National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Tracking Storms with Impacts in the Northwest and Northeast U.S.

A Pacific storm will move across the Northwest U.S. through Thursday with low elevation rainfall, gusty winds, and mountain snows. A storm crossing the Northeast U.S. will continue gusty to high winds, scattered rain showers and limited snow showers into Thursday. Read More >

Recently, we recorded an upper-air launch at our office. Much of the edited video is from a first person perspective, giving unique insight into how our meteorologists launch the weather balloon. It was breezy the day the radiosonde was launched, adding some excitement to the mix.

We normally launch the balloon twice a day. The sounding, as it is called, is released around 4am/pm or 5am/pm depending on whether daylight savings time is in effect or not.

Example output from our most recent sounding:

Most recent sounding from KRAP Upper-Air site