TTUHRT
My blogs
| Location | Lubbock, Texas, United States |
|---|---|
| Introduction | The Texas Tech Hurricane Research Team was established in 1998 with the goal of mitigating the effects of landfalling tropical cyclones on life and property through research and analysis. The project began with the development of several ruggedized instrument towers that could withstand the hurricane environment. The primary reason was that over 80% of conventional national weather service weather stations fail in wind speeds of 50 mph, so during a hurricane there are very little if at all, complete data records from the impacted area. Additionally, engineering interests require high resolution data to determine wind loads produced by individual gusts on structures. Texas Tech became the first university to build a tower platform that was self sustaining, and deploy it in the path of a landfalling hurricane. Since the first season, TTU has deployed instrumentation for 28 landfalling tropical systems, including those such as Ivan, Katrina, Rita, and Ike. TTU collected the only complete wind speed record from Hurricane Katrina's Mississippi landfall. The program now uses the StickNet and Ka-radars to provide a detailed structure of hurricane winds at landfall. |