Hurricane Ian stunned even veteran meteorologists and hurricane hunters: 'I haven't experienced anything close to this'

• Meteorologists, storm chasers, and hurricane hunters were shocked by the severity of Hurricane Ian.
• They got caught in floodwaters, knocked over by winds, and tossed around by the storm's force.

Matthew Cappucci was wary when floodwaters began to rise on either side of the road he was driving, near Englewood, Florida, on Wednesday.

The meteorologist felt prepared for Hurricane Ian. He'd been through other cyclones. He'd modeled the storm surge and rainfall ahead of time. So he thought he and his friend Andrew would be out of the flood zone when they ventured into the storm's Florida landfall.

But for a frightening split second, he worried the storm surge was rushing in around him — several feet of ocean water, often the most dangerous part of a hurricane. But that was highly unlikely. He was far out of the surge zone.

This was rainwater.

WARNING: The sound in many of the below videos is very loud.

"That much freshwater flooding definitely caught me off guard," Cappucci told Insider.

"It's just so unsettling to look left, look right, and realize your entire road is surrounded by water in all directions," he added. "It's tough not to be freaked out."

The pair had planned to drive back to their hotel, but were forced to turn around. That's when they punctured two tires driving over a chunk of debris. They rushed to higher ground and hunkered down in a nearby apartment building for the night.

Other meteorologists and hurricane hunters who embedded themselves in the thick of Hurricane Ian shared similar surprise at some of the storm's most extreme features.

Scientists have to conduct further research to know whether climate change made any single storm more likely or more extreme. But overall, because tropical cyclones feed on warm air and water, climate change is making them stronger, wetter, and even slower to progress from one region to another. That ultimately makes them more damaging and deadly.

Rising ocean temperatures help cyclones build strength rapidly, as Hurricane Ian did in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm air holds more moisture, which means storms can bring more rainfall. Rising sea levels can also raise storm surge waters higher than they otherwise would be.

Cappucci said he couldn't help but think about those impacts as the waters rose around him.

Meanwhile, other people documenting Hurricane Ian struggled with the winds or the flood of ocean water it pushed inland.

Watching homes swept away was 'horrifying'

"The storm surge was unbelievable," Max Olson, a storm chaser who has been through 13 hurricanes, told Insider via email.

He deployed probes in different locations to record the storm surge without anybody there to operate the camera. One of those probes captured a home being uprooted and swept away in the floodwaters. He later learned that there were people inside that house. According to Olson, they survived after grabbing onto trees and floating into other houses.

"It's also the most horrifying video I've captured as it shows numerous homes getting swept away," Olson said – "something I've had a hard time processing over the last 24 hours."

Flying through the eye included 'unnerving' turbulence

When Air Force hurricane hunters flew into Hurricane Ian's eye on Wednesday, they encountered surprisingly strong winds. Turbulence pushed the aircraft into a sudden drop of nearly 1,200 feet.

"It was NOT even calm inside the eye," Dave Malkoff, a correspondent for The Weather Channel who was on the flight, wrote on Twitter upon landing.

He said at some points they were lifted out of their seats and experienced zero gravity.

The pilot, Kendall Dunn, told Malkoff that it was his worst flight ever.

A NOAA reconnaissance plane called Kermit encountered similar turbulence as it flew through Ian's eye. Nick Underwood, an engineer aboard the plane, shared video from inside the flight, showing mattresses falling off bunk beds as the plane was jostled.

"We're kind of used to the up-and-down, roller coaster feeling that you get, but in this case, there was just a lot of lateral movement," Underwood told The New York Times. "It was a lot more unnerving."

He was also surprised at the constant lightning inside the storm's eye.

"This flight to Hurricane Ian on Kermit was the worst I've ever been on. I've never seen so much lightning in an eye," Underwood said on Twitter.

The worst of the storm was on the other side of the eye

The hurricane's back side — after the eye had passed — was the most devastating part, according to meteorologists who were on the scene.

"I haven't experienced anything close to this in over 30 years," Mike Seidel, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, wrote when he posted a video of the storm's back side on Twitter.

Cappucci, too, said it was the most extreme storm he'd ever experienced.

"Ordinarily, the backside of the eyewall isn't as bad as the first side. And yet this time, it was way worse. I had like five to six hours of just prolific rainfall rates, extreme wind gusts at well over 100 miles per hour. I probably got 15 inches worth of rain in six or seven hours," he said.

Olson also found the back astonishing.

Both Seidel and Cappucci said they were in the eye wall of the storm — the dense cloud area where wind and rain are strongest — for about five hours total.

At one point, Seidel's colleague Jim Cantore appeared to almost get swept away in the powerful winds. As he bounced into a wide stance to brace himself against the storm, a tree branch flew at him, hooking his leg and knocking him to the ground. After freeing himself, he had to hold onto a signpost and lean heavily into the wind before launching himself behind the shelter of a building.

"Honestly at this point very little is surprising," said Olson, who is making a documentary from his footage. "This is starting to feel like routine, as terrible as that sounds."