Weather Balloon Launch

I will start with the weather outlook and get into the good stuff. For tomorrow, the SPC has highlighted the southern portions of Mississippi and Alabama for having a slight risk. Rick plans to chase it and invited me to join him (he is leaving today), but I declined... keeping my eyes to a closer prize... on Monday in Southwest Georgia... maybe. For Rick, this is how it looks:

IT APPEARS THE GREATEST TORNADO THREAT WILL EXIST S OF I-20 ACROSS S-CNTRL/SERN LA AND SRN MS WHERE A MOIST...UNSTABLE BOUNDARY LAYER WILL COEXIST WITH STRENGTHENING LOW-LEVEL SHEAR. THE DAMAGING WIND AND TORNADO THREAT IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE SUNDAY NIGHT INTO MONDAY MORNING IN ASSOCIATION WITH PRE-FRONTAL CONVECTIVE BAND MOVING THROUGH MS INTO WRN AL.

On Monday, that slight risk moves much closer to my neck of the woods (cutting into southwest GA, which seems to be a hot spot for tornadic action in our little section of the CONUS... Enterprise, Americus, Mitchell/Baker County - hot spot) so I might just need to take a vacation day on Monday and make my Garmin earn its cost. Here's what the SPC has to say about it:

THIS MOISTURE AND DAYTIME HEATING SHOULD CONTRIBUTE TO WEAK TO MODERATE INSTABILITY MONDAY. THE COMBINATION OF A MOIST...UNSTABLE AIR MASS AND MODERATELY STRONG VERTICAL SHEAR SUGGEST THE POTENTIAL FOR EMBEDDED SEVERE STORMS CAPABLE OF MAINLY DAMAGING WINDS AND A COUPLE OF TORNADOES.

I'll take it. I will continue to monitor the progress of this storm. It'll be interesting to see how it interacts with the Dewvoid. I'll let you know if I end up chasing it on Monday.

(Only S. GA/N. FL... had to stop and shoot this...) Ahh, yes, onto the meat and potatoes of today's post. As you know I went to the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee yesterday, to witness a balloon launch. Bob Duggan was the host for the evening, and he offered a tour of the facility and a wonderfully detailed explanation of the weather balloon/radiosonde launch, showing the step-by-step process. It was fascinating! The balloon is incredibly huge, and we were able to maintain a visual for quite some time, as it drifted off into the sunset. Here is my photographic synopsis of the events, as they occurred...That is the weather balloon, all inflated and ready to be armed with the "harmless weather instrument" (the radiosonde with parachute). The radiosonde contains many different weather data collection components, and it contains an envelope for returning it if found. I have decided that I will go chasing radiosondes one of these days.It was a beautiful day for a balloon launch, slightly breezy, but visibility was GREAT!Yes, yes, that's me cheezing it up with Bob Duggan, pre-launch. Yes, yes, my shirt says "holy scrap". Bob was so considerate, making sure I was ready before he released the weather balloon. I was laying on that platform, with camera in hand. It did shoot up extremely fast through that shoot.Up, up... ... and away... the good news is that it missed the antenna and the plane flying over. All-in-all, a very cool weather experience. Special thanks to Bob Duggan for taking the time to show us the event, and to Tim Barry for setting it all up. Aside from that, I took some shots of the guys hard at work on their AFD for the evening... I complimented Bryan on his AFDs, which I have commented on before....Here is a blip from what he was working on while I was there, talking about Saturday.

WHAT DID LOOK LIKE A PRETTY GOOD CHANCE OF WIDESPREAD RAINFALL OVER THE AREA 24 HOURS AGO IS NOW IN JEOPARDY.

He has obviously not been educated in the weather killing powers of the Dewvoid. Thanks for putting up with me guys. I really enjoyed the trip. No word on the Milton weather event at that point, but it fell under Mobile's CWA. Here is their preliminary report. There you have it folks, a series of microbursts.

After that, I had a wonderful comedy experience, with the conclusion being a fire eating comedian. It was a hysterical show. I laughed my booty off.Interesting, huh?

Happy Saturday, y'all.
~Dewdrop