Tide Station Continues Measuring throughout Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Maria caused widespread damage on the Caribbean island of Dominica on the night of 19-20 September. Data from the OceanWise and GIS SRL monitoring station installed on the island's east coast stopped being received at around 02:30 AST, both via the US GOES satellite system and the island's cellular network. Nothing more was heard from the station, and the worst was feared. Then, after eight days, data started to appear on Port-Log.net again. New data was displayed first, and then all of the missing data was sent through as the backlog was cleared.

Both Valeport's pressure sensor and OceanWise's supplied Smart Telemetry modem, the ip.buffer, had worked as designed and all the data acquired as the Cat 5 hurricane passed overhead was recovered. Mike Osborne, OceanWise MD commented that the ip.buffer was installed for its resilience and ability to store and recover data when communications fail for short periods. However, to capture data throughout the storm and then to recover all this data when communications were restored is unprecedented.