As Hurricane Irma moves through the Caribbean Sea, impacting the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico, we watched flights in the area, including NOAA Hurricane Hunters NOAA42 and NOAA49 and Delta Air Lines’ rescue flight from Puerto Rico, with great interest. But none of the flights on our site are visible without the constant stream of data from volunteers who host our ADS-B receivers or have built their own and share data with our network.

Over two dozen receivers in the path of Hurricane Irma are now offline. We’ve been in contact with our receiver hosts in the area where possible, including our partners at PTZtv, the operators of MahoBeachCam.com who had their camera destroyed as the storm passed over St. Maarten.

As a result of the destruction of the storm, we are without MLAT coverage in the area and lower level ADS-B coverage has been severely degraded. The first priority is obviously to assess the damage to the affected areas and rebuild where necessary. We’ve offered support to our hosts for when they can safely assess whether repairing or replacing a receiver will be necessary. We do anticipate that coverage in this area will be degraded for some time.

Please keep all those affected by Irma and possibly affected by Jose in your thoughts.