Earlier this week, Scott Coonfare emailed in a question for Anello Answers It and asked about weather balloons. What are they? How do they work? Why do we need them?
Great questions, Scott!
The first thing you need to know is that weather balloons are launched by The National Weather Service 2 time a day, at 6am and 6pm every day, from 92 sites across the country.
The balloons have a small microchip, called a radiosonde, attached to their string. This sonde takes measurements of barometric pressure, wind, atmospheric energy, temperature, and dew point. The information retrieved and transferred from these weather balloons and radiosondes is the cornerstone of all weather forecasting.
So, it all starts when we take a weather balloon (various sizes are uses, but 150g is most common) and inflate it with helium. We then let the balloon and accompanying sonde rise in the atmosphere. As the balloon rises, it …