You're about to hear a story about hurricanes.

And before we dive in, just a quick word about this hurricane season.

Right now, communities across the southern U.S. are still recovering from hurricanes

Helene and Milton.

NASA is working closely with NOAA, FEMA, and other federal, state, and local partners to

support response and recovery efforts.

And hurricane season isn't over yet, so as you keep an eye on the news and forecasts, or

even make evacuation plans depending on where you live, know that NASA and its partners

are hard at work collecting critical data and making it widely accessible to bring you the best information

possible to help you stay safe.

Now, on to the story.

Every hurricane season, from June to November, meteorologists keep a close eye on satellite imagery of the Atlantic Ocean, the birthplace of hurricanes.

These storms will start off the coast of Africa as something, you know, relatively small, just a group of clouds,

then they'll develop some circulation, and then just the warm water will create these huge storms.

That's Dean Legidagus. Every hurricane season, he's looking at the satellite data too,

because Dean is a hurricane hunter pilot.

He works for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Once a storm gets close to the U.S., it's his job to fly directly into it.

So first off, you get two reactions. Like, that's really cool or you're really dumb for doing that, right? And then the second question they ask is, so you guys, you fly around the storm. I mean, to get the data that we need, we have to fly right through the storm multiple

times and multiple flights to collect the actual data that can't be collected via satellites.

Once a hurricane spins up, satellites can't see through the cloud cover.

The only way to measure the storm's intensity and forecast its path

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