Harrowing footage released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Aircraft Operations Center shows a research plane violently shaking from heavy turbulence as it flew directly into Hurricane Milton.
The view from the passenger side window of “Miss Piggy,” the Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft, shows the plane flying through an impenetrable gray sky as it is pounded by blistering rain.
“Bumpy ride into Hurricane #Milton on@NOAA WP-3D Orion,” the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center wrote on a post on X.
The agency said the purpose of the trip was to collect data for hurricane research and help improve the storm’s forecast.
Inside the plane were at least four NOAA researchers.
Electrical Engineer Tom Brannigan is seen sitting at the AVAPS (Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System) as the plane loudly shakes.
The turbulence quickly intensifies, causing a plastic bag tied to a shelf in front of the researcher to rotate 180 degrees, spilling its contents onto the floor.
“Can you grab my phone real quick?” asks Programs Integration Engineer Nick Underwood, who was filming the rocky flight.
As Brannigan reaches for his colleague’s cell phone, the turbulence worsens yet again, causing the items to fly off a shelf on the plane.
Underwood points his camera at the back of the plane and shows several objects strewn about the floor, knocked into disarray by the intense turbulence.
“Damn,” he exclaimed while laughing.
“Holy crap,” the Underwood said as he showed another of his colleagues gripping a cooler tightly, so it doesn’t fly away.
“When you get a chance, can you grab my wallet too? Gotta keep these pockets zipped!” Underwood joked.
After belting “Good God,” the researcher returned to the view from the window, which showed that the plane had made it to clearer skies.
This is not the agency’s first rodeo.
“Our NOAA WP-3D Orion aircraft have been flying into storms for almost 50 years,” said Jonathan Shannon Public Affairs Specialist for NOAA Aircraft Operations Center.
Shannon said these missions are necessary because their scientists “cannot get this important data our forecasters need at this scale and resolution any other way.”
“We basically take a weather station to the weather,” he told The Post.
The NOAA researchers appeared to be calm and in good spirits as the storm pounded their aircraft.
“The best analogy I’ve heard is it is like riding an old wooden roller coaster through a car wash,” Shannon said.
Despite the agency’s long history of storm chasing and the researchers’ cool demeanor Shannon emphasized that flying an airplane through a hurricane was still a “dangerous undertaking.”
“We do our best to mitigate that danger.”