Flying into the eye of Ian: An experienced hurricane hunter takes a wild ride.

TAMPA, Fla. — Nick Underwood has flown into the attention of a hurricane 76 occasions over the previous six years as an aerospace engineer for the Nationwide Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. His roughest flight so far? Early Wednesday, to the center of Hurricane Ian.

“I’ve by no means seen a lot lightning,” he mentioned in a cellphone interview after touchdown in Houston.

A veteran of twenty-two storms, Mr. Underwood described an exceptionally turbulent expertise punching by Ian’s thick eye wall. Even inside the attention, which is normally the calmest a part of the storm, he and the flight crew, technicians and scientists on the staff have been regularly buffeted inside a Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft known as Kermit.

“We’re type of used to the up-and-down, curler coaster feeling that you just get, however on this case, there was simply a number of lateral motion,” he mentioned. “It was much more unnerving.”

NOAA’s hurricane hunters assist affirm a storm’s location and energy, as do Air Power Reserve reconnaissance flights. However the NOAA planes additionally function flying analysis labs that launch probes and accumulate real-time scientific knowledge essential to understanding — and higher forecasting — hurricanes. Throughout Wednesday’s flight, Mr. Underwood’s staff launched an experimental analysis drone that NOAA has been testing.

“The essential thought is that it might probably go to the locations within the storm that we are able to’t,” Mr. Underwood mentioned, including that it’s going to accumulate “the lifesaving knowledge that we’re actually up there for.”

The hurricane hunters are primarily based in Lakeland, Fla., however flew the Ian mission from Houston in order that the plane may safely depart and return. The staff’s households principally reside in central Florida and the Tampa Bay space, mentioned Mr. Underwood, who calls St. Petersburg dwelling.

“Your ideas are all the time with the oldsters who’re on the bottom,” he mentioned. “There’s that little additional stage of concern when it’s your folks.”