October 1st: Major Hurricane Joaquin continues to intensify as it drifts to the WSW near the Bahamas. Although confidence is high that this will remain a powerful storm, large uncertainties remain about the storm’s track and where it might make landfall along the U.S. East Coast. With coverage provided by more than 250 stations positioned along the entire Eastern Seaboard, WeatherFlow’s network is online and ready to record conditions should Joaquin impact the coast.
WeatherFlow’s stations include almost 90 in its Hurricane Network, which have been specifically designed to withstand landfalling hurricanes. In addition to these stations, WeatherFlow partners are also gearing up, preparing to deploy 4 towers from the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program, 24 deployable surface “StickNet” stations from Texas Tech University, and a Doppler on Wheels (DOW) mobile weather radar system from the Center for Severe Weather Research. These deployable assets are supplemented by over 1500 other high quality fixed weather stations operated by NOAA and others, and which have been vetted extensively by WeatherFlow.
WeatherFlow’s StormPrint product suite combines this proprietary data set with other high quality observations from NOAA and selected third party networks to assemble the most comprehensive ground-truth surface wind data set available. This data set is then used to generate the industry’s most accurate footprint of the storm’s maximum sustained winds. StormPrint products are provided to NWS Weather Forecast Offices, the National Hurricane Center, and emergency responders, and are vital to WeatherFlow’s insurance clients.
As a result of their geographic coverage, careful siting, high quality, and exceptional reliability, stations from WeatherFlow and its partner networks recorded over 75% of the highest wind speeds for both SuperStorm Sandy (October 2013) and Hurricane Arthur (July 2014). With a higher station density, they also recorded the single highest reported wind speeds for both storms, in both cases a full 8 mph greater than those recorded by other networks in the area.
For real-time access to the observations described above, weather radar, and NHC/NWS forecast information, stay tuned to WeatherFlow’s Joaquin Storm Coverage page.