Chilling Footage Captured From the Eye of Hurricane Melissa Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before

If there were awards given to storms based on their intensity and destructive potential, Hurricane Melissa would likely be recognized as the “top monstrous storm of the year.” Now intensified to a Category-5 storm, Melissa is projecting a brilliant display of its devastating potential. After successfully unleashing a swath of destruction in Jamaica, it is now barrelling towards Cuba. Piqued by Melissa’s ferocious displays of power, meteorologists from the US Air Force goaded it into its face, penetrating right into its eye. The pilots had already captured the “eye of the storm” up close in the little time they were floating there. Jeremy DeHart (@FlynonymousWX), a Hurricane Hunter from the USAF, shared the videos on X, where they have been viewed by millions of stunned spectators.

Aboard Lockheed WP-3D Orion turboprop, DeHart departed St Croix, US Virgin Islands, early Monday and pierced Melissa’s northeastern eyewall at 10,000 feet. A approximately 8:47 am, his aircraft poked into the eye. The episode was part of a mission aimed at data collection, organized by the USAF’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the "Hurricane Hunters," with DeHart being one of them. Melissa, according to ABC News, had a “well-defined 10 nautical mile wide eye.”

The first video, shared by DeHart on October 28, shows the plane making entry into Melissa’s eyewall, stippled by enormous clusters of fluffy, cotton-candy-like clouds and a pool of golden sunlight sparkling at the rim. As the plane ventured deeper into the eyewall, the sky started to become denser and darker with clouds. The pilots swooped the plane even down and deeper, plunging right into Melissa’s eye, which appeared to be dominated by shadows and dwindling sunlight. In the end, there was nothing except a vast stretch of cloudy sky, the color of ash.

Describing the video, the meteorologist wrote, “We are entering from the southeast just after sunrise, and the bright arc on the far northwest eye wall is the light just beginning to make it over the top from behind us.” The following video showed the plane rising from the eye to reveal patches of the eyewall illuminated by the golden glow of the Sun. Another video, captured by the GoPro attached to the plane’s side, displays these glowing patches in further detail and 8k resolution. Another side view shows the plane panning across the entire sunlit patch on Melissa’s glowing eyewall. A fifth pass captured the clouds in up-close detail, making them look like a cauldron of white whipped cream or a valley of crushed snow bathed in sunlight.

One video also recorded how the “sea surface” looked while Melissa continued its spinning dance. Another view looked down into its eye and captured a giant swirl of milky clouds rolling like little balls of misshapen fur. The experience, for the filming pilots, wasn’t just ethereal, but also poignant. "It was humbling, mesmerizing and, surprisingly, poignant—equal parts scientifically stunning and horrifying from a humanitarian standpoint," Matthew Cappucci, an American meteorologist who was a part of this mission, shared with The Washington Post.

Adding a note of poetry to the description of his experience, he said, "There was something emotional about being in the eye; perhaps it was the poetic sinisterness of knowing what the surrounding eyewall contained, and yet - even fleetingly - being immune to it.”