2021 Atlantic hurricane season comes to an end

An above-average season of activity provided Rosenstiel School scientists with ample opportunities for research that could improve forecasting and help save lives. With the deadly and destructive Hurricane Ida only minutes from making landfall in Louisiana, University of Miami researchers David Nolan and Kurt Hansen raced against time to deploy weather devices that would measure the cyclone's wind speed and direction. "We were far enough inland that we were only getting rain and gusty winds,” Hansen said. But still, he admitted, the experience was a bit harrowing. Like firefighters racing into danger, he and Nolan, professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, had traveled to Louisiana to place various instruments directly in Ida's path to collect the critical wind and storm surge data that could one day help save lives. From Galliano to Raceland, they positioned anemometers and other sensors on the ground and near levees in those communities, sheltering in place in a New Orleans hotel when the storm hit. "Our hotel lost power and water, the roofed leaked quite a bit, and fallen trees nearly blocked our way out,” recalled Hansen, a Ph.D.