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News from WPTV NewsChannel 5 (www.wptv.com)

New weather balloons help with hurricane prediction

Last Update: 9/26/08 9:04 pm

A new weather balloon program was launched today to help the prediction of hurricane tracks.  Hurricanes cause millions of dollars in damage when they hit, but they can also costs millions of dollars in evacuation costs even when they don't. .... Accuracy is everything.

The WISDOM project seeks to improve hurricane forecasting by launching weather balloons all around the storms to help sample the atmosphere around a storm.

Students from Mississippi State University, University of Miami, and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados came together to learn how to launch this new " Super-Pressure" Balloon. It caries a GPS tracking device on it that tells the altitude and location, which will help tell the wind speed around a storm.

About 60 balloons will be launched per storm, filling the gaps in data that exist over the ocean.

The balloons are expected to stay up there for 2-5 days.

Over one hundred of these balloons are going to be launched ahead of our next hurricane ... and if all goes as planned, we could be looking at more accurate forecast tracks a whole day earlier .... which could save millions of dollars in unnecessary evacuations ... and possibly lives.

Reporting from Miami, meteorologist James Wieland, WPTV NewsChannel 5>>

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