Hurricane Katrina's eyewall taken on August 28, 2005, a day before the powerful storm came barreling into the USA Gulf Coast. NOAA hurricane hunter WP-3D Orion and Gulfstream IV aircraft conducted ten long flights into and around the eye of Hurricane Katrina. Lt. Mike Silah, a P-3 pilot, got to see Hurricane Katrina up close and personal, especially when she was an extremely dangerous Category Five storm in the Gulf of Mexico. The day before the powerful and destructive storm made landfall on the USA Gulf Coast, Silah snapped a series of images capturing the eyewall of Katrina. The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area, typically 20-40 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather occurs. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic tropical cyclone of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the US. At least 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest US hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane; total property damage was estimated at $108 billion (2005 USD).