The Texas Tech University Hurricane Research Team traveled to Florida to deploy during Hurricane Helene.
The 10-member team prior to leaving Lubbock on September 22nd.
The Texas Tech University Hurricane Research Team (TTUHRT) deployed on its second storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Helene.
The decision to send the hurricane research team to a hurricane landfall is seldom easy, and Hurricane Helene was no exception.
On Sunday, September 22nd, Helene had just become an “invest” by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The term invest is used by NHC as marking a region that has potential to develop into a tropical depression, storm, or hurricane, but does not guarantee that development will actually occur. However, the models latched onto the cluster of storms and developed them into a major hurricane making landfall in the Florida Bend.
The issue presented itself clearly, does the team go for a storm that hasn’t even started to develop and may not even happen? Or do they stay and potentially miss out on a major hurricane.
The 10-member team decided to take the risk and at least start driving Monday morning for a storm that hadn’t even formed. As if they didn’t, and the storm did develop, there would be no way for them to get all the way to Florida and deploy the platforms in time for landfall. The team spent the night near New Orleans, LA and as they continued to drive to Florida on Tuesday, the system became a tropical storm at lunchtime.
The team discussing the deployment of future Hurricane Helene during travel to Florida.
Another wrinkle to this deployment was finding deployment sites, as the hurricane research team had never deployed in this location in its history. So, while in route to Tallahassee, FL, team members furiously worked to find locations for deployment in a region which finding open land with no trees feels almost impossible.
The teams started to deploy the platforms early Wednesday morning from Apalachicola to just north of the Tampa metro. During the day Wednesday, the tropical storm finally strengthened to hurricane status and started to rapidly intensity, and the team was able to have a slight sigh in relief.
The team finished the deployment of platforms on Thursday as the outermost bands started to impact the southern Florida Peninsula. Teams watched as reconnaissance aircraft estimated category 4 winds as the eye made landfall just after 11 pm eastern time.
The team waited out the eye passage overnight and returned to the landfall region to collect the platforms on Friday.
The team post Hurricane Helene deployment.
Hurricane Helene caused severe damage across the southeastern U.S. The storm caused 4.5 million power outages was estimated to cause at least $15 billion dollars in property damage according to Moody Analytics. The most catastrophic damage occurred due to major flooding. In North Carolina, where record breaking rain occurred, Helene washed out interstates, caused dam failures, and wiped away communities.