Airplane Flies Straight Through Hurricane Polo’s 180 MPH Eye

An airplane flies through the eye of Hurricane Polo in wide-angle footage from NOAA WP-3D Orion NOAA43 “Miss Piggy,” revealing a circular ring of towering white eyewall clouds against a deep blue sky.

The camera pans across dense, rolling cloud tops inside the eye before the aircraft flies back into solid white cloud at the end of the pass. The footage was filmed by NOAA Hurricane Hunters during the September 22 mission.

Polo reached peak strength with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph and a central pressure of about 892 millibars, making it the second-most intense eastern Pacific hurricane on record by pressure, behind Hurricane Patricia in 2015.

The storm intensified from a tropical storm to Category 5 in about a day and was nearly stationary south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Aircraft data later showed an eyewall-replacement cycle beginning that afternoon.

The NOAA flights support National Hurricane Center forecasts and research by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory into rapid hurricane intensification.