WISDOM Balloon Data

The NOAA WISDOM Balloon Program is like CWOP in that weather data are collected from separated locations, sent to MADIS for archival and quality checking and then distributed to users. Here, the data are winds determined by constant altitude balloons, launched by college student teams and others, from up to ten locations before and during, but far from, hurricane activity. More details are in a Washington Post Article.

The WISDOM Balloon launch sites are shown and listed below. The Maps link shows the location and has links to other maps. The Winds link gives the current surface winds near the launch site and clicking a location gives weather history. Here is current status of the sites.

N 38.75550 / W 27.06417 - Maps - Winds - Azores
N 13.33433 / W 59.61300 - Maps - Winds - Barbados
N 32.37050 / W 64.66200 - Maps - Winds - Bermuda
N 27.58200 / W 97.21933 - Maps - Winds - Corpus Christi, TX
N 14.75117 / W 17.47467 - Maps - Winds - Dakar, Senegal
N 24.88455 / W 80.68565 - Maps - Winds - Islamorada, FL
N 17.97900 / W 67.07883 - Maps - Winds - Lajas, PR
N 30.28283 / W 89.36783 - Maps - Winds - Waveland, MS
N 32.03367 / W 80.90397 - Maps - Winds - Tybee Island CGS, GA
N 37.93173 / W 75.38337 - Maps - Winds - Wallops Island CGS, VA

Randy Collander of NOAA ESRL Global Systems Division, has developed predicted trajectories if WISDOM Balloons were launched from the above launch sites. Here are 0-7 day predicted locations and 2-7 day predicted locations using GFS and FIM winds for WISDOM Balloons from all 10 sites. Wade Givins of Mississippi State University has developed a KMZ file to show these predictions on Google Earth. He has also developed a trajectory map display with KML file and links at the bottom of the Northern Gulf Institute web page.

Philip Gladstone, 2008 NOAA Environmental Hero Award recipient for making MADIS quality checking data widely accessable, provides Current WISDOM Tracker, a KML file for Google Earth that shows current and previous balloons. He has also developed a WISDOM RSS feed that you can add to your news reader to receive notice of WISDOM balloon flights and see balloon track maps. Also a twitter feed gives information on launches and positions.

Summaries of the WISDOM flights covering 09/26 to 10/22 and 10/22 to 11/05 and since 11/05 are available. The latest reports received since the top of the current hour are available and there won't be a file present if data have not been received since the top of the hour.