by A growing array of tools to measure conditions inside one of nature’s most fearsome storms saw quite a workout in the 11 hurricanes, including five landfalling hurricanes, so far this hurricane season, set to conclude Nov. 30.
That includes one of the newest and tiniest tools, a StreamSonde. The small cylinder seems right out of a climactic scene in the movie “Twister,” when the lead characters send a collection of handmade sensors spiraling up into the vortex of a monster tornado. In the movie, the scientists, played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, nicknamed their project Dorothy.
When Joshua Wadler, an assistant professor of meteorology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, first saw the StreamSonde presented in a technology review committee, “It’s Dorothy,” was his first thought.
Weighing only a half an ounce and not much bigger than a tall beer can, StreamSondes carry sensors to measure some of the harshest conditions on Earth in the eyewall of a hurricane. They are released through a chute from the belly of a Hurricane Hunter aircraft, and Wadler said you can see right down into the hurricane when the chute is opened.
The dainty but sturdy cylinder is just one of the advancing technologies researchers like Wadler are using to gather critical information about these powerful and deadly storms.
The suite of tools includes uncrewed aircraft systems, gliders that can dive into the ocean and Saildrones that skim the surface amidst monster waves. The tools are designed and developed in collaborative partnerships among research institutions, private companies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hoping to improve forecasts to “keep people safe and making good decisions,” they want to understand more about how hurricanes form and dissipate, said John Cortinas, former director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and now the deputy assistant administrator for science for NOAA Research.
A quest to learn more about hurricanes
The aim is to improve the forecasts for a hurricane’s formation, its track, its intensity and the likelihood that it might rapidly intensify, like Milton did in the Gulf of Mexico in October, when its winds increased 65 mph in 24 hours.
When hurricanes make landfall, “we have to know what’s going on (at the surface) so we can make decisions, life and death decisions of evacuating or not evacuating,” said Joseph Cione, lead meteorologist for the laboratory’s hurricane research division.
Into the eye of a hurricane:How NOAA uses drones to penetrate monster storms
The newer research tools reach layers in the storm the hurricane hunters aircraft can’t, including the critical space near the surface where the atmosphere and hurricane interact with the ocean.
“We’re really interested in what the atmosphere looks like when you’re close to the ocean surface,” Wadler said. “That’s where the atmosphere absorbs the energy from the ocean to strengthen, and we really have no other way of getting data down there.”
Collecting these measurements will help scientists better understand what’s happening inside a hurricane and the conditions that drive those changes.
NOAA is focused on understanding the potential impacts that could be communicated to people along the path of a storm, Wadler said. “We want to be able to better predict the impacts in areas away from the center, such as the phenomenon that produced so many tornadoes during Hurricane Milton or the rain in North Carolina during Hurricane Helene.”
Taking measurements of wind speeds, salinity, temperature and other parameters, the instruments provide real time data from inside the storm that’s relayed to the National Hurricane Center forecasters. Some of the data also is fed into the computer models that help inform the forecasts.
“If your model gets better, your forecast gets better, and if your forecast gets better you help protect property and save lives, which is the overriding goal of NOAA,” Cione said.
Developing technologies for hurricane research
Wadler did post-graduate work with NOAA before he started teaching at Embry-Riddle and serves on a NOAA committee for new observational technologies and advanced concepts of operations (NEOTAC). It was in one of those meetings that he first saw StreamSonde.
Developed by Finland-based Skyfora with the assistance of the European Space Agency, StreamSondes spin through a hurricane in much the same way as the sensors in the “Twister” scene. They were first deployed into a hurricane during Nigel in the summer of 2023, Wadler said. This season was the first time they’ve been released in high volumes.
This year Wadler was on a flight that released StreamSondes into Francine. Because it measures humidity, researchers were able to learn more about dryness in the south side of the storm, which influences intensity, while the north side was very moist, he said.
The StreamSonde is a lighter and smaller take on the dropsonde, a bundle of instruments in a large cylinder to measure conditions inside a hurricane that has been the research workhorse of the hurricane hunter fleet since the 1970s.
The research program also includes uncrewed aircraft systems being developed to fly into a hurricane’s strongest winds for a sustained period, sending back a stream of data. They include the Black Swift SO, developed by Black Swift Technologies, in collaboration with Embry-Riddle and the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies.
The newer technologies like the uncrewed systems are being developed to provide data that dropsondes can’t as they’re dropping through the layers of the storm. Even if 20 dropsondes are deployed, “it’s still just 20 data points in an entire storm,” Wadler said. If an uncrewed system can fly for a longer period of time in the lower altitudes, “you get a lot more data and you can understand processes a lot better.”
During a flight into Francine, Wadler said, they deployed the Black Swift SO, NOAA’s smallest drone, weighing only 3 pounds.
Measuring a hurricane’s highest winds
In August, four Black Swift S0 drones were launched into the heart of Hurricane Ernesto from NOAA’s P-3 hurricane hunter. As Black Swift orbited the eye, it dropped as low as 200 feet. A news release stated the drones gathered information for about 200 minutes, including one flight of 77 minutes.
In total, 19 Black Swifts were deployed this year, including in Helene and Milton, where one measured winds of about 240 mph at a height of about 1,300 feet, Wadler said.
With an 8-foot wingspan, the 27-pound Altius-600 was flown into a hurricane for the first time in 2022, when it was deployed into the eye of Ian. It flew as low as 200 feet above the surface and at one point recorded 216 mph winds. The Altius was developed by Anduril Industries, a defense technology company.
Other research tools include the Saildrones, a large autonomous ocean drone that provides information about the ocean and the atmosphere, including temperatures, wind direction and speed, salinity, humidity, pressure and wave heights.
Saildrone quickly became familiar to people interested in hurricanes after one of the vessels returned dramatic video of 90-foot waves during Category 4 Hurricane Sam in 2021. This summer, the Saildrones captured video footage and data during Beryl, Debby, Ernesto, Milton and Helene.
Learn more about the NOAA tools in these videos:
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change and the environment for USA TODAY. She’s written about hurricanes, tornadoes and violent weather for more than 30 years. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X.
