HANDOUT / AFP
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the Hurricane Erin forming in the Atlantic Ocean on August 16, 2025.
Climate – The images are spectacular, and testify to the extreme risks they take for their job and the security of the region. The noaa hurricane hunters, the American ocean and atmospheric observation agency, filmed their passage in the eye of Hurricane Erin after its passage in the maximum category on Saturday, July 16. Now in category 4, depression is heading on Monday, August 18 to the Bahamas on Monday, August 18, where significant damage is feared.
While the winds reached more than 255 km/h, meteorologists went directly to collect data in the heart of this first hurricane of the season above the North Atlantic. As the images they posted on their Instagram account show, they have been able to observe a splendid phenomenon, very common for this kind of climatic phenomena but which we are more used to seeing from the outside than in the heart of the storm: the « stadium effect » (stadium effect in French).
Thus, one can perfectly observe the contrast between the impressive wall of clouds and the circle of blue sky above the eye of the cyclone. But also the difference between the calm of the eye and the tumult as soon as they come back to the heart of the thick cloud wall.
This mission was not at all only to post beautiful videos on social networks. These operations are indeed crucial for the weather forecast and the overall security of the region. “The main objective of these missions is to locate the center of the storm, and to measure the central pressure and the surface winds around the eye. The information collected during research and recognition flights contribute directly to the safety of people who live and go to the vulnerable coasts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico ”recalls the Noaa on its website.
A “catastrophic” hurricane
Hurricane Erin strengthened on Saturday until reaching the maximum 5 category, qualified as “Catastrophic” By the American Hurricane Center (NHC), which depends greatly on the data collected by the NOAA. “When Hurricane Erin went to category 5, we were there. It was the last passage of this flight, but our mission is not over: we continue to protect the American people, as always! “, wrote the American agency on their Instagram account.
Wind speed then decreased, the hurricane being demoted in category 3. Before Sunday evening around 11 p.m. (this Monday morning at 5 a.m. Paris), the NHC only wrote Ecrin “Again reinforced in category 4 hurricane”warning against “Waves and potentially fatal currents on the East Coast” of the United States.
It was now about 205 kilometers from Grand-Turk Island, in Turks-and-Caicas, blowing winds measured at 215 km/h maximum. “Erin’s eye should go to the east and northeast” of this archipelago, and to “Southeast of the Bahamas in the night from Sunday to Monday”still warned the NHC in its latest bulletin. Before adding that “Intensity fluctuations are expected in the coming days due to changes in the internal structure of the system. Erin becomes a larger system ”.
Hurricane Erin had reached the maximum level of the Saffir -Simpson scale just over 24 hours after being classified in category 1 – a rapid intensification that scientists are increasingly associating with global warming.
Massive Trump administration cuts
But the NOAA as well as the NHC are faced with a major problem: the budget cuts wanted and imposed by the White House. Last May, Rick Spinrad, a former agency administrator, told AFP for his concerns about the NOAA capacity to ensure his mission while nearly 900 meteorologists, technicians and other staff members were dismissed by the Trump administration just weeks after the Republican President.
The government also plans to cut $ 1.3 billion in the agency’s budget next year, or 27 % of its total envelope, as it is accused of being “Alarmist on the climate” By the extreme right -wing 2025 project thinking group whose administration seems to follow the precepts.
The NOAA has the overlying of predicting a seasonal season more intense than normal. And this, due to warmer oceanic temperatures than the average, forecasts of low wind shear (a sudden variation of the speed and/or the direction of the wind over a short distance, which can break the formation of cyclones) and a potentially increased activity of the West African Mousson, the starting point of the Hurricane of the Atlantic. A phenomenon that already seems to be observed with Erin, and which could mark a particularly violent cyclones on the Atlantic.
