6abc Weather Balloon lands in Mount Holly, N.J.
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The 6abc Weather Balloon has landed in a field in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
Action News meteorologist Karen Rogers tracked the progress of the balloon all morning long.
The 6abc Weather Balloon was launched around 6:37 a.m. Thursday from Farming Ridge Park in Exeter Township, Berks County.
Then just before 10 a.m., Karen and her team spotted the weather balloon at a sod farm near Eastampton Farms not too far off of Route 206.
Karen will now retrieve data from the weather balloon, as well as video.
Every day, twice a day, squadrons of balloons, 900 worldwide, soar up to record conditions of the atmosphere. The National Weather Service has been using these balloons since the 1930s.
The instruments attached to the balloon, called a radiosonde, measure the atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity.
Weather balloons are launched to gather high-altitude weather data critical for forecasting.
Joseph Maydell, an aerospace engineer who used to work for NASA, helped us prepare for the launch.
"With modern technology such as satellite and radar we get imagery of what's happening in the atmosphere. These radiosondes sampling the upper levels of the atmosphere provide critical data that is essential to our forecasting weather models," Maydell said.
The Go Pro camera attached to the balloon will give us breathtaking views, as well as showing an inside look at how the weather is forecasted.
As the balloon moves farther away from the surface of Earth, there is less air pressure pushing against the outside of it.
This allows the gas inside the balloon to expand as it rises, to four times its original size before it bursts.
The flight typically takes more than two hours to the edge of space: 25 miles high!
As soon as the balloon begins to float, instruments on board measure temperature, pressure, and relative humidity, beaming data back to computers.
An on-board GPS records the movement of the balloon as it flies up, calculating wind speed and direction at different altitudes.
All this information is fed into weather computers that create three-dimensional models. These forecast models are sent to weather stations across the country to help meteorologists create weather forecasts you depend on every single day.
