Our (slightly doomed) flight to an atmospheric river

A few weeks back, I found myself on a cramped and loud C130 cargo plane, flying headlong out to the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. The plane and crew were part of the Air Force’s fabled “Hurricane Hunters” — they fly into hurricanes to collect crucial data on the storms.On this mission, they were after a different phenomenon: an atmospheric river. They’re huge, somewhat mysterious weather systems that supply California with up to half its annual rainfall. Unders