Drones are now being used not only to respond to natural disasters but better predict them

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- A group of drone pilots in Raleigh are working to help veterans develop more skills to help serve the community.

Vets to Drones provides training for veterans looking to become licensed drone pilots. That certification opens up a lot of doors in various industries, including disaster response.

When Hurricane Idalia hit Florida in 2023, drone pilots took to the skies to help search and rescue crews. They also helped conduct power line inspections in order to more quickly restore power in hard hit areas.

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In July 2023, the same drone pilots responded to Nash County when an EF-3 tornado tore through the town.

But drones are doing more than just helping first responders clean up after disasters. Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using drones to help them better predict storms before they hit.

"We're measuring the wind, the air pressure, the surface pressure, the temperature and humidity, the salinity of the ocean and the ocean waves. All of this data is shared around the world in real time," Dr. Greg Foltz said.

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Foltz is the lead scientist at NOAA's Saildrone program. That program is sending back critical weather data that's previously been hard or impossible to gather effectively.

That extra data can help meteorologists better predict what storms are going to do. It's all fed into computer models that then run millions of computations to better forecast a storms characteristics.

"There are aerial drones deployed from hurricane hunter aircraft, and there are vehicles under the water called 'gliders.' We are trying to get all of them lined up in the storm, and that will give us a good knowledge of the whole structure of the ocean and the atmosphere," Foltz said. "We are trying to get as many hurricanes and eyewalls as we can. That's really hard data to get and it's really valuable to understand these really not understood processes that happen on the surface of the ocean."

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