones out of the airplane. And so we have an operator on board, the drone can fly down to a lot lower altitudes, and we can safely get to and collect data that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to get,” he added.

Despite extreme turbulence, the NOAA crew successfully launched a 27-pound Altius-600 drone. The drone collected critical measurements at a lower altitude while the flight crew found safer airspace.