In a world first, a 23-foot Saildrone Explorer equipped with a specially designed “hurricane” wing has collected the first video footage of the extreme weather conditions inside a Category 4 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission is a partnership between Saildrone and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Five vehicles were deployed to better understand the ocean processes that are occurring as hurricane intensity increases, which means collecting data immediately before and during a hurricane.

Saildrone is announcing a new mission to deploy five uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) from the US Virgin Islands in August to gather key data throughout the 2021 Tropical Atlantic hurricane season. The USVs will be equipped with specially designed “hurricane wings” to enable them to operate in extreme conditions. Saildrones are the only USVs capable of collecting this data and are designed to withstand winds over 70 mph and waves over 10 feet, which occur during a hurricane weather system. The five saildrones will sail into the paths of hurricanes to provide valuable real-time observations for numerical hurricane prediction models and to collect new insights into how these large and destructive weather cells grow and intensify.