Weather Videos

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• WEATHER BALLOON INFLATION, RELEASE AND RADIOSONDE VIDEOS 
• DUST DEVILS AND LARGE HAIL VIDEO
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WEATHER BALLOON INFLATION, RELEASE AND RADIOSONDE VIDEOS 

The two short VIDEO CLIPS below will give you a sense of "being there" during a weather balloon inflation and release.

The purpose of these flights is to transport up into the atmosphere an instrument called a radiosonde to measure and continuously transmit back to the observer, pressure, temperature and humidity data. Tracking computers on the ground calculate wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere during the flight.

Made of latex, balloons can expand to as much as 25 feet when they get to the thinner upper levels of the atmosphere (up to 100,000 feet). At this point they will finally burst. A small parachute attached to the collection/transmitting instrument (radiosonde) helps it gently fall back to the earth. Releases occur twice daily at NWS stations all around the nation, at 11:00am and 11:00pm GMT.

Once a flight has been completed, the data is sent to the NWS supercomputers near Washington DC. for compilation and analysis which lead to local forecasts by the National Weather Service and private weather providers such as your local television station. Now click on the links below to watch.

Your computer will need to have the "RealVideo" plug-in and a sound card with speakers to access this information 

#1 Inflation and Release Video

Watch the inflation and release, then listen to the signal from the attached instrument (radiosonde) as it transmits data back to the ground where the data is plotted on a computer.

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#2 Weather Balloon Release with Radiosonde Information Video

This is a very informative that gives information about how the upper air data is collected and sent to the NWS super-computers for processing before it is eventually used to predict the weather.

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DUST DEVILS AND LARGE HAIL

The video below comes from the America's Funniest Home Videos TV show.  It shows a couple of clips of dust devils and a couple of large hail. Watch till the end, when there is an amazing clip of hail falling into water.