periphery of the storm, so it normally gets very rough right near the center and then typically out away from the center when the winds lighten up, it's not so bad any more, and in this case, for hurricane irene, at least on friday, the strong winds were well out from the center, and we had some really nasty stuff to go through on the north side of the storm, probably 105, 110 miles north of the center. >> greta: what kind of aircraft do you fly through that? >> we use a wc-130j. ourselves and noaa, they use p3-orion, so they're turbo prop type aircraft. a lot of people ask us why don't you use jets? typically jets tend to fly a little bit too fast, and we want to go slow to reduce the majority of the turbulence as much as possible. >> greta: colonel, thank you, sir. >> you're welcome. >> >> greta: coming up, some people choosing not to evacuate oceanfront homes. what are they dealing with tonight? we'll find out next in our live coverage of this monster storm.