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A very critical component of the National
Weather Service forecasting and warning
system is the upper air balloon, actually
it’s called a radioson and here is the
instrument and this instrument again is
called a radioson is released twice a day
from about ninety national weather
services offices across the United States.
The data from the instrument is sent back
in real time. The instrument itself does
not store the data. It’s sent back in real
time to a computer system here at the
National Weather Service office and we
plot the data on what’s called a skew T
log P diagram. It’s a vertical profile
of the atmosphere on this diagram and it’s
the temperature and humidity, pressure
and wind that were plotting. And very
critical to weather forecasting is to
know is there a weak storm system passing
through at say eighteen or twenty thousand
feet. Because if there is and were not
aware of it, then a forecast for this
afternoon might be sunny when in reality
it turns out to be mostly cloudy with rain
showers. Because possibly we didn’t know
that system that weak system was moving
through at eighteen or twenty thousand feet.
This data from the balloon shows us those
systems at those levels and helps us to
forecast. In addition to that this is very
critical in severe weather when were
anticipating severe thunderstorms or tornados,
flash flooding. Three, four, five days in
advance of a hurricane making land fall working
with FEMA to let them know where we expect
the hurricane to make land fall so they can
preposition resources and be ready so when
the disaster strikes their not then starting
to get ready for it their already in place
ready to go and they can immediately move
into that area and help the people in need.
This data forty years ago with the computer
processing we had, took us much longer to
receive the data back from the balloon release
and to analyze it. We use to have to plot
this data by hand and then analyze to
determine the threats of thunderstorms,
tornados and flash flooding. Where as today
it’s a manner of minutes when we receive this data
back and can have that information at our
finger tips much more quickly. And its important
in forecasting the weather again not whats
happening right now where you are but what’s
happening upstream from you what’s coming in,
in the next few days. And so across the world
if we could increase this network and release
more of those balloons that would help in weather
forecasting. Without this data I would say we
would be back in the early nineteen hundreds
forecasting basically day to day without this
information.So it is really a critical component
of weather forecasting today.