NOAA Hurricane Hunters Getting Drones

It may not be as romantic an image
as a small prop plane with salty, gritty air jockeys chomping on corncob pipes and bracing against the bucking turbulence of the outer bands of a developing hurricane in order to provide us with the relevent data like atmospheric pressure and wind speed... but it's cool. And it's useful.

NOAA is hoping to use unmanned drones (Aerosonde platform) to investigate certain aspects of hurricanes that cannot be safely investigated by other means - specifically, conditions at really low altitude inside tropical storms. The report is here, and it lists two primary scientific objectives;
to observe and better understand
- The surface ocean and atmospheric boundary layer environment ahead of and along the projected TC track
- The low-level inflow layer associated with a mature hurricane.

A (short) related NASA article here.

We will definitely be talking about this in class. Chapters on flight are coming up soon, and the students always want to know more about hurricanes - probably even more so this year.
Thanks to this political blog where I first found the story.