National Weather Service Center

Today the National Weather Service Center held an Open House to show the public all the interesting things they have out there.  This center provides weather, hydrologic, and climatic forecasts and warnings for the District of Columbia, much of Maryland, the northern third of Virginia, and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

This is the forecast operations center where all forecasts for the County Warning Area are made.  To read more about the forecast process, click here.

This is the doppler radar and a tied down weather balloon.

The center releases weather balloons twice a day, every day, to measure upper air data.  Instrument packages are attached to the helium-filled balloons and are launched at 70 sites in the continental United States, with an additional 22 sites in Alaska, Hawaii, and Pacific Territories, and others in Canada and Mexico. For a map of the North American launch sites, click here. These launches are synchronized worldwide so that the whole world is collecting data at the very same time.  How cool is that?! 

Up, up and away.  You can't make out the data collecting equipment this high up.  The orange you can see is a parachute that floats the equipment back down to Earth when the balloon bursts at 100,000 feet. 

Only 20% of the data equipment packages are ever recovered.  Luckily, they are not needed after they begin to fall.  All the info has already been sent out of them to the office.  The center would love to recover all that they can though because they can be reused.  It sure would be fun to find one someday.  A self addresses stamped envelope comes in each one so that they can be returned if found.  To read more about upper air observations, click here.

We also got to tour the Sterling Field Support Center, which is responsible for researching, testing and developing a variety of meteorological sensors and systems for the world.

This was their temperature/humidity chamber.  It was set on 150 degrees with 3 percent humidity.  We all got to stand inside it.  It felt like a hot oven but was very bearable because of the lack of humidity.

This is the pressure chamber so they can make sure that the info collecting equipment they send up with the weather balloons can hold up to the pressure they will experience at 100,000 feet.

This chamber was to test to see if equipment can stand extreme ice.

This is the wind tunnel.  It can make winds up to 158 miles per hour, same as the upper end of a category 4 hurricane.  You can't tell by the picture, but it was blowing away at near full speed and turning that wind measuring device so fast that we were for sure that it was going to blow to smithereens.

This is the engine propeller that provides the suction for the wind tunnel.  It was huge and very, very powerful.  Ethan's favorite part of the tour.

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