Sandy MacDonald got an up-close view of the eye of Hurricane Sandy on Sunday morning.
MacDonald, who directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory, was a passenger on a NOAA "hurricane hunter" research plane. Instruments on the plane measured wind temperature and humidity, with the goal of better forecasting future hurricanes.
MacDonald said he flew past the eye four times during the early morning flight, watching as the slightly disorganized storm formed an eye wall of thunderstorms by the fourth pass. At that point, the massive storm was about 400 miles east of Charleston.
"It was really exciting," he said. "This is the first hurricane I've flown into."
Sandy, which slammed the East Coast on Monday evening, is being closely monitored by scientists at Boulder's federal labs. Though the scientists here haven't been in charge of the official forecasting, they've been using radar and models to track and predict the storm.
Jeff Weber, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has been following the storm since the weekend.
"We're running all sorts of models," he said.
He said the storm is different than a typical hurricane because it's occurring so late in the season, allowing it to come in contact with cold, dry winter air -- and increasing its instability.
"It's really adding a lot of fuel to the system," he said.
Plus, it's a large storm with the potential to impact a large chunk of the country.
"The models show the storm meandering through the northeast United States for pretty much the whole week," he said. "There will be lots of power failures. There will be localized flooding."
He said his models also showed the system setting a low-pressure record for the United States, at 950 millibars. Pressure matters, he said, because the lower the pressure, the more intense the winds.
"It's a deep-pressure storm system," he said.