Hurricane Hunter

摘要

If you freak out when turbulence threatens to topple your ginger ale, you probably won't get into the U.S. Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. Based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, the 20 pilots and their crews fly into the eyes of dangerous hurricanes, usually four times on missions of up to 12 hours. Think of it: After making it through, they circle around to do it again. (The first flight was in 1943, when an Air Force colonel pierced a Texas hurricane just to show British trainees that he could.) Why risk it when satellites and radar do a bang-up job of tracking storms? Because it's hard to gauge the strength and growth of a hurricane without measuring the pressure in its eye, and although radar can map the center of a storm to within 60 miles, being inside it brings accuracy to within two.