It’s not exactly flying the friendly skies.
NOAA engineer and hurricane hunter Nick Underwood shared footage from inside the special aircraft used to track, measure and analyze storms as it flew inside Hurricane Ian.
Early in the video, equipment that had been tied down jolts loose. Beds spill onto the floor. And by the end, there’s a hellish amount of lightning outside the windows of the Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft, nicknamed Kermit:
Underwood also posted some still photos of the damage inside the aircraft that was caused by the extreme turbulence:
As the footage went viral, Underwood answered some of the most common questions he received about the flight and his job:
Philippe Papin of the National Hurricane Center also tweeted about the importance of these flights: