Webcam Sends Hurricane Pictures
A screen capture taken at 8 p.m. on July 23, 2008, shows the aftermath of Dolly.
> Image at 2 p.m., height of the storm
Hundreds of web users watched dramatic live images of Hurricane Dolly as it lashed the Rio Grande Valley in July. An indoor camera, running at the university's Harlingen campus, kept sending pictures on the Internet despite the storm.
"I was surprised it stayed up," said Jim Barrett, webmaster for The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "I'm almost certain these were the only live images coming from the hurricane except for TV news feeds."
Viewer traffic at the camera's web site shot up sevenfold, to about 2,000 views in the three days before and after the hurricane.
The camera is at the university's Regional Academic Health Center in Harlingen. Harlingen is about 30 miles from where Hurricane Dolly made landfall.
Back-up electrical power, and a sturdy Internet connection kept the camera on the web.
Mounted in a second-floor office, the camera relayed images every 10 seconds showing sheets of rain and trees bending in winds exceeding 50 mph. The storm cut electrical power to the campus, but back-up generators provided power to much of the campus.
Barrett, working from San Antonio, said he needed to restart the camera remotely three times during the storm due to power spikes, but the camera responded with each restart. The network connection never failed, he said.
Jason Campbell, network specialist at the Regional Academic Health Center, said the camera draws electrical power on the same cable that is its Internet connection. He said the camera is among many electrical devices on campus that connect to uninterruptible-power supply units, and the emergency-power generators used in outages.
Hurricane Dolly, a Category 2 storm, hit July 23. It brought 5-12 inches of rainfall to the Rio Grande Valley, causing widespread flooding and wind damage. The hurricane's eye came ashore at South Padre Island with near 100-mph winds. The RAHC had to be closed for nearly a week due to repairs.
The Harlingen camera, set up in 2006, is one of four on the university's CampusCam network. Others are in Laredo and San Antonio.