GREENWOOD, MS - For the second time in two months, NOAA's Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) and Mississippi State University's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory successfully executed UAS operations to provide data to the National Weather Service's (NWS) Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center (LMRFC). With funding provided by the NOAA UAS Program Office, and in response to expressed needs for aerial imagery by the LMRFC following a historic rainfall event, Dr. Robert Moorhead (Director of NGI and principle investigator of the "SHOUT4Rivers" parent project) and his team conducted operations of a large, "Group 3" UAS over vast areas of flooding near Greenwood, MS in February 2019. The primary goal for that first mission was to provide forecasters with critical information to indicate water level heights and show locations of inundation. The data was transmitted in near real-time to the LMFRC office in Slidell, LA to help hydrologists update flood warnings and generate more accurate forecast products for use by emergency managers and the general public. “We were able to see the water as it rose over the course of two days, which helped our office confirm when the crest had been reached,” said Dr. Suzanne Van Cooten, hydrologist-in-charge at the LMRFC.
For full article: https://uas.noaa.gov/News/ArtMID/6699/ArticleID/812/Another-One-in-the-…