The hurricane hunters earned their pay with Felix:

NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft N42RF experienced a truly awesome and terrifying mission into the heart of Hurricane Felix last night. Flying at 10,000 feet through Felix at 7pm EDT last night, N42RF dropped a sonde into the southeast eyewall. The swirling winds of the storm were so powerful that the sonde spun a full 3/4 circle around the eye before splashing into the northwest eyewall. It is VERY rare for a sonde to make nearly a complete circle around the eye like this. As the plane entered the eye of the now Category 5 hurricane, they found a 17-mile wide stadium lit up by intense lightning on all sides. The pressure at the bottom of the eye had hit 934 mb, and the temperature outside, a balmy 77 degrees at 10,000 feet. This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane. N42RF then punched into the northwest eyewall. Flight level winds hit 175 mph, and small hail lashed the airplane as lighting continued to flash. Then, the crew hit what Hurricane Hunters fear most--a powerful updraft followed a few seconds later by an equally powerful downdraft. The resulting extreme turbulence and wind shear likely made the aircraft impossible to control. Four G's of acceleration battered the airplane, pushing the aircraft close to its design limit of 6 G's. Although no one was injured and no obvious damage to the airplane occurred, the aircraft commander wisely aborted the mission and N42RF returned safely to St. Croix. N42RF is the same aircraft that survived a pounding of 5.6 g's in the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

And that low developing off of Florida's east coast is starting to make me a little nervous, and eyeing the shutters.

Very Cool. I wish I could see a movie of a mission into a Cat 5.

This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane.

Hmm. Hurricanes are heating up.

Hmm. Hurricanes are heating up.

No.

You cannot draw general conclusions about hurricanes from a single one.

Both Dean and Felix benefited from extremely favorable conditions in the western Caribbean at this particular time. There's no reason to think it indicative of any long-term trends. It has in fact been a relatively slow season so far, though the tropics are finally becoming active.

Rand, I should have had inserted a ;-) after my comment.

Of course we can't draw too many conclusions from hurricanes, their frequency or intensity. There are just too few of them to point to anything statistically significant, at least in my opinion. And Gore should have avoided doing so in his movie.

In any case, I'm glad this isn't headed your way. I was once right in the middle of a Cat 3, near Cat 4 and that was quite awe inspiring. Though the thrill of it does tempt one.

Rand, I should have had inserted a ;-) after my comment.

Yes, you should have, because I've seen too many people saying things like that seriously lately.

In any case, I'm glad this isn't headed your way.

You and me both. But things are just starting to cook up in the tropics. It may be an interesting couple months for Florida.

Well if you do happen to lose power in the next couple of months, this would be a neat way to fix that problem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/automobiles/02POWER.html

The aircraft in question.
And in plain text:
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=N42RF&distinct_entry=true

So it's a modified P-3 Orion.