August 29, 2011  Hurricane Hunters  A look at these storm
chasers.  Shelby: When a hurricane is heading your way, the goal
is to find a safe place away from the storm. But for some
scientists, their job is to do the exact opposite. Check it out.
During a hurricane, while this is the situation on the ground,
the hurricane hunters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, or NOAA, are up in the air as part of the Air
Force Reserve, flying into the center of the storm every day.
“To get into the eye, we basically cut a straight path.”
Shelby: This team was flying into Irene while she was still off
the Florida coast. The plane criss-crossed the eye of the storm
five times as scientists dropped these tubes into the clouds.
The tubes measure pressure, humidity and wind as they fall down
to the ocean, giving a snapshot of a vertical slice of the
hurricane.  “We’re really able to get a nice picture of what the
structure of the storm looks like and that’s really important
for knowing what’s going to h