Flashlights, a battery powered radio, and extra batteries. Raingear, sleeping bags, and protective clothing. More complete information on this subject, as well as how to best prepare your house for a hurricane, can be gathered by contacting your local Red Cross chapter. The ocean-water temperature has to be above 79 F in order for a hurricane to be generated, so they normally form in late summer and early fall. Hurricanes begin as tropical storms over the warm moist waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans near the equator.
Satellites are the common data collection method today.
Meteorologists and the public also rely on hurricane hunters to learn more about the hurricane. They do this by flying aircraft equipped with weather instruments straight into the middle of these powerful storms. Both the Air Force Reserve based at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates hurricane hunters. The two have a long history, making their first flights in 1944. Before satellites were put in space, these planes were the best and sometimes only source of information about a hurricane's position and intensity.