Sofar Ocean and its collaborators in the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) Hurricane Coastal Impacts Project (NHCI) were recognized as the 2025 recipients of NOPP’s Excellence in Partnering award. The annual award celebrates the project that, “best exemplifies the NOPP’s objective of developing a successful network of partnerships to advance the ocean sciences.”

Launched in 2021, NHCI’s goal was to enable better understanding and predictive ability of hurricane impacts to serve and protect coastal communities. Project work was divided amongst nine teams comprising 13 academic institutions, 13 government agencies, and 11 industry partners, including Sofar. Each team focused on a specific aspect of the production or quantitative evaluation of research-grade hurricane forecasts.

Sofar was a member of two teams — Task 3A (Thomson) and Task 3B (Brown) — both of which focused on the rapid deployment of wave buoys and water level sensors to collect real-time data in the path of hurricanes. These direct observations of the extreme conditions generated by storms are used to validate hurricane models and improve forecasts.

During the 2022, 2023, and 2024 hurricane seasons, Sofar and its collaborators conducted six successful air-deployments of Spotter buoys and other devices into the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean ahead of the following major hurricanes:

• Hurricane Milton (2024): 8 Spotter buoys deployed
• Hurricane Helene (2024): 13 Spotter buoys deployed
• Hurricane Francine (2024): 5 Spotter buoys deployed
• Hurricane Lee (2023): 3 Spotter buoys deployed
• Hurricane Idalia (2023): 10 Spotter buoys deployed
• Hurricane Ian (2022): 7 Spotter buoys deployed

The air-deployments were conducted in partnership with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Scientific Development Squadron VXS-1 from P-3 aircraft. Experimental Submersible Spotters, as well as cross-shore transects of moored wave and water level sensors, were also deployed to make additional observations near the coast.

Data collected by the air-deployed Spotters supported other NOPP NHCI teams’ efforts to produce and evaluate hurricane forecasts. Outside of the project, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center leverages observations from the air-deployed Spotters — as well as from Sofar’s global Spotter network — to enhance situational awareness and better support critical warning systems for extreme weather.

For more information about NHCI, check out NOPP’s 2025 award announcement, the NHCI website, and Sofar’s 2024 Hurricane Tracker.

Special thanks to Sofar’s NHCI collaborators, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Scientific Development Squadron VXS-1, and the Office of Naval Research.