Day 1, Visit With the National Weather Service - Chanhassen and Trip to Des Moines

We met with a meteorologist named Todd, he had over 30 years of experience at the office. He welcomed us in and showed us around a bit. There was a wall with several tv's on it showing live news feeds, the most recent radar scans, as well as weather balloon readings and other nerdy stuff. One of the main events of our visit was the weather balloon setup, launch, and readings. If your not familiar, forecast offices all around the US launch a weather balloon every 12 hours. The launch times are synchronized so that all offices nation wide launch within the same hour. They contain a large hydrogen balloon with a parachute, and at the bottom is a radiosonde, a small battery powered sensor pack which collects and transmits atmospheric data over digital radio back down to the forecast site. As the radiosonde rises through the atmosphere, its data is collected in an antenna on the ground. Computers within the forecast site plot the position of the radiosonde as well as its atmospheric readings with height in order to form a special and complicated plot called a Skew-T plot and Hodograph. 

I know all of this technical jargon may be confusing so to put it simply, the weather balloon provides meteorologists, forecasting computer models, and the general public with valuable information about the current contents and movement of the atmosphere plotted against height. 

Later on we got to talking about storm spotting with Todd and the system is pretty cool. They have several different ways which trained civilians can submit weather reports on inclement weather. Sources ranging from online forms to amateur radio operations are used to ensure redundancy in the reporting process as well as to ensure that everybody has at least one viable option to report with. No internet or service? No problem! You can submit reports from across the world with a simple HF radio rig. In your car and you can't type up a report? No problem! Just give them a call. 

Being a trained spotter myself, it was very reassuring to hear how much these forecast offices value spotter reports. It was also very interesting to hear his take on storm chasing. You see, the National Weather Service doesn't explicitly suggest that storm spotters should leave the comfort of their homes and chase a storm, in fact they condone it in most cases so that no one gets too confident and makes a mistake which would fault the NWS. However, the legion of chasers which(with proper training) safely get near thunderstorms provide information which is second to none when it comes to protecting the public. 

We told Todd that we would be heading out today to get near storms and he told us to not get too close to them or get egotistical about it and we would be safe.

After our forecast office visit, we packed our bags and got to driving to Des Moines. My forecast partner, Owen unfortunately injured his foot a few weeks earlier so that means I will be the only driver during this short trip. As the trip progresses, the place which we will setup to spot some storms will become more and more clear. For now, It's its in the cards for us to end up all the way down in Texas. While I haven't driven so far in a few days before, I am very confident that if i get good rest through the trip, I won't get too tired. The initial drive down to Des Moines felt great, we just checked into our room and are ready to get a good night of sleep.