Marine Radios Review

Have any of you ever taken a tour through a National Weather Service operations center?  Well, I haven’t.  But, I spoke to a person that took his Cub Scout group through one last week.  He was extremely taken by the sophisticated equipment that monitors the weather for our safety.  A couple of items of interest may be the fact that what we call rain drops, the weather service refers to them as “hydro meteors”.  If you think about it, it makes sense. but I’ve sure never called them that!  Another bizarre point of interest is how the data is obtained to enable the national weather service to accurately map out all the “Highs and Lows” for pressure centers across our nation.  It is my understanding that every 30 miles on a gridwork across the nation, a small weather balloon is released twice a day from each location and the recording device sends data to the service.  That never crossed my mind that this was  happening!  I always thought it was accomplished through the use of radar or satellites or something – I guess I never thought about it.  Hopefully you found this just as interesting.  None-the-less, we can be the recipients of that valuable information as we monitor and react to the latest weather information on our VHF Marine Radio.