Storm Tracking Goes Hi-Tech

In this photo, I stand with a StickNet probe, perched atop Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, Ala., ready to track incoming Tropical Storm Ida.

The 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season seemed as though it would be active, with Tropical Storm Ana, Tropical Storm Claudette and Hurricane Bill all forming and moving closer to the U.S. by the middle of August.  These were followed by an additional six tropical systems.  Thankfully, only one of these nine systems, Tropical Storm Claudette, made a U.S. landfall.

As November rolled around and the season neared its end, the Texas Tech University Hurricane Research Team (TTUHRT) had hung up its hat, accepting that there would be no research opportunities this year.  And then came Ida, an odd, late-season storm which formed off the coast of Nicaragua.

As Ida moved northward and her threat to the Gulf Coast became apparent, TTUHRT hit the road with weather-monitoring StickNet probes and the new TTUKA-1 radar.  Ida was the StickNet fleet’s fourth tropical cyclone deployment, and the very first for TTUKA-1.

The StickNet probes were deployed on both sides of Mobile Bay in Alabama, and were primarily concentrated along Gulf Shores, within 10 miles of TTUKA-1, to get overlapping coverage.

The StickNets are portable weather stations which measure temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, and precipitation.  They were designed and built by Texas Tech students and have been used for four years during severe thunderstorm seasons, including VORTEX 2 last spring, and were deployed last year for Hurricanes Dolly, Gustav, and Ike.

StickNet has become my own personal “Flat Stanley.”  In the words of the late Johnny Cash, “I’ve been everywhere, man,” with StickNet by my side.

Last year for Hurricane Dolly, my team deployed StickNet on the sand dunes of South Padre Island, in the shadow of spring break hotels.  We deployed StickNet at the Morton Salt Plant at Weeks Island and at Avery Island, home of Tabasco, for Hurricane Gustav.

Hurricane Ike brought a deployment at Fort Travis at the tip of the devastated Bolivar Peninsula.  We were fearful that the probe would be swept away and lost forever; it survived despite the fact that nearly every home was destroyed.

The elevated fort made such a good deployment site, that we decided to try other fort sites, and made deployments at Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island on the west side of Mobile Bay, as depicted in the image, and at Fort Morgan on the east side of Mobile Bay for Tropical Storm Ida.

- Tanya Brown, Texas Tech University

Image credit: Ian Giammanco, Texas Tech University