Since 1965, there has been one lone NOAA sensor in downtown Fort Myers used to measure flooding for ALL of Lee County. Now, there are more than a dozen!
“After Hurricane Ian we were looking for data and realized very quickly the data doesn’t exist. You can wait for federal resources to come on line, and if they do that takes years,” explained Lee County’s Director of Public Safety, Ben Abes.
After Ian, Abes and his team started looking for options, and found a partner with Hohonu, a tidal gauge company based in Hawaii that has installed sensors in 16 states.
“More and more frequently we’re seeing more impacts from higher than normal high tides, storm surges and episodic flooding events. And the granularity that comes from the NOAA tide gauge network just isn’t everywhere and isn’t solving problems for everyone. So Hohonu empowers communities by putting in new sensors in new locations to give access to data to more people,” explained Brian Glazer, cofounder and CEO of Hohonu.
Hohonu began installing devices during the 2024 hurricane season in Lee County to test how they perform.
“[We] successfully deployed the first eight ahead of Helene and the rest ahead of Milton. Then we’re finalizing the placement of an additional 8 to 10 across the community,” said Abes.
As of June 4th, there are 14 new sensors online, placed in coastal areas susceptible to flooding like Captiva, and on land in areas notorious for flooding, like in St. James City.
“That’s really important for us because we don’t have to wait for people to call and tell us there’s a problem. We’ll know there’s water over the roadway. We can react. We can issue advisories from the EM center, public works, all the things that need to happen when that occurs,” said Abes.
Lee County’s All Hazards fund covered the cost for a fraction of a NOAA tidal gauge. “When the federal government installs a tidal gauge it’s a huge installation and very costly. When Hohonu does it, we work with local governments or communities to be able to be able to do it like this,” said Glazer.
All sensor data are publicly available on the Hohonu website and the iOS app, so you can track second by second where the water is rising and which areas may be flooding.
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