A flying drone, that could hover in the eye of a hurricane, is being developed by US defence company Raytheon. By gathering storm data, these drones could assist weather forecasters in predicting the course, and severity, of hurricanes.
The drones would stay in the eye, an area typically a few tens of kilometres across, for hours or days at a time. From there they could collect low-altitude data on the “eye wall” – the area of towering clouds where a hurricane’s most severe weather is to be found. To do that, however, the drones must know their eye wall from their elbow. So Raytheon is patenting an “eye wall sensor” that uses radar to sense the intense thunderstorm and rain activity that define the zone. Drones can then stay well clear of the dangerous areas, while collecting and transmitting valuable data.
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