13 balloon reports flagged, satellite sector moved
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-East is pointing mesoscale sector 1 over the eastern Pacific, about 635 mi WSW of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico — to keep a close eye on a tropical system. 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
- 20.5°N, 119.5°W view on map
- Window
- from until
- Reason given
- monitoring Hurricane Rachel
Balloon reports 00Z NAM 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 00Z run of the NAM.
13 stations were flagged: 3 sent no usable sounding at all, 8 reported a numeric status code, 1 was missing part of the transmission, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| JAX 72206 | Jacksonville/Intl, FL | 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. | No report |
| GRB 72645 | Green Bay/A.-Straubel, WI | 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. | No report |
| OTX 72786 | Spokane, 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. | No report |
| OTZ 70133 | Kotzebue, Ralph Wien, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| BET 70219 | Bethel/Bethel Airport, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| SNP 70308 | St. Paul Islands, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| AKN 70326 | King Salmon, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| YAK 70361 | Yakutat, AK | Ground equipment failure — the station’s tracking/receiving equipment was down, so no usable sounding was produced. | 10142 |
| TWC 72274 | Tucson, AZ | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| VEF 72388 | Las Vegas, NV | Ground equipment failure — the station’s tracking/receiving equipment was down, so no usable sounding was produced. | 10142 |
| GCM 78384 | Owen Roberts Airport Grand Cay · Cayman Islands | Ground equipment failure — the station’s tracking/receiving equipment was down, so no usable sounding was produced. | 10142 |
| BDA 78016 | L F Wade Intl · Bermuda | The station reported, but part of the sounding transmission was missing — specifically TTBB, the "significant levels" section that carries the extra detail between the standard pressure levels. | Missing TTBB |
| AMA 72363 | Amarillo/INTL, TX | Quality control removed part of this sounding before it reached the models: wind 716 to 710 mb.. super-adiabatic lapse rate. The rest of the sounding was still used. | Purged wind 716 to 710 mb.. super-adiabatic lapse rate. |
Notices & outages
An operational notice from the Senior Duty Meteorologist.
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 060129 ADMSDM SENIOR DUTY METEOROLOGIST NWS ADMINISTRATIVE MESSAGE NWS CENTRAL OPERATIONS COLLEGE PARK MD 0127Z TUE OCT 06 2026 MDS STATUS... GOES-E MDS Sector 1 will be centered over 20.5N/119.5W from 0600Z to 07/0600Z in support of monitoring Hurricane Rachel. 00Z NAM RAOB RECAP... 72206/JAX - No report 72645/GRB - No report 72786/OTX - No report 70133/OTZ - 10159 70219/BET - 10159 70308/SNP - 10159 70326/AKN - 10159 70361/YAK - 10142 72274/TWC - 10159 72388/VEF - 10142 78384/GCM - 10142 78016/BDA - Missing TTBB 72363/AMA - Purged wind 716 to 710 mb.. super-adiabatic lapse rate. There were 9 Alaskan...26 Canadian...61 CONUS...13 Mexican... 8 Caribbean and 9 Pacific stations available for ingest. Green/SDM/NCO