Greg Foltz gaped at the violent footage. A chief scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), he’d spent most of the previous night glued to his computer monitor, anxiously following the data streaming from the first surface drone to drive into a raging cyclone.
Then the images appeared. Deep within the bowels of Hurricane Sam, less than 35 miles northeast of its eye, a torrent of 50-foot waves and fierce 120-mph winds pummeled the camera, spitting frenzied sea spray against a dark and menacing sky. It was Mother Nature at her angriest—and Foltz couldn’t be happier.
“I got chills when I saw those first pictures,” says Foltz, from NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. “I had never seen anything like that from the surface of the ocean. And to see those 50-foot wave faces and the power of the wind and air, that was the most exciting part. It was more…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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