Hello Everyone, Understanding the weather is important no matter where you are. But up in the Arctic it can be life or death. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) Alaska Region provides weather, hydrologic, climate forecasts and volcanic ash and tsunami warnings for the state of Alaska and its surrounding waters. Barrow is home to the nations northern most weather monitoring station. We got a behind the scenes visit with meteorologist technician Gina Strum who was working the graveyard shift. Gina showed us the ins and outs of forecasting the weather in this remote region of the world including how these cool animated weather maps are made.
(Video with audio)
It was 3am in the morning and time to launch our weather balloon. The station launches two weather balloons everyday, 12 hour apart. The balloons are equipped with GPSA Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system used to track the location or position of objects on the Earth’s surface. and record wind direction, speed, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. Gina showed us just how the system works.
(Video with audio)
The balloon was ready to go and I was very excited and honored to be the balloon launcher.
(Video with audio)
It was a really cool watching the data stream in from the balloon and we had a great visit with Gina. If you are interested in weather, check out NOAA's NWS website. You will find all kinds of information and cool weather graphs and animations.
Comments