A U.S. reconnaissance plane swooped through Hurricane Beryl — the earliest-recorded Category 5 storm to ever form in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
The powerful hurricane capitalized upon anomalously warm sea surface temperatures and favorable atmospheric conditions to intensify into a powerful cyclone, with winds reaching some 165 mph. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a hardy four-engine turboprop aircraft through the tempest in a mission to gather valuable storm observations. Meteorologists then feed this data into complex computer simulations to forecast the storm's future track and intensity.
On July 2, the agency posted images the mission captured as it flew through the hurricane's eye. In the views below, you're looking at a grandiose "stadium effect," showing Beryl's towering stack of clouds.
"OVER THE CARIBBEAN - Inside the eye of Category 5 Hurricane #Beryl!" NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center wrote on the website X, formerly Twitter. "NOAA WP-3D Orion #NOAA43 'Miss Piggy' continues operations into Hurricane #Beryl to collect data for hurricane forecasting and research."
Although the eye of a hurricane is relatively calm, the storm's strongest winds are located in those cloudy walls, called the eyewall. Strong rotating winds create these iconic, if not unsettling, hurricane eyes.
Though a number of factors influence the formation of strong hurricanes (a lack of opposing winds that can break apart storms, moist air, etc.), a vital influence is warm sea surface temperatures of over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). Warm oceans act as jet fuel for hurricanes, storm scientists explain. That's because warmer oceans fuel tropical storms as more water naturally evaporates into the air, giving storms energy and moisture to intensify.
In the coming years and decades, increasingly warmer oceans may play a role in boosting the odds of rapidly intensifying hurricanes, which pose a great risk to people in hurricane country. Beryl, for example, intensified from a tropical depression (winds of 38 mph or less) to a major hurricane (111 mph or above) in under 48 hours. That's fast.
The extremely absorbent oceans soak up over 90 percent of the heat that humans, due to fossil fuel burning, trap on Earth. And there's no sign of ocean warmth slowing down. Today, Atlantic hurricanes are already twice as likely to develop from a milder storm into a major hurricane.
Beryl, now churning through the Caribbean, is expected to remain a powerful hurricane this week and will bring "Life-Threatening Winds and Storm Surge to Jamaica on Wednesday," the National Hurricane Center said.
