Southern Miss researchers small boats into Cat 5 hurricane

As Hurricane Humberto was rapidly gathering strength just east of the Caribbean late last month, researchers with the University of Southern Mississippi were busy preparing an experiment.

Leila Hamdan, a professor of ocean sciences, and her team loaded two fiberglass sailboats into a truck and headed for North Carolina's coast. From there, the boats set sail for the eye of the Category 5 storm, where they encountered 150 mph winds and waves that rose several stories high.

But though the boats were out at sea, no one was on board.

Measuring just 4 feet long, the vessels, known as C-Stars, are completely remote-controlled and unmanned. They're part of a larger effort, Hamdan said, to collect weather and climate data from the kinds of places people can't always reach.

"For example," she