Pending government approval, the “Meteodrone” will launch this fall and be the first drone to record weather data used operationally in the United States.
, operate in the U.S. and collect weather data but are primarily used for research purposes or for one-off missions. However, the data collected from Meteodrone would be fed constantly into computer models to improve forecasts for drone flight operations — not just during a storm.The Meteodrone isn’t your average drone. It’s packed with small weather instruments, which can measure temperature, dew point, relative humidity, wind speed and pressure.
Right now, “the data isn’t granular enough. We just don’t have enough data. Our models are not sufficient,” said Don Berchoff, co-founder and CEO of TruWeather Solutions, which will provide decision-support once the high-resolution modeling is completed. The Meteodrone will be new to the United States, but it’s already used regularly in Switzerland. Fifteen Meteodrone stations are situated around the European country, collecting data from the atmosphere around the Alps.“We have done more than 20,000 vertical profiles, thousands of flight hours,” said Martin Fengler, founder of the weather forecast service Meteomatics.
With better data collection from the Meteodrone and more accurate high-resolution weather models, he hopes a launch could just be delayed by a few hours, instead of outright canceled.“If I can get 10 percent more flight hours, it pays for itself in the first year,” said Swoyer. “The real value for me is more flight time, more up time, more mission time.”Icing is incredibly hard to forecast and extremely dangerous.
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