Watch Airplane Fly Into Hurricane Miltion In Horrifying Footage
It was a plane ride that passengers won’t soon forget. An aircraft owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) barreled right through the center of Hurricane Milton on Tuesday, ahead of the storm’s eventual landfall across Florida’s Gulf Coast. One of the hurricane hunters on board the craft managed to capture rare footage of what it looks like inside a storm of this magnitude when he took careful aim out the window of the plane with his cell phone camera and recorded footage that’s equally terrifying and spectacular.
The researchers were in some pretty choppy conditions and subjected to quick plummets at times that made them experience momentary weightlessness.
The video spans a little less than two and a half minutes and opens with several moments of the user’s cell phone camera being used to catch the chaos outside the plane’s starboard side window. Though it’s daylight, the sheer amount of torrential rain that’s pouring over the wing and engine makes these plane parts quite difficult to see.
On a normal day, a look out an aircraft’s window might yield white puffy clouds or, if the skies are clear, the beautiful scenery of the ground below. But the forces of nature that Hurricane Milton brought with it on Tuesday made seeing anything beyond the plane’s wing impossible.
The craft flies under the name “Miss Piggy” and is a twin of the agency’s other plane that’s affectionately nicknamed “Kermit.”
The video then pivots to the interior of the aircraft and captures the important work of the crew on board as they use various pieces of equipment to monitor Hurricane Milton. It’s been revealed that the researchers were in some pretty choppy conditions and subjected to quick plummets at times that made them experience momentary weightlessness.
The NOAA’s plane is a decades-old Lockheed WP-3D Orion that the agency has had in operation since the 1970s. The craft flies under the name “Miss Piggy” and is a twin of the agency’s other plane that’s affectionately nicknamed “Kermit.” The planes were built specifically for the agency so that its employees could use the latest technology to gather valuable information about these types of storms.
According to the National Weather Service, these dangerous missions give researchers and scientists the ability to measure various attributes of storms like Hurricane Milton, including its central pressure and the surface winds that swirl around a hurricane’s eye.
Hurricane Milton’s winds were recorded by the NOAA as being sustained at nearly 150 miles per hour, while its gusts reached an astounding 180 miles per hour. Though the landfall wasn’t the worst-case scenario some were predicting, the damage has been extensive. Nearly 50 tornadoes were reported, with 19 being confirmed.
The planes were built specifically for the agency so that its employees could use the latest technology to gather valuable information about these types of storms.
As one can imagine, this year’s hurricane season has been a busy one for Miss Piggy and those that she carries on board. Before the devastation of Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene ripped across the Gulf of Mexico and created a wave of destruction that decimated parts of Florida before sending torrential rains and high winds northward through Georgia. Massive flooding was experienced as far north as Asheville, North Carolina as rescue workers have toiled tirelessly to reach the scores of residents that were in that storm’s powerful wake.
