Media and news
SASCWATCH in the media
Video from LtCol Mark Withee and the 53rd "Hurricane Hunter" Weather Reconnaissance Squadron showing the buoy array deployment ahead of Hurricane Erin, August 18, 2025
Fox Weather, September 5, 2025
The Weather Channel, August 20, 2025
Boston's WBZ’s 6pm newscast, August 20, 2025
SASCWATCH Milestones
- The 2x2 degree spatial grid of ocean drifters has never been done, and is the successful result of complex coordination across multiple agencies and personnel groups.
- With this 2D spatial grid of sea surface temperature and wave measurments under the passage of a storm, the array provides first-ever spatio-temporal evolution of cold wakes and directional wave spectra --- something impossible from a single point or even a line of ocean drifters
- High-density sea-level pressure measurements from the 2D drifter array provides an unprecedented method of providing high-accuracy TC center fixes
- sUAS from the Black Swift S0 have already made wind fluctuations measurements that likely exceed any that have been made in a geophysical context. They also provide first-ever covariance flux data at low altitudes in high winds.
- Wave spectra from within Hurricane Erin and Tropical Storm Imelda are providing the basis for the first-ever large-eddy simulations of TC-strength winds over realistic wave spectra --- including wind-wave alignment and frequency-dependent wave propagation