WILMINGTON, N.C. – Some people have retreated to Southwest Virginia, getting out of Florence's path.
But some others headed right for it.
These Virginia Tech students are in Wilmington chasing Hurricane Florence.
They're not associated with the official Virginia Tech storm chasers, but rather their own student group.
Their SUV is decked out with meters and gauges feeding real-time data to a laptop.
Between the three of them, they have years of experience doing this and say they do it because they have a burning love for weather.
"There's nothing like experiencing a storm like this first hand, we learn about it in the classroom, we sit and study the physics and the dynamics, the meteorology that goes into it and then to be able to experience it firsthand really just brings it to a whole other level," said Peter Forister, a senior at Virginia Tech.
The students are prepared to stay down along the coast for a few days if they need to, although they hope to experience the eye overnight and then chase it inland.