The Category 4 Hurricane Fiona Was Filmed by a Saildrone

The hurricane Fiona, which is currently moving northward in the Atlantic Ocean and is expected to hit Bermuda on Thursday night and the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Friday, was targeted by the Saildrone Explorer SD 1078. The first Category 4 storm of the 2022 season is Hurricane Fiona. In order to gather crucial scientific data, SD 1078 must battle 50-foot waves and winds that reach speeds of over 100 mph. In the process, the ship is also providing us with a completely new perspective on one of Earth’s most destructive forces.

SD 1078 is moving at sustained speeds of more than 9 mph while inside the storm. It surfed down a huge wave, hitting a peak speed of 39.7 mph at one point. Currently, the vehicle is 315 miles southwest of Bermuda.

In order to better understand the physical processes of hurricanes, seven “hurricane” saildrones have been flying in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico throughout this hurricane season. SD 1078 is one of these saildrones. With this information, coastal communities will be better prepared for storms, which should help save lives and make storm forecasting better.

“Saildrone is proving once more that it can deliver essential ocean data in the worst weather scenarios. Just before making landfall on Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona grew from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane, causing significant destruction and fatalities, according to Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins. The information that Saildrone vehicles are gathering will improve scientific understanding of rapid intensification and give residents of coastal communities more time to get ready.

The Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), two NOAA institutions that work with Saildrone on this mission, receive data directly from Saildrone.

A larger NOAA initiative to understand hurricane intensification includes the seven saildrones. Additionally, NOAA has aerial assets like profiling floats, surface drifters, and underwater gliders to help scientists learn more about the evolution of hurricanes than ever before. NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft and weather buoys collect a wide range of weather observations that are used to make hurricane forecasts.

According to Capt. Philip Hall, director of NOAA’s Uncrewed Systems Operations Center, which is funding the Saildrone project, “uncrewed systems in the air, on the ocean surface, and underwater, and aircraft systems have the potential to transform how NOAA meets its mission to better understand the environment.” These fascinating new technologies give NOAA another useful tool that can gather data in locations that other observing systems can’t reach.

The fourth Saildrone USV to interact with Hurricane Fiona is SD 1078. When it passed over SD 1083, located 400 nautical miles east of Montserrat, it was still a tropical storm; the vehicle recorded wind gusts of more than 40 mph. As it passed over SD 1031, located just south of Puerto Rico, where Fiona first made landfall, the storm was still moving due west and had intensified to a Category 1 storm. When SD 1031 was in the storm’s eye, wind speeds suddenly dropped to as low as 10 mph, and the vehicle recorded waves up to 46 feet high. SD 1031 measured a minimum central pressure of 986 mb while it was inside the eye. SD 1040, positioned north of Puerto Rico, measured storm-edge winds of more than 60 mph and waves as high as 40 feet. Multiple saildrones that interact with Hurricane Fiona will collect data that will help scientists learn a lot about how these dangerous storms form.

Saildrone has now broadcast a second video from inside a significant hurricane: The year before, SD 1045 spent 24 hours inside Category 4 Hurricane Sam and sent almost instantaneous high-definition video and photos.