[wcameron]

If you check out the abstract at: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173 you'll see that it mentions a temporal resolution of a few minutes or so, for the entire west coast. A fleet of drones might be cheaper, but they wouldn't be able to cover that kind of area that often.

I worked doing something similar with using weather satellites to detect volcanic eruptions in the north pacific. This is totally feasible in the here and now, whereas I imagine public acceptance of massive surveillance drone use is a bit far off.