Design and performance of the Hurricanes-at-Landfall equipment

The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) designed, fabricated, and installed meteorological "black boxes" (MBB) at nine Coastal-Marine Automated Network (C-MAN) stations around the southeast U.S. as part of the Hurricanes-at-Landfall (HAL) project. HAL was funded in cooperation with the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory/Hurricane Research Division (AOML/HRD) to develop the capability to retrieve high-quality meteorological data during the approach and passage of land-falling tropical storms and hurricanes to improve the analyses and forecasts of the pattern, extent, and intensity of damaging winds associated with them. The project also included photographic documentation of these nine stations to determine influences of upstream wind disturbances in the vicinity of these stations. During the hurricane season of 1999, data were recovered from the MBBs at three C-MAN stations following the passages of Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd, and Irene. The data are currently being analyzed by AOML/HRD. A sample of the data are provided in this paper.