KUSA — As Hurricane Florence made its way towards the Carolinas, it lost some strength and was downgraded to a tropical storm, but the storm still caused massive flooding and surges.
In the days leading up to landfall, people dealing with the storm were getting life-saving information - thanks in part to tech built in Colorado.
Vaisala is a company based in Louisville that builds dropsondes used to track Hurricane Florence. NOAA said it used dropsondes to track Florence for much of the week.
Hurricane hunters take several dropsondes when flying into the storm and release them into the hurricane to gather data, including temperature, humidity and wind. That information helps track the path of the storm and its intensity.
Chad Gimmestad with the National Weather Service demonstrated how that plays out on the ground.
“We had a pretty good idea it was going to hit the east coast of the United States," Gimmestad said.
That's not very specific.
"One run it would go to Florida. Then the next time we ran the computer it would go to New Jersey," Gimmestead said. "There were some computer runs that showed it running up Chesapeake Bay."
The next step is to narrow it down.
"Then, we start flying these hurricane hunter missions out there," Gimmestead said. "We get the dropsonde data into the computer modules. We are able to narrow it down that it's probably going to be in the Carolinas."
With the help of this data, state and local officials were able to mobilize and warn people about evacuations before the storm hit.
Hurricane hunters have been flying the storm several times, determining that, even though it’s getting weaker, it's still strong enough that flooding is a big concern.
Gimmestead said technology has helped them become good at figuring out where a hurricane is headed. He also said there’s more research being done on how to track a hurricane’s intensity.
The local dropsondes have been used in a lot of major hurricanes, including Lane - which had its eye on Hawaii.
