Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. Im fredericka witfield. A Major Hurricane is barreling toward the southwestern u. S. Hurricane hilary has weakened to a category 3 as it hammers mexico with strong winds and high waves. Forecasters warn it could dump more than a years worth of rain across california, nevada and arizona in a short amount of time. The threat is so severe in the golden state that a Tropical Storm warning has been issued for the First Time Ever there. Cnn meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking the conditions. A years worth of rain in a short amount of time, how are they going to handle that . That is the big concern, because especially in the desert areas that ground is not able to absorb it very quickly, so a lot of it becomes runoff, leading to localized flash flooding. Sustained winds 125 Miles Per Hour gusting up to 155. Weve seen that Forward Movement pick up. Its starting to speed up. Thats important for the timing of a lot of the rain showers. W
Yesterday. what is it like to fly into this storm system? this storm, i actually didn t fly that mission. i m the mission commander on the ground. talking to the crew, it was a fairly standard hurricane mission. the ride wasn t too bad. it was a fairly smooth ride for hurricanes. what kind of information was gathered? the aircraft collects temperature data, wind speed, relative humidity that gets sent back to the hurricane center. we also have an instrument on the wing that s measuring surface winds and rain rate over the storm. all that s being sent back to the hurricane center, then goes into the computer models to tighten the forecast. we re also looking for the
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Understand a storm, scientists say more data needs to be collected from the surface of the ocean. what drives hurricane consistent is transfer of heat and moisture to the atmosphere. we don t understand the dynamics how it works. reporter: to find out, they deployed five ships to the caribbean, areas where lots of hurricanes develop and are likely to hit land. powered by sun and wind, can stay at sea months at a time, built to take a beating. it is designed to get hit by wave, tumble, submerge, come back up. i see a camera up top. hurricane mission, it is key to understand spray, foam on the water. hoping to see with the camera what it looks like. reporter: drone sensors and cameras can send data and images in real time back to headquarters. these are measurements of wind, temperature, humidity, right at that interface level that may help modelers understand fundamentals of hurricanes before. that s never been done before.