A Flight Through the Eye of a Hurricane


The following is an account by Robert H. Simpson of an aircraft flight into the eye of Typhoon Marge in the early days of hurricane reconnaissance.

As we came closer, the surface winds grew stronger. Two hundred miles from the center they reached hurricane force–74 miles per hour–and in another 50 miles they had increased to 100 miles per hour. From here on we could no longer see the surface, for the cloud cover now engulfed the plane completely. Only the spiral pattern of the squall lines on the radar screen enabled us to keep headed toward the storm center. Soon the edge of the rainless eye became visible on the screen. The plane flew through bursts of torrential rain and several turbulent bumps. Then suddenly we were in dazzling sunlight and bright blue sky.

Around us was an awesome display. Marge's eye was a clear space 40 miles in diameter surrounded by a coliseum of clouds whose walls on one side rose vertically and on the other were banked like galleries in a great opera house. The upper rim, about 35,000 feet high, was rounded off smoothly against a background of blue sky. Below us was a floor of smooth clouds rising to a dome 8,000 feet above sea level in the center. There were breaks in it which gave us glimpses of the surface of the ocean. In the vortex around the eye the sea was a scene of unimaginably violent, churning water. R. H. Simpson (1954): Hurricanes. Scientific American, vol. 190. no. 6, pp. 32-37.