Two floating ocean drones deployed from St. Petersburg navigated Hurricane Helene’s 140 mph sustained winds, and waves the size of a six-story building, to provide scientists with valuable data.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) received a record-breaking amount of real-time hurricane data as the massive storm rapidly intensified into a Category 4 before landfall in Taylor County early Friday morning. Saildrone, which operates from St. Petersburg’s Innovation District at the waterfront Maritime and Defense Technology Hub, significantly aided those efforts.
The company has released initial footage from inside the massive storm that killed at least five people in Pinellas County. Saildrone is now “prioritizing high-resolution offload of data for scientific research.”
Dr. Greg Foltz, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), told the Catalyst that the St. Petersburg-based uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) successfully collected critical information from the “strongest parts” of Category 4 hurricane.
“It’s really hard to get this data any other way,” Foltz said. “Because nothing else like this can be steered into the path of hurricanes on the ocean surface and collect continuous data from all these sensors. It’s really unique.”
The overarching goal is to improve hurricane intensity forecasting. Meteorologists accurately predicted Helene’s rapid strengthening and extensive wind field before the storm became a hurricane.
Foltz noted NOAA collects and feeds it into forecasting models in real-time. Gaining a better understanding of how the most dangerous storms form, track and intensify can ultimately save lives.
The Saildrones measured 110 mph wind gusts and 31-foot wave heights from roughly 20 miles outside the storm’s eyewall. Foltz said Helene unexpectedly shifted east in the upper Gulf, which “kind of threw us off.”
While the USVs “ended up on the weaker left side of the storm a little bit,” Foltz said that was “right before landfall” as the storm rapidly intensified into a Category 4. “We got a lot of good data, and I’m looking forward to analyzing it.”