3 balloon reports flagged, satellite sector moved
Notices & outages
An operational notice from the Senior Duty Meteorologist.
Balloon reports UPDATED 12Z RAOB RECAP...
Twice a day, NWS and partner agencies release weather balloons that carry a radiosonde — a small instrument package that radios back temperature, humidity, pressure and wind as it climbs. Those soundings are one of the main ingredients in a forecast model’s starting conditions. This section is the roll call of stations that had a problem for the 12Z run.
3 stations were flagged: 2 sent no usable sounding at all, 1 reported a numeric status code, 1 had bad data removed by quality control. A handful of gaps is normal and is not by itself a sign of a forecast problem — the models are built to work with an incomplete picture.
| Station | Where | What happened | As printed |
|---|---|---|---|
| FFC 72215 | Peachtree City, GA | No weather balloon data from this station reached the NAM run. The GFS run did get a report from it. | No report for the NAM...in for the GFS |
| UIL 72797 | Quillayute, WA | No weather balloon data from this station reached the model for this cycle — either no launch happened or the data did not arrive in time. unrecognised status code 10159 | No report for the NAM...10159 for the GFS |
| YVQ 71043 | Norman Wells A, Nwt · Canada | Quality control removed part of this sounding before it reached the models: temps/moisture at 496 mb, 360 mb, 298 mb and 249 mb...non-meteorological and super-adiabatic lapse rate. The rest of the sounding was still used. | Purged temps/moisture at 496 mb, 360 mb, 298 mb and 249 mb...non-meteorological and super-adiabatic lapse rate |
Satellite moves MDS STATUS...
Each GOES weather satellite has two “mesoscale sectors” — small, movable windows that the satellite photographs roughly every 60 seconds, far more often than its routine full-disk and continental scans. Forecasters aim them at whatever is most important that day. This section announces where they are being pointed and for how long.
GOES-West is pointing mesoscale sector 1 at a point about 40 mi W of Rock Springs, WY — to support flash flood and heavy rainfall forecasting. That means this patch of sky gets a fresh satellite image about once a minute instead of every 5 to 10 minutes, so forecasters can watch storms develop almost in real time.
- Centre point
- 41.5°N, 110.0°W view on map
- Window
- from until
- Reason given
- excessive rainfall monitoring in Montana
Show the original message
Exactly as NWS transmitted it. Everything above is our plain-English reading of this text — if the two ever disagree, this is the authoritative version.
000
NOUS42 KWNO 191516
ADMSDM
SENIOR DUTY METEOROLOGIST NWS ADMINISTRATIVE MESSAGE
NWS CENTRAL OPERATIONS COLLEGE PARK MD
1516Z SAT SEP 19 2026
The 12Z GFS began and is running on time with 12 Alaskan...24
Canadian...38 CONUS...12 Mexican...9 Caribbean...and 8 Pacific
raobs available for ingest.
UPDATED 12Z RAOB RECAP...
72215/FFC - No report for the NAM...in for the GFS
72797/UIL - No report for the NAM...10159 for the GFS
71043/YVQ - Purged temps/moisture at 496 mb, 360 mb, 298 mb and
249 mb...non-meteorological and super-adiabatic
lapse rate
MDS STATUS...
GOES-W MDS Sector 1 is centered over 41.5N/110W from 15Z until
20/12Z in support of excessive rainfall monitoring in Montana.
Ready/SDM/NCO