Some of the most deadly and costly hurricanes intensify rapidly before landfall, leaving little time for preparations and evacuations.
Meteorologists are good at forecasting the track tropical storms take but predicting which ones are liable to escalate quickly is harder.
That is partly because we have not been able to observe what happens inside a rapidly strengthening hurricane.
Last year that changed when scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration managed to steer a saildrone into the heart of Hurricane Sam.
Last summer, five wind- and solar-powered uncrewed sailboats were cast into the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea and remotely piloted into the path of emerging tropical storms.
In September, saildrone 1045 got its chance when it was directed towards a tropical wave, which swiftly became Hurricane Sam, the most powerful of the season.
The measurements returned from saildrone 1045, as it battled through 14-metre-high waves and winds of more than 200km/h, were invaluable, showing that unlike most hurricanes, the sea surface did not cool during the first half of the storm.
Now the scientists preparing the saildrones for the 2022 season are hoping for another opportunity to observe a storm that rapidly becomes a hurricane.
