MARILYN CORNWELL: Marilyn's Photos - July 31st 2026

What an interesting Globe and Mail story today on the problems being experienced with the U.S. National Weather Service no longer launching their noon and midnight weather balloons on time. The is an activity done simultaneously worldwide at noon and midnight GMT. Doing this provides supercomputers with a uniform, three-dimensional snapshot of the atmosphere.

There are 900 - 1,300 meteorological stations across the globe and they are supposed to launch weather balloons twice each day at exactly the same time. There are even ships at sea who participate in the maritime observation networks.

One of the questions that AI wants to answer is How high do the balloons fly before the pop? They fly to altitudes between 20,000 and 30,000 metres before they pop. As the balloon rises it starts to expand and reaches the size of a two-storey house. Eventually the latex stretches to its limit and bursts. A small orange parachute opens automatically to bring the instrument package safely back to earth.

There are 30 to 31 upper-air monitoring stations across Canada and that means 60 - 62 balloons a day are released. The U.S. has around 92 weather stations. However, the U.S. has cut staffing and budget so severely that many of their balloons can't be launched on schedule so the synchronization isn't happening. The National weather service has suspended or delayed launches at over 25 stations - either stopping them or delaying their launches to later in the day.

So if you want to complain about the weather forecast, you now have the answer as to why it isn't as accurate as it might have been or should be or could be.

What would be the risks? Predicting sudden thunderstorms, heavy rainfall, and tornadoes in real time, receiving less advanced notice of dangerous weather events, and degrading forecast accuracy for neighbouring regions and downwind areas.

I found the first cartoon on a cartoon stock website - isn't is excellent for us old-timers. The second comes from a previous post about the "worst" beginning sentences of famous novels.