By Sid Perkins
Flying an aircraft through a hurricane is risky business, even if the plane is specially equipped for the job. In the hurricane’s eye, skies are clear and calm prevails, but in the ring of intense storms surrounding the eye—the eyewall—rain falls in thick sheets and winds gust to 300 kilometers per hour.
In 2005, despite those perils, the pilots of three “hurricane-hunter” planes flew repeated missions into the cores of the monster storms Katrina and Rita as well as the much tamer Ophelia. During the missions—collectively dubbed the Rainband and Intensity Change Experiment, or RAINEX—scientists on board the instrument-laden aircraft collected unprecedented data on the structure, configuration, and interaction of clouds within the massive hurricanes. Probes dropped from the planes garnered additional information.