Tipsheet

With Ian Making Landfall, Hurricane Hunter Details a Hellacious and Lightning-Infested Flight Into the Eye

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 28, 2022 4:35 PM

Earlier this afternoon, Hurricane Ian, upgraded to a major category four storm, made landfall in Cayo Costa, Florida, near Captiva and Sanibel—two neighboring islands that are being pounded by this ferocious storm as we speak. The storm surge is expected to be astounding at eight-to-twelve feet. Sanibel is only three feet above sea level. I pray that those in the Fort Myers area evacuated as this surge, according to the experts, is unsurvivable. The latest figures have at least 524,000 Floridians without power, which is expected to rise. As we published this post, that number has soared past one million. Power outages are expected to last days, if not weeks, due to the projected amount of damage from Ian. Spencer wrote about the initial images from the storm as Ian approached the state. 

In Punta Gorda, winds reached a devastating 124 miles per hour. The hellacious winds will undoubtedly cause power lines to collapse and transformers to be damaged, which is why the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued a warning for residents to remain inside.

NBC 2 Southwest Florida was in contact with a family whose home was engulfed by the storm surge. Their status is unknown since the connection was lost, but local reporters advised the anxious father to find any flotation device, any item in his house that he thinks could float and be prepared to head to the roof.

As for the hurricane hunters collecting data from Ian as it approached the United States, some have called the flights the roughest of their careers. The New York Times spoke with Nick Underwood, who has flown into the eye of nearly 100 storms over his career. Underwood, a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration aerospace engineer, noted that the lightning show within Ian was nothing he had ever seen before and that the eye itself, usually the calmest area for hurricanes, was exceptionally turbulent (via NYT):

Nick Underwood has flown into the eye of 76 storms over the past six years as an aerospace engineer for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. His roughest flight so far? Early Wednesday, to the heart of Hurricane Ian.

“I’ve never seen so much lightning,” he said in a phone interview after landing in Houston.

Mr. Underwood described an exceptionally turbulent experience punching through Ian’s thick eye wall. Even inside the eye, which is usually the calmest part of the storm, he and the flight crew, technicians and scientists on the team were continually buffeted inside a Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft known as Kermit.

“We’re kind of used to the up-and-down, roller coaster feeling that you get, but in this case, there was just a lot of lateral movement,” he said. “It was a lot more unnerving.”

In 2004, Hurricane Charley, another category four storm, swept into the Sunshine state on a similar path, but that was a fast-moving system, which blessedly limited the severity of the damage that still totaled nearly $17 billion. Ten people were killed. With Ian, it’s a larger storm it’s going to linger and inflict more damage. 

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Stay safe, Floridians. This one is going to be catastrophic.