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National Weather Service office at the Jacksonville International Airport. The large tower in the background is the WSR-88D radar. |
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Another view of the NWS office. Off to the right is the upper air targeting antenna (used to test the radiosonde tracking equipment before launch) and various rain gauges. |
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The balloon inflation building. Balloons are inflated with hydrogen inside the building. A radiosonde and parachute are then attached to the balloon. The balloon is then brought out of the large door and released. The tracking antenna is located in the dome on the top of the inflation building. |
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Preparing to bring the balloon and radiosonde out of the inflation building. |
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Launching the radiosonde. |
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The radiosonde remote tracking station. The radiosonde is launched, then the tracking antenna is locked on it via the remote panel. The equipment is then put into automatic mode. Adjustments can then be made on the indoor panel. |
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The hydro-meteorological technician (HMT) can view and quality control weather data as it received via the Automatic Radio Theodolite (ART) computer. |
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The operations area inside the weather office. The meteorologist in the background creates the public zone and marine forecast packages, while the one in the foreground creates aviation and fire weather products. Also shown are several PC's, as well as AWIPS (Advanced Weather Information Processing System) - our main computer system. On the big screen is a typical AWIPS display. |
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