This amazing photo of Tropical Storm Lee was captured by AccuWeather.com’s own Valerie Smock while on a hurricane hunter mission late last week. Lee was just offshore of Louisiana when this picture was snapped.

This was before Lee unleashed torrents of rain from Louisiana to New York, causing disastrous flooding.

Valerie had the opportunity to join the hurricane hunters on the flight through Lee because of her position as a Public Affairs Specialist in the Air Force Reserve, which she does in addition to broadcasting the weather for AccuWeather.com.

Valerie, currently stationed in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, also had the opportunity to join the invest flight mission into the tropical system that is now Nate in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. She is also taking a flight into Maria, which will be passing through the Leeward Islands this weekend.

“It has definitely been a busy week,” she told us. “I was able to fly through Tropical Storm Lee. We were supposed to fly back to Keesler Air Force Base [in Mississippi], but the weather was so bad at the base because of Lee that we had to evacuate all of the aircraft to Ellington Field in Houston.”

“Wednesday I was on the flight that did an invest [mission] in the Gulf,” Valerie continued. “That invest helped to determine whether or not to upgrade the system to a tropical storm. Once we landed, that system became Tropical Storm Nate.”

We’ll have more from Valerie and what her experience has been like flying with the hurricane hunters as she updates us over the next few days.

Here are more pictures from Valerie’s Lee mission: