Twice a day, until recently, technicians at the National Weather Service (NWS) released balloons into the atmosphere from nearly 100 locations. As these balloons sailed upward, small data collection instruments called radiosondes went with them, capturing the atmospheric data that — along with information from ocean buoys, satellites, and even hurricane-hunting aircraft — feeds the computer models meteorologists around the country use to predict the weather. Now, following a series of bud...
