A meteorologist tried to throw down with a hurricane and ended up throwing up.
Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, was caught on camera vomiting while flying through the eye of Hurricane Melissa.
Screenshot CNN via Snapstream
Cappucci was interviewed by CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday and shared the gross footage — but Burnett pointed out that he had a good reason for allowing CNN to air it.
“I know that you got sick on the flight,” Burnet said. “I mean, it was that horrifically turbulent, even though you’ve done this before. You did record that so everyone could understand just the severity of this.”
Cappucci described the experience as being “very reminiscent of a roller coaster at night.”
“If you’ve ever been on Space Mountain at Disney World, you sort of know how it is,” Cappucci said. “You know it’s dark, you don’t know if you’re going up, down, left or right. You’re jostled all about, to and fro.”
Though Cappucci may have shared the footage to emphasize the severity of the storm, he still clearly knows how awkward the footage comes off, because he poked fun at himself on X Monday.
“Puking on national TV. I think my television career has peaked,” he quipped.
He added in the comments of his X post: “Also rest assured I was fine 5 minutes later. I knew what I was into and it was worth it 10 fold. 😂”
During his appearance on CNN, Cappucci explained that after “10 crazy minutes with the turbulence,” it suddenly becomes “calm” once you reach the eye of the storm.
“And I have to say, that was one of the most breathtaking and simultaneously horrifying experiences I’ve ever had,” he said. “Even though it was night, the moon was illuminating what we call the stadium effect. Basically, you’re right in the middle of this atmospheric sink drain, and yet you look up, all around you, 360 degrees, towering, hulking thunderstorms overhead, spiraling around, marking that eyewall.”
Cappucci did make sure to add to CNN that Hurricane Melissa was more than just a surreal weather experience.
In the wake of the storm, “it will be very difficult for Jamaica to avert a potentially significant humanitarian crisis,” Cappucci said. “And I’ve covered many storms. I’ve seen high-end hurricanes before, but it’s very rare that we get a hurricane of this magnitude heading to a place that has 2.8 million people there.”
Hurricane Melissa roared into Jamaica with 185 mph winds on Tuesday as a Category 5 storm — and was one of the region’s strongest storms on record, The Associated Press reported. As it shifted to a Category 3 storm, it made landfall in Cuba and Haiti on Wednesday morning and caused “significant damage,” CNN said.
Although it’s unclear how bad the aftermath of the storm is yet, officials in Haiti said about 20 people were killed overnight due to flooding, and three bodies were recovered in Jamaica, The New York Times reports. Melissa has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm as it heads toward the Bahamas.
