That's usually what the pilot or co-pilot will tell you after you've hit a few bumps at 10, 20 or 30 thousand feet in the air. You may get rattled, your drink may end up flying to the seat in back of you. You don't usually expect it when you don't see any clouds around, but air is always in motion, ascending and descending. It is caused by uneven heating of the ground below. Rocky, mountainous terrain or flat farmlands below, the warm air is rising and cooling. Nearby to that rising parcel of air, cool air is rushing downward. 99.9 percent of the time, that's all it is. Air pockets, otherwise known as turbulence. Your pilot is trained how to handle the disturbance.
Your pilot is also trained to steer around storms. You expect turbulence to be worse if you are in the vicinity of towering cumulus clouds, rising into their majestic, cauliflower turrets. Sometimes, they turn into thunderstorms. Given the right conditions and the right place, these thunderstorms bunch together over the warm water and ultimately turn into tropical storms or hurricanes. Your pilot and the air traffic controllers are taught to avoid those locations.
But what if you see a plane flying right into the heart of a hurricane. Is that pilot nuts? My answer is yes! But to him, NOAA, NWS and the NHC, it is his job. He is trained to go headfirst into the monster because he and several crew members are going to gather data to help forecasters which in turn will hopefully save lives.
I have never been on a hurricane hunter flight. I know a few colleagues that have taken a flight and have told me every detail. Apparently, there really is no need to worry about my safety; it would likely be the thrill of a lifetime for me. I would trust the crew implicitly. I'm just more worried that I'd end up using my air sick bag and ruin the experience. :(
These guys get rattled, bumped and buffetted like bumper cars when flying into the outer bands of a hurricane. When trying to penetrate the eyewall, the strongest bands of wind and convection (the rising air) encircling the calm eye, they talk of jolts like being in a collision with a truck...not just horizontally, vertically too. But lo and behold, they make it into the eye to report on some of the most awesome sights. A stadium affect to the clouds, looking up at blue skies or stars. Calm ocean water below. Of course, this is not a sight-seeing flight for these guys. They are also in the midst of gathering a monumental amount of data to help predict the individual idiosyncracies of each storm.
Then, they must fly right into the other side of the eyewall and get knocked around some more before it gets calmer and calmer with distance away from the eye. Almost every flight I've heard about, goes through the same procedure. Hurricane Felix proved to be too tough. One investigative flight into this explosive category 5 storm actually had to turn around because the turbulence was too strong for mightiest of hurricane hunter planes. That is almost unheard of. Thank goodness damage on land was not terribly severe even though history was made by having a second category 5 storm make landfall in the same location in the same year.
Below are some links to video and pictures. The video from flight 42 is 5 minutes long. It starts 20 miles out from the eye. Taken at night, you will see the lightning flash and when the plane is nearer to the eye (about 2 or 2 1/2 minutes in), the plane is rising and falling approximately 5,000 to 7,000 feet at a time. The next flight, flight #43 was actually forced to turn back. I'll also post the pilot's blog. Awesome! Enjoy
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