



An all-female, three-pilot flight crew conducting a Hurricane Dorian recon mission on Thursday was the first-ever all-female crew to do so for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency said.

Their job was to collect data on Dorian as it barreled through the Caribbean toward Florida.

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“#NOAA49 prepares for a Hurricane #Dorian reconnaissance mission with the first all female three-pilot flight crew, featuring Capt. Kristie Twining, Cmdr. Rebecca Waddington, and Lt. Lindsey Norman,” the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center tweeted Thursday.



The three female pilots took off from Lakeland, Fla., at 1:34 p.m. ET Thursday and flew around Hurricane Dorian to collect the information. Their plane returned to Lakeland 6.5 hours later after flying a total of 3,651 miles, according to the global aviation software and data services company, Flight Aware.

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Dorian was upgraded to Category 2 strength late Thursday — after the all-female piloted recon flight had already completed its work. As of 11 p.m. ET Thursday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, placing it just short of being a Category 3 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm is expected to continue gathering force over the holiday weekend and will likely hit Florida’s Atlantic coast by Monday night, according to the Associated Press.

Fox News’ Dom Calicchio and the Associated Press contributed to this report.