Hurricane Dorian has been moving across the Atlantic Ocean for the last several days, but forecasters had some trouble predicting where it would make landfall and how much it would strengthen.
After making landfall in the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm on Sunday, the hurricane is now inching toward Florida's eastern coast.
Though hurricane models have improved over the last several decades, forecasters are still working to learn about how the storms form and intensify.
To answer these fundamental questions, they turn to data from places like University of Miami's Sustain Laboratory, where a $15 million machine can mimic the conditions of a Category 5 hurricane.
Brian Haus, the director of the laboratory, told Business Insider how he's using the tank to help forecasters make better predictions about storms like Hurricane Dorian in the future. Here's what the hurricane tank looks like.