East Bay company Saildrone provided essential weather tool for Hurricane Milton

As Florida continues to recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, NOAA said the East Bay tech company Saildrone helped in hurricane forecasting.
Saildrone captured incredible video of Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico just hours before making landfall on the Florida coast that was shared by the NOAA X account.
Back in the Bay Area, Vice President of Program Delivery Robbie Dean and his team at Saildrone in Alameda are proud their drones captured the remarkable video and provided critical weather information to the National Hurricane Center.
“Saildrones are designed to be very robust and are able to withstand storms like this,” said Dean. “They have traditional sailboat features like a keel underwater and the wing above so that when wind gusts hit the wing, the weight of the keel counteracts that force and keeps the drone upright.”
Saildrones operate autonomously. Mission Control team and pilots direct the drones where to go with a series of waypoints to follow. Drones then robotically navigate on their own.
“You’re looking at the wind sail here and that is what is used to propel the drone,” said Dean. “This wing harnesses the power of the wind and that’s what makes the drone go forward. Also on the wing, you can see the scientific sensors which are used to measure environmental conditions.”
Saildrones provide continuous, real-time data like ocean surface winds, air temperature, humidity, ocean currents, wave height, wave period, ocean temperature and salinity. The National Hurricane Center receives this data within minutes to help analyze and understand the storm, as well as improve their forecasts.
“With Hurricane Milton, some of the highlights are it measured about 85 mph sustained winds and wind gusts up to 150 mph and wave heights above 35 feet, so pretty extreme conditions and in really harsh conditions inside of a hurricane,” said NOAA Oceanographer Greg Foltz. “You could tell by the video the drone took and so that’s what we’re excited about. We don’t like hurricanes that make landfall, but we are excited to get the data to look at it and analyze it and hopefully improve and give people more warning when hurricanes are going to make landfall.”
Foltz said this valuable information is like nothing else, giving NOAA ocean surface weather data in the most extreme environment on earth, the middle of a major hurricane.
“At Saildrone, we are happy to know that we’re helping to protect these communities,” said Dean. “We actually have a Saildrone office in St. Petersburg, Florida, and our team is right there with these communities.”
For the Saildrone team, they’re grateful to see the power of their technology making a difference in communities across the country.
This is the fourth year NOAA and Saildrone have partnered together, deploying saildrones during the Atlantic Hurricane Season.