Contact: Frank Lepore FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Hurricane Center 8/29/96
Glenda Coss
National Data Buoy Center
As Hurricanes Edouard and Fran moved off the coast of Africa and began to intensify in the Atlantic's warm summer waters, they were monitored by a new array of floating buoys that transmitted critical data to National Weather Service forecasters.
For the first time ever in this part of the Atlantic, floating buoys operated by the National Data Buoy Center took a hurricane's vital statistics and transmitted them directly to forecasters who used the information to help predict its path.
Dropped into the ocean by C-130 hurricane reconnaissance aircraft flying out of Mississippi's Keesler Air Force Base, the series of 14 drifting buoys took Edouard and Fran's pulse as the storms moved by them. The buoy array measured wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, and sea and air temperature, measurements which gave important clues about the storm's strength, speed, and direction of travel to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The buoys, which transmit their observations via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration environmental satellites, are drifting slowly to the west, but are expected to remain in service through the remainder of the 1996 hurricane season. They were deployed between the Lesser Antilles Islands and the Cape Verde Islands, a well-known storm genesis area where data is difficult to obtain using NOAA's hurricane hunter aircraft.
Also involved in the buoy monitoring project are the Hurricane Research and Physical Oceanography Divisions of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, U.S. Air Force Reserves at Keesler AFB in Biloxi.