An intrepid research mission through the eye of Hurricane Harvey has been caught on video.
Flight crews with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran multiple research sorties through Harvey on Thursday and Friday in a Lockheed WP-3D Orion ‘hurricane hunter’.
The team based in Lakeland, Florida provides forecasters with invaluable data that helps predict storm tracks and save lives.
The storm was upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane on Friday afternoon, with winds of 120mph, and is expected to devastate the Texas coast making landfall around midnight.
One of NOAA’s two Orion P-3 Hurricane Hunters prepares for a mission earlier this week
Flight Director Mike Holmes briefs the hurricane hunter crew before missions into Harvey
The storm was upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane on Friday afternoon, with winds of 120mph
‘What you don’t know and what nobody else knows right now is the magnitude of flooding that will be coming,’ Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a press conference on Friday afternoon, adding that the state ‘will be dealing with immense, really record-setting flooding in multiple regions across the state of Texas.’
Forecasters labeled Harvey a ‘life-threatening storm’ that posed a ‘grave risk,’ saying it could swamp several counties more than 100 miles inland and projecting it will wallop the coast not once but twice in the next week.
Several counties were put under under mandatory evacuation orders, and residents not under orders to leave were urged to move inland.
‘Now is the time to urgently hide from the wind,’ the NWS said in a flash bulletin on Friday. ‘Failure to adequately shelter may result in serious injury, loss of life, or immense human suffering.’
Radar shows the flight path of the NOAA hurricane hunters into the storm eye on Friday
‘All the advice we can give is get out, and get out now,’ said Patrick Rios, the mayor of Rockport, Texas where an estimated 60 percent of the town’s 9,500 residents had left.
Rios had blunt words for those determined to stay, telling them to ‘mark their arm with a sharpie pen, put their social security number’ to be identified if found dead.
Sharp winds and rain had already begun to batter the coast on Friday, with landfall predicted east of Corpus Christi sometime between 10pm Friday and 2am Saturday.
Eight million Texans are under hurricane warnings, with an additional one million under tropical storm warnings, as landfall quickly approaches for what could be the most powerful hurricane to hit the US in 12 years.
The National Hurricane Center’s official five-day forecast Friday has Harvey slamming the central Texas coast, stalling and letting loose with lots of rain.
Then forecasters project the weakened but still tropical storm is likely to go back into the Gulf of Mexico, gain some strength and hit Houston next week, meaning the storm could wallop the Texas coast twice in a row.
Eight million Texans are under hurricane warnings, with an additional one million under tropical storm warnings