Weather Balloon

[Terry]

Hi All:

I was watching James Bond marathon on Spike. They released a "weather balloon".

Would someone explain "exactly" what a weather balloon purpose is? Are they still used.

Any books worth reading about weather balloons?

Thanks;

Terry

 

[jesse]

Hm.. I don't know for sure.

But I would think it would be for tracking winds aloft or something of that nature.

 

[Areeda]

Yes weather balloons are launched multiple times per day from locations around the country. The offical name is Radiosonde Observations. The data produces the Skew-T/Log P diagrams with temperature, dew point, wind velocity and direction up to the 100 mb altitude.

You can go to http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/upper/ to see the data from these.

Best place for information I've found is Scott Dennstaedt' website http://chesavtraining.com/, he's also a member of this forum.

If you're like me you can ask Scott dumb questions until you get a clue what they mean.

joe

 

[Everskyward]

Would someone explain "exactly" what a weather balloon purpose is? Are they still used.

About 15 years ago I took a tour of the Weather Service office in Denver which was near the old Stapleton airport. Part of the tour was that I got to help release a weather balloon. It had an instrument package attached to it that measured certain conditions (temperature, humidity, pressure, etc). I think it transmitted the information back to the station. I guess the main thing I remember was being outside at night, in the winter, in the cold, trying to hang on to this thing, while the other people teased me about floating away with it.

As for the more technical aspect, here's a site for you.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mob/balloon.shtml

 

[gismo]

Hi All:

I was watching James Bond marathon on Spike. They released a "weather balloon".

Would someone explain "exactly" what a weather balloon purpose is? Are they still used.

Any books worth reading about weather balloons?

Thanks;

Terry

Here's a link:

http://www.ua.nws.noaa.gov/factsheet.htm

The NWS still releases them from about 90 locations across the country three times a day IIRC. They are tracked as they ascend and they send back temp, pressure, and moisture data which is fed to the supercomputers that model the atmosphere for weather forecasting. I used to have one of the electronics packages and a parachute that I got when I worked in the same building as the NWS used to be at KMSP.

 

[silver-eagle]

Who says TV isn't educational.

 

[Terry]

Thanks for the Info.

James Bond uses a lot of "Hi-tech" stuff but this weather balloon was just your cheap store bought brand. Red and round.

Hey, it fooled me, but then i just like James Bond.

Terry

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

They seem to use the big sky theory but I have passed pretty close to one.
There are other balloons out there too, a friend was contracted by an oil business to release them 2X/wk here. They carry a radio and receive info to all this company's rigs from OK to the Gulf of Mexico and repeats it to headquarters. The package is 5-10lbs as I recall.

 

[gismo]

They seem to use the big sky theory but I have passed pretty close to one.
There are other balloons out there too, a friend was contracted by an oil business to release them 2X/wk here. They carry a radio and receive info to all this company's rigs from OK to the Gulf of Mexico and repeats it to headquarters. The package is 5-10lbs as I recall.

The NWS office where they release the balloons is almost exactly under the ILS at my home base. A few years ago I queried both the NWS and the FSDO about this potential conflict, but all they could say is that they've never had a collision.

 

[cameronbm]

I got my introduction to weather balloons by finding one in my hay field after it had been through my haybine. While I can't say much for the balloon itself, the instrument package attached to the balloon is one tough bugger. It survived the trip through the haybine with only minor damage (a cracked case and a few chips). The strings attaching the two were an entirely different story -- took me an hour to clear them out of the rollers.

I returned the instrument package to the weather service and got a nice thank you note in return.

Bruce

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

The strings attaching the two were an entirely different story -- took me an hour to clear them out of the rollers.

they should have at least sent someone to throw bales for a couple of hours to help you out in return!