Event Briefing

As the strongest hurricane on record named with a Greek letter, Hurricane Delta made landfall in Mexico near Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo as a Category 2 hurricane on 7 October 2020, with a second landfall in the United States as a Category 2 hurricane on 9 October 2020 in Creole, LA. This U.S. landfall was roughly 10 miles east of the location where Hurricane Laura made landfall on 27 August 2020 as a Category 4 hurricane. This project encompasses a curated dataset an Event Briefing, an abbreviated StEER response mechanism that briefly summarizes the event and any key lessons that can be learned based on publicly available data and the impressions of Field Assessment Structural Teams (FAST) who deployed regionally to assess the impacts. Specifically, StEER activated FAST-1 and FAST-2 between 12-15 October 2020 to deploy rapid imaging techniques using the same teams and hardware that surveyed Hurricane Laura. The first team operated out of Auburn University 12-13 October and the second team out of Louisiana State University 14-15 October; FAST-2 liaised with other local researchers. Their combined data collection efforts emphasized a longitudinal data capture of areas previously documented for Hurricane Laura, as well as new clusters exposed to some of the Delta’s highest wind speeds to the east of landfall.