What things do air reconnaissance fliers look for when they fly into the path of a hurricane?
Greetings from Miami! The reconnaissance aircraft look for a few different things when they fly into hurricanes. The most important things to know are the location of the hurricane, its intensity, and its size. This information is needed to forecast where the hurricane is going, when it will arrive there, how strong it will be, and how large an area the storm will affect. To do this, we fly what are called “legs,” or straight-lines from one end of the storm to the other through the center or eye of the storm. We start where we first see the strong winds of the hurricane, sometimes as little as 40 miles from the eye, and sometimes as big as 200 miles from the eye. As we go toward the eye, the winds increase until we get to the area just outside the eye, which we call the eyewall. This has the fastest winds, and here we find out how intense the storm is. When we get into the eye, the winds die down, and sometimes the sun or the stars come out. We find the exact center of the storm, which
