CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Corpus Christi is launching special weather balloon soundings to help the National Hurricane Center (NHC) track and forecast the latest “tropical trouble”.

These special soundings — essentially “bonus” balloon launches beyond the regular schedule — are giving meteorologists a closer look at atmospheric conditions as the NHC works to nail down its forecast for Isaias.

Bonus Balloons: NWS Corpus Christi collects more data to help predict Isaias

“A sounding is when we send up a weather balloon with a little piece of equipment on it,” Liz Sommerville, Senior Meteorologist at NWS Corpus Christi, said.
Each balloon carries instruments that gather meteorological data as it climbs higher into the atmosphere. “It just go from the surface all the way up into nearly the tropopause, which is roughly 100,000 ft up in the air,” Sommerville said.

The National Hurricane Center requested the additional data to better understand atmospheric conditions over Texas. “The reason why we’re doing a special is because the hurricane Center is wanting to get more information about what’s happening in the environment, especially over Texas right now, so that we can use it to help us adjust our forecasting and kind of give us a better idea of what’s going to happen with this disturbance,” Sommerville said.

On October 4th, the Corpus Christi Weather Forecast Office also moved its regular balloon launch to its original time. “We’ve just recently gone from our 18Z to back to a 12Z sounding. Uh, now with more staffing we’re able to do that back to 12Z or Zulu time,” Sommerville said. That shift moves the regular launch an early afternoon time of 1 p.m. to the more typical morning time or 7 a.m. Central Daylight Time.
Meteorologists at NWS Corpus Christi will continue the special soundings until Isaias has moved inland. To see the sounding data on a skew-T log-P chart, click here.

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