Flying through the eyewall of the Hurricane – crazy footage from inside plane

Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded at sea, slammed into the Mexican coast overnight, and as it did so, a number of Meteorologists were recorded flying in the eye,and into the eye wall.  The crew had taken off ten hours prior seeking the opportunity to collect data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and back them the hurricane was being called a mild tropical storm.  A practiced crew, led by flight engineer Jospeh Klippel, who has tracked and measured approximately 300 storms, they were undeterred from flying directly into the eye of the storm in the NOAA’s research aircraft, a P-3 Orion named Miss Piggy.  The 180 mile per hour cross winds would have been nothing short of terrifying, and Klippel posted two videos online of the moments on board.

The video we are featuring below shows the plane penetrating the eye wall and entering the eye followed by two minutes of time inside the eye of the storm.  .

“The plane and crew were thumped so hard that the flight director’s (Meteorologist’s) keyboard flew off his station and all of his data was dumped,” NOAA wrote. “The crew circled for a hour afterwards as the Flight Director reconstructed the data from the eye wall penetration to transmit that data to NOAA NWS National Hurricane Center. From the data collected, NHC analyzed Hurricane Patricia at 879 mb, a Western Hemisphere record for lowest pressure,” NOAA wrote.
“The plane and crew were thumped so hard that the flight director’s (Meteorologist’s) keyboard flew off his station and all of his data was dumped,” NOAA wrote. “The crew circled for a hour afterwards as the Flight Director reconstructed the data from the eye wall penetration to transmit that data to NOAA NWS National Hurricane Center. From the data collected, NHC analyzed Hurricane Patricia at 879 mb, a Western Hemisphere record for lowest pressure,” NOAA wrote.