St. Pete-Launched Ocean Drones Sailed Into Hurricane Isaias, Logging a 104 MPH Gust Near the Eyewall

Two uncrewed sailing drones launched from St. Petersburg sailed into Hurricane Isaias in the Gulf on Friday, and one of them recorded a 104 mph wind gust near the storm's eyewall hours before Isaias came ashore near Destin. The National Hurricane Center put the reading in its 11 a.m. CDT update on Friday, noting that a NOAA Saildrone, designated SD-1045, had logged the gust while Isaias was a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph sustained winds about 180 miles south of Pensacola.

The Tampa Bay Times reported Friday that both vessels had been launched from St. Petersburg and published video the drones captured inside the storm. The mission is part of a NOAA program that uses wind-powered surface vehicles to measure the thin layer where the ocean feeds a hurricane its energy, the part of a storm that aircraft and satellites have the hardest time seeing.

What the drones saw inside Isaias

According to the Hurricane Center's update, SD-1045 was near the eyewall when it recorded the 104 mph gust. At the time, Isaias had a minimum central pressure of 959 millibars and was moving north-northeast at 16 mph toward the Florida Panhandle and Alabama coasts.

News reports citing Saildrone and NOAA said one drone crossed the storm's northern edge and passed directly through the eye about 150 miles south of Pensacola. The second vessel entered the eastern edge of the storm well offshore of Sarasota. The video, credited to Saildrone and NOAA, shows the vehicle pitching through gray, breaking seas.

Wave figures varied among outlets. WGNO in New Orleans reported that NOAA put the significant wave height at more than 10 feet, meaning the largest individual waves in the footage could have been about 20 feet, since maximum waves can run roughly double the significant height. Other outlets reported higher measurements. NOAA had not published a full data summary for the intercept as of Saturday morning.

SD-1045 is a veteran of these missions. The same vehicle sailed into Category 4 Hurricane Sam in the Atlantic in September 2021, when Saildrone reported winds gusting over 120 mph and waves near 50 feet, and released video from inside that storm.

Why NOAA sends drones to the sea surface

Forecasters have grown steadily better at predicting where a hurricane will go. Predicting how strong it will get, and especially when it will undergo rapid intensification, remains harder. Saildrone defines rapid intensification as a gain of at least 30 knots in maximum sustained winds within 24 hours, and it is the behavior that turns a manageable storm into a dangerous one with little warning.

Much of that energy comes from the exchange of heat, moisture and momentum between warm ocean water and the air above it. Hurricane Hunter aircraft drop instruments through the storm, and satellites watch from above, but neither can stay at the sea surface for long in hurricane conditions. NOAA scientist Greg Foltz of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami has described the air-sea interface as the place where energy moves from the warm ocean into hurricanes, according to an AOML release.

The Saildrone Explorer is a 23-foot vessel powered by wind and solar energy. For storm work it carries a shorter, ruggedized "hurricane wing" built for extreme wind and seas. Its sensors measure near-surface wind, air and water temperature, humidity, pressure and waves, which scientists use to calculate the energy and momentum flowing between ocean and atmosphere.

The 2026 mission

Saildrone announced on May 21 that it would deploy 10 Explorers for NOAA during the 2026 season, positioned from July through November in the western tropical and subtropical Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Gulf. Under the arrangement, NOAA scientists set the objectives and assign targets as storms develop, while Saildrone pilots and navigates the vehicles.

NOAA's mission page describes a larger combined fleet this year: 23 uncrewed surface vehicles, including the 10 Saildrone Explorers and 13 smaller, lower-cost Oshen C-Stars. The effort is run by NOAA's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations Uncrewed Systems Operations Center, with support from AOML and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. The mission co-leads are Foltz of AOML and Dongxiao Zhang of PMEL and the University of Washington. The University of Miami is among the academic partners.

Some Explorers this year carry sensors for carbon dioxide exchange, and some C-Stars measure sea surface salinity. NOAA plans to coordinate the surface drones with underwater gliders, aerial drones, moored buoys, drifters, dropsondes from Hurricane Hunter aircraft and ocean profilers.

The agency lists two practical goals besides research: sending data in real time to weather prediction centers to improve the starting conditions of forecast models, and feeding observations directly to the National Hurricane Center to help forecasters judge a storm's strength. In earlier seasons, NOAA said, the drones' data flowed to AOML and PMEL and into the forecasting display system used by Hurricane Center forecasters and field offices.

A Tampa Bay launch point with a track record

St. Petersburg has been a staging point for the program before. In 2022, NOAA and Saildrone launched one Gulf drone from St. Petersburg and another from Port Aransas, Texas, while five others left from Jacksonville and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to AOML. Saildrone has also run Florida ocean mapping missions from what it describes as its Ocean Mapping Headquarters in St. Petersburg.

The program has grown since its start. Saildrone deployed five vehicles in 2021, seven in 2022 and 12 in both 2023 and 2024. The company says its drones have intercepted 21 named hurricanes and tropical storms on 46 occasions since 2021.

The run was interrupted in 2025. CNN reported that June that NOAA's request for proposals came too late for Saildrone to bid and position its fleet at Atlantic and Gulf launch ports. NOAA said then that it was exploring other uncrewed systems for that season and preparing for surface vehicle deployments with industry partners in 2026. The Oshen C-Stars that joined this year's fleet were first used in the 2025 mission.

Does the data improve forecasts?

Researchers have shown the measurements hold up. A study of the Hurricane Sam deployment found the drone's wind measurements closely matched readings from satellites and a moored buoy, giving scientists confidence in the instruments under major hurricane conditions.

Turning those observations into better intensity forecasts is a longer project. NOAA frames the mission as research into how air-sea exchanges drive intensity, with the goal of improving prediction models. A published, quantified gain in forecast skill from the drones has not yet been reported, and scientists have noted that conditions below the ocean surface and in the lower atmosphere also shape how efficiently a storm can intensify.

For Florida, the stakes are concrete. Several recent storms strengthened quickly over the warm Gulf before striking the state's west coast and Panhandle, leaving residents less time to prepare. Isaias itself climbed to Category 3 over the Gulf before weakening to a Category 2 at landfall.

What's next

The Explorers are scheduled to stay at sea through November, the end of the Atlantic hurricane season. NOAA and Saildrone are expected to release more video and data from the Isaias intercept, and scientists at AOML and PMEL will fold the measurements into their research on rapid intensification. Data from 2026 deployments is being cataloged in public NOAA datasets by vehicle number, which lets outside researchers study the same readings forecasters used as Isaias closed in on the Panhandle.