Real time weather balloon tracking | Hacker News Reader

Real time weather balloon tracking

sondehub.org

127 pointsL_22620 comments

If you are ever going to be near Dulles airport I highly recommend doing the NWS tour. They have a well organized/rehearsed tour and put up with all sorts of questions. At the end of the tour they launch a balloon. I imagine other NWS forecast centers have similar tours.

https://www.weather.gov/lwx/tourrequest

Yes they do. My local center will give a tour to a group of 6 or more. I haven't put a group together yet, but it's on my list.

There's also a version dedicated to tracking amateur radio high-altitude balloons at https://amateur.sondehub.org

The Vaisala product page for their RadioSondes has a few pictures and datasheets (at the bottom) that are quite interesting - the RS41-SGPE has a transmitting distance of 350KM and weighs 94 grams (probably without batteries)

https://www.vaisala.com/en/products/weather-environmental-se...

YouTube teardown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ikRJMeSUTI

According to NWS' website, most of these weather balloon are dropped at 0UTC and 12UTC everyday, so it's the time to watch out for those balloon.

Launching weather balloons is routine, and requires no special preparation. If you are launching at an airport, you usually have to notify ATC.

But radiosondes and balloons come under an exemption, so can be flown pretty much anywhere. I think the exemption allows up to 2kg payloads. Radiosondes (the new Vaisala ones) are around 120g, and it's pretty cool technology.

I've helped to launch two weather balloons, one at south pole and one at summit station in Greenland. The one in Greenland was quite difficult to launch due to high winds...

what do you consider "at an airport"? depending on the size of the airport, the area might be significantly larger than you might expect. especially so if you happen to be in a line of approach which can extend hundreds of miles out. as an example, I launched a small balloon west of Abilene TX, and had to notify DFW ATC (Abilene to DFW is ~175 miles).

if you're going to launch any kind of something >400', you should do the responsible thing and contact ATC. if they say you're fine and no further contact, then great. they'll ask the size of your balloon, the size of the payload, the expected altitude, expected flight duration, and if you have any radio beacons they can listen to, and similar question. they didn't even ask me my purpose. it's a really simple phone call to make. the last thing you want to see happen is some sort of incident involving your balloon.

The skew t charts are good for sail planes

https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/upperair/skew-t-log-p-diagram...

I think that's what i find most useful from the balloons

Wow, are the cars tornado chasers like those in the movie Twister? I'd love to read more about those, but really cool to see how all these are moving. Way more things out there then I thought.

Depends on the level of chaser. One professional that I know has reinforced his windows to survive hail and other potential debris. He's now to the point where he has sponsors, so his car has vinyl wraps and damn near looks like it would be at home at a NASCAR event.

The cars on the map are the locations of people who are hunting for balloons after they have fallen back to earth. SondeHub's "chase mode" allows you to announce your position so that others will know you're in the area and will possibly soon collect a nearby balloon.

OP: Esrange in Kiruna should be listed as an operation. It even has a label for "Esrange Balloon Pad" on the OSM map you use.

Behold, for this is the Golden Age of (Weather) Ballooning

nounhub.com is associated with pornhub for good or bad. Kind of like calling a train wheel assembly a "bogey" in the UK and trying to remain mature about it.

Does anyone on HN now have much experience with weather balloons? How much preparation do you need to do to launch? I assume you'd have to inform the relevant authorities, has that process become more onerous after the Chinese balloon incident? What is a launch like? How long after launch do you get usable data?

Edited to add: a flagged comment mentioned GitHub. I guess I always think of Git first, and "hub" barely registers. Pornhub somehow is the opposite for me. It may have been intended as an insult, but that comment made me think, thank you random Internet person.

I think it's just you associating it with porn. I thought of github.

Grubhub, too. Methinks GP is revealing more about themself than they realize.

Lol, I don't like pornhub or any of the big sites. Too much incest, non-consensual scenarios, and making woman performers dress or appear too young.

I think I saw the story about pornhub and Texas on HN before I made that comment. So it was somewhat fresh in my mind.

What about github?

What about youSOMETHING.com and SOMETHINGtube.com ? There is youtube? But what about youporn and redtube!?!?

There are a lot more SOMETHINGhub sites that are not-porn (ex: scihub, github) than the one pornhub site.

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