National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Tracking Storms with Impacts in the Eastern and Northwest U.S. into Friday

A storm will track north of the Great Lakes Friday with widespread rain showers across the Eastern U.S. along and ahead of its cold front. Further south along the front isolated severe thunderstorms are possible. A Pacific storm will continue moving across the Northwest U.S. into Friday with additional low elevation rain, gusty winds, and mountain snow. 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