Hurricane Sally; Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico | 2020-Sep-14

Initial Notification: Around 4 AM on September 14, 2020, Hurricane Sally made landfall in the vicinity of Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama as a strong Category 2 storm (sustained winds ~100 MPH). The center of the storm tracked slightly farther east than initially forecast. Very heavy rain on the east side of the storm continued as it tracked northeast. Coastal areas impacted by significant storm surge spanned from Gulf Shores, Alabama east to the Florida panhandle. Seas in excess of 20 feet were observed offshore Pensacola, Florida. USCG Sector Mobile set up incident command for hurricane response operations under their Continuity of Operations Procedure (COOP) at the NOAA Disaster Response Center in Mobile, Alabama. NOAA disaster response support included deployment of the NOAA Scientific Support Coordinator and Scientific Support Team, as well as the National Geodetic Survey Remote Sensing Division (NGS/RSD) Emergency Response aerial surveillance team, and the Coast Survey’s mobile navigation response team (NRT). Additionally, support from NOAA included satellite imagery analysis from the Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB) of National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). NOAA's Emergency Response Division and Spatial Data Branch personnel from the Office of Response and Restoration provided direct on-scene support of all pollution response operations including operation of the Common Operational Picture (COP) in NOAA's Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA), as well as data collection and management of all assessment and pollution mitigation for over 1,000 storm-impacted vessels. NOAA's Emergency Response Division also provided Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Technique (SCAT) teams for a storm related oil spill on Johnson Beach Gulf Islands National Seashore.