Hurricane Helen caused rough seas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has teamed up with Saildrone, a company that makes innovative marine drones, to dispatch a powerful robot to Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the Big Bend, Florida, area on Thursday night. Before making landfall with catastrophic storm surge and 140-force winds, a drone captured footage from the storm’s eyewall, where the strongest winds originate.
The 30-second video below was sent from a drone and was filmed at approximately 7:45 pm ET on September 26 (before a brief commercial was played). The average height of the highest waves is approximately 30 feet (9 meters). Gusty winds blew over the 23-foot-long, 16-foot-tall drone.
Mix and match speed of light
Why it’s impossible to predict weather too far into the future
The robots are designed specifically for hurricanes and are designed to collect new data about these cyclones and how they evolve.
Above, the position of the navigation drone SD-1083, which captured footage in the eyewall of Hurricane Helene.
Image credit: Saildrone/NOAA
NOAA uses Saildrones because they have proven to be excellent at directly collecting observations of ocean and surface atmospheric conditions. It’s there, where the ocean interacts with the air, that hurricanes begin to intensify, sometimes rapidly.
While there are many factors that influence the formation of a severe hurricane (lack of headwinds to break up the storm, moist or dry air, etc.), the most important factor is warm sea surface temperatures in excess of 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). Storm scientists explain that warm oceans are the jet fuel for hurricanes. This is because tropical storms are intensified by warming oceans as more water naturally evaporates into the air, Gives the storm energy and moisture to strengthen.
For example, Hurricane Helene took advantage of Recording warm ocean temperatures It quickly intensified into a terrible storm. Atlantic hurricanes are now twice as likely to develop from mild storms to major hurricanes.
