Watch: Alameda-based company captures stunning drone video of Hurricane Milton
Drone footage from inside Hurricane Milton
NOAA is partnering with Bay Area company Saildrone to deploy drones in the region to collect important data and images for researchers to learn about how hurricane winds interact with water and waves. KTVU visited their headquarters in Alameda to learn how the drones work and share data with the National Hurricane Center that could eventually improve forecasting models.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Dramatic video of 28-foot waves were taken from inside Hurricane Milton using drones deployed through a partnership between NOAA and Saildrone, a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"We have 12 saildrones deployed for the hurricane season this year," Robbie Dean, Saildrone's Vice-President of Program Delivery told KTVU Thursday.
"All 12 drones were deployed out of St. Thomas or St. Petersburg Florida. And we have them roaming about in the region."
The drones are powered by solar panels and batteries. The operations team controls the drones remotely from their mission headquarters in Alameda, giving each drone directions on where to locate itself.
The public is getting a firsthand look at Hurricane Milton thanks to cameras mounted on the top of the drones.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared video on Wednesday from Saildrone, who has been a partner on the hurricane tracking project since 2021.
"Through satellite communications, the data is piped off the drone to the satellite and to the customer’s desktop, and they can see it in near real time and make decisions based on what's happening," Dean said.
Greg Foltz, a NOAA Oceanographer in Miami who leads the NOAA Hurricane Saildrone Project says the drones can collect a wide range of information.
"Things like the temperature, currents, salinity of the ocean….we also measure atmospheric data, air temperatures, humidity and the winds and the surface pressure," Foltz said. "This data goes directly to the National Hurricane Center, so forecasters are looking at this data in real time. and they can use it for their assessments of the current state of the hurricane, how strong it is, what are the winds and the pressure."
Saildrone's technology was in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday as Milton produced intense storm conditions. The drone video from Wednesday showed wind gusts of more than 75 miles per hour and 28-foot waves.
Foltz says it costs about $2.5-million per year to deploy the Saildrone vessels through hurricane season, which ends in November.
In the long-term, he says, the public can benefit, as the data sets provide valuable information that researchers are using to improve hurricane forecast modeling.
"We're doing experiments with forecast models, putting the Saildrone data into the models," Foltz said.
It is data, he says, that is very unique, which can't be obtained from traditional sources.
"Our pilots are the humans that are sending the sets of navigation command," she went on to say," Julia Paxton, the company's director of mission management, told KTVU in 2023.
The drones have been sent to circumnavigate Antarctica and larger drones have been used to do sonar mapping of the ocean floor.
The state had seen at least seven tornadoes as of 1 p.m., the Associated Press reported.
Alameda's Saildrones collect hurricane data
Scientists are getting never-before-seen glimpses inside the eyes of hurricanes thanks to new drone technology being built right here in the Bay Area. The company, Saildrone, is based on Alameda. It makes robotic sailboats to collect high quality ocean data. These sailboats were created to chase hurricanes. Mark Tamayo reports