As It Happens

A Hurricane Hunter on using drones to get to the bottom of a storm

They fly straight into the storm, literally. They are the Hurricane Hunters -- a team of pilots and scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or N-O-A-A. Joe Cione is one of them and he is now leading a project that sends drones deep into the heart of Hurricane Edouard....
They fly straight into the storm, literally. They are the Hurricane Hunters -- a team of pilots and scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or N-O-A-A. Joe Cione is one of them and he is now leading a project that sends drones deep into the heart of Hurricane Edouard.

Joe Cione tells Carol that "the reason we think the drones can survive down there...just think of a stick in the river, it gets bounced around a lot but they just keep moving along. The trick is don't try to go perpendcular to the wind, don't try to go against the wind, just go with it. And we just put it into that stream and we had it pointed towards the centre of the storm -- and eventually it'll get in there."

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Low level swirls in the eye of Hurricane Edouard [PHOTO: Kristie Twining NOAA]