Our (slightly doomed) flight to an atmospheric river

Atmospheric rivers are important but poorly understood weather phenomena that supply the West Coast with up to 50% of its annual precipitation. In an effort to understand them better, scientists have partnered with the Air Force to fly directly into these weather systems and study them. Verge Science collaborated with CalMatters to hitch a ride on a recent flight. It didn’t go as planned.

[VergeScience]

Any West Coasters out there with stories of recent droughts or floods?

[aquaticaquatos]

The audio inside Hercules sounds way better than my carrier phone call

[dingus]

"carry as much as 27 Mississippi rivers" Ahh yes, my favorite SI measurement standard

[mikhaelsaadeh]

I love the high contrast, older operating system look when switching between ideas. Makes it easy to follow along, especially when you close the windows to show we've moved on.

[Rege]

1:20 I CAN HEAR YOU JUST FINE, GOOD JOB EDITING TEAM :D

[CalMatters]

Awesome work from our environment reporter, Rachel Becker and Verge! We should collaborate more. Great piece!

[jasonk.]

3:28 USA measurement units work as usual, 27 Mississippi Rivers XD

[ColeyDuncan]

Wow, you guys did great on the audio. Spent a fair amount of time in many different USAF aircraft during my time in the service, and conversations with anyone other than the people next to you is basically impossible. And just like every flight I'd ever been on, something goes wrong.

[sudonim]

Not a very good sign when the safety briefing includes the phrase "when we crash"

[seanhudson]

That animation of the info popping up (linear-flow/providing recall info) in windows like on a computer is EXCELLENT! THANKS!

[jakobneun]

3:28 Americans really gonna use everything but the metric system

[luuk_twister]

I chuckled when she said "loadmaster" XD

[jaredblake]

Dont worry about the audio. On plains like that, it's almost impossible to get clear audio.

[sadiqmohamed]

Nice video, and I like the slightly retro style of the graphics. Very clear.

[ammo]

Awesome guys, love this quality of work.

[hbarudi]

Hope they get another chance for this weather research... The aircraft is in need of service for this kind of fuel tank situation.

[nik_evdokimov]

Glad you all got home safe, that is as important as getting that data

[PremierCCGuyMMXVI]

It’s definitely unfortunate that Climate Change warming the planet is causing the Atmospheric River and the Jet Stream to freak out.

[sighpocket]

Nice!!!(glad you'll came back safely)

[AliBaba-vwmo]

5:10, good to see the airforce doesn't still use Windows XP xd