Saildrones head into hurricanes for sixth straight year to help NOAA sharpen forecasts
Saildrone will deploy 10 unmanned surface vehicles to support NOAA's mission to forecast hurricanes.
Saildrone is expected to deploy 10 Saildrone Explorer surface vehicles during the 2026 hurricane season to support NOAA’s goal of forecasting hurricanes and saving lives.
As the 2026 hurricane season begins, a fleet of remote vessels known as Saildrones will continue to gather data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the sixth year in a row.
Saildrone, a maritime defense company, will deploy 10 Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) during the season to support NOAA in its mission to forecast hurricanes, according to the company. The mission continues a partnership between Saildrone and NOAA that began in 2021.
Saildrone Explorer equipped with hurricane wing (Courtesy Saildrone)
An innovative partnership
Greg Foltz, an oceanographer at NOAA and one of the principal investigators on the mission, explained the significance of the collaboration.
“This multiyear mission between NOAA and Saildrone is helping to improve our understanding of how hurricanes intensify, including when they strengthen rapidly before landfall,” Foltz said. “Each storm we observe gives us more data to evaluate and improve prediction models, which is critical for increasing forecast confidence, extending warning lead times and strengthening the nation’s preparedness for high-impact weather events.”
The Saildrone Explorers will be strategically placed in the Caribbean Sea, western tropical/subtropical Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of America from July to November. Saildrone will operate the vehicles and place them in and around storms to deliver oceanographic and meteorological data in real time, coordinating with NOAA.
NOAA scientists at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) will then use the data to study how different conditions can affect storm intensity.
Cristina Castillo, senior program manager of ocean data at Saildrone, explained the goals of the mission in a pre-recorded Atlantic Hurricane Mission interview.
“We are trying to get ourselves in front of as many hurricanes as possible to collect data from within different parts of the storm to really help NOAA scientists better understand why some storms rapidly intensify,” Castillo said. “Saildrone fills a critical gap in data by going where other platforms and crewed assets simply can’t survive.”
Saildrone Explorer equipped with hurricane wing (Courtesy Saildrone)
Solar-powered hurricane explorers
The Saildrone Explorers are 7-meter (23-foot) USVs designed to deliver continuous metocean observations across extreme and remote environments. Each is equipped with meteorological and oceanographic sensors to measure air, surface, windspeed and direction, relative humidity, salinity, wave height and period, sub-surface temperature and barometric pressure.
Specifically, the USVs used for hurricane monitoring have a robust, shorter “hurricane” wing, which is designed to withstand conditions inside a tropical cyclone.
Castillo explained that the Explorers are also special because they are entirely wind- and solar-powered.
Footage gathered by a Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) on Sept. 22, 2022, from inside Hurricane Fiona, a Category 4 hurricane, barreling across the Atlantic Ocean. (Courtesy Saildrone and NOAA)
In the past five years, Saildrone has intercepted 21 named hurricanes and tropical storms on 46 occasions. In addition to the 2026 hurricane mission, Saildrone will operate over 75 USVs globally this year to support national and homeland security, research and ocean mapping.
AccuWeather meteorologists are forecasting 11-16 named storms and four to seven hurricanes across the Atlantic basin, including the Caribbean and Gulf.
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