For scientists, Hurricane Ian is posing threats —and opportunities

Forrest Masters, a civil engineer from the University of Florida (UF), spent much of Wednesday hunkered down at the Punta Gorda Airport near Fort Myers, Florida, as 185-kilometer-per-hour winds from Hurricane Ian lashed the building—and nearby instruments collected data. At the same time, marine ecologist Eric Milbrandt was sitting in a hotel across the state in West Palm Beach, watching news reports and worrying about the fate of his marine laboratory on Sanibel Island, a barrier island near Fort Myers that was in the direct path of the storm. For scientists, Hurricane Ian, which roared onto Florida’s southwest coast on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm with winds of 250 kilometers per hour, has been both a research opportunity and an ordeal. The winds cut power for more than 2.5 million and caused extensive damage, and floodwaters swamped communities. President Joe Biden on Thursday warned of “early reports of what may be substantial loss of life.” For some like Masters, the storm was an object of study, promising insights into everything from the adequacy of building codes to the fate of sand dunes during storms. Milbrandt and others, meanwhile, have been forced to flee and are now worried about their homes, experiments, and laboratories. “I don’t know the condition of my house or my parents’ house, whether it’s livable,” Milbrandt told Science Insider yesterday. He directs the lab for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Found...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news