Up, Up + Away: Balloons Track Weather In Western Colorado And Worldwide

Courtesy NWS.

Grand Junction meteorologist Jeff Colton remembers growing up in Denver during the 1982 Christmas blizzard, when it snowed 24inches and the city practically shut down. “I was hooked; I wanted to know why,” recalls Colton, a longtime forecaster and now the warning coordinator at the National Weather Service(NWS) in Grand Junction. “Most meteorologists get hooked as kids after going through a big weather event.”

Outside NWS offices located near the Grand Junction Regional Airport, a weather balloon is launched twice daily in coordination with other balloon launches taking place worldwide. In Grand Junction, certified operations staff and managers take turns launching the balloons— which always happens at the same time each day — 0Z and 122 Greenwich Mean Time, GMT, (in Colorado that’s 4 a.m. and 4p.m.). A tiny instrument inside the balloon immediately begins transmitting data indicating temperatures, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure.

Weather balloons expand and rise to about 100,000 feet high (20 miles) before they eventually pop, and a weather instrument called a radio sonde parachutes to the ground. In the past, the NWS would ask people who found remains of the balloon to send it back to them in the included postage-paid envelope. “We just got a balloon returned to us from a 1978 launch,” Colton says. “It’s fun to see it; a lot of people send them back.”

These days, the instruments are so small that people are encouraged to keep or discard what they find. Data is not stored inside the device; the information is radio-signaled back to the NWS.

Grand Junction television weatherman Russ Pappas. By Sharron Sullivan.

Balloons have been tracked east to Denver, and they’ve also been found to go straight up and down over Grand Junction. Colton says he expects a lot of balloons end up over the Flat Top Mountains.

As the NWS warning coordinator, Colton informs the Colorado Department of Transportation, the National Park Service and various other agencies on current and upcoming weather events. He additionally gets called to wildfires in California and elsewhere, where he updates firefighters on humidity, wind shifts and other weather details all transmitted to his laptop computer. The NWS assisted Pitkin County with its emergency management operations during January’s Winter X Games in Aspen.

“There’s always someone in the office; the office never closes,” says Colton, who is among a team of local meteorologists (currently there are 15) who monitor the weather from Grand Junction, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Although balloons provide the most critical piece of the puzzle and can see through clouds, radar and satellites also transmit weather data to NWS computers. A radar system installed on top of Grand Mesa at just over 10,000 feet elevation also detects and transmits important weather information.

The NWS in Grand Junction tracks weather for an area encompassing 50,000 square miles, from Western Colorado’s Continental Divide to the four most eastern counties in Utah and to the borders of Wyoming and New Mexico. It’s one of the largest tracking territories in the United States, and meteorologists find it challenging due to the range of elevation covered — from14,000-foot mountain peaks to 4,000-foot desert valleys, says Colton. NWS offices across the United States send information they’ve gathered to Washington, D.C where super computers create climate models from the massive amount of collected data.

At the NWS office in Grand Junction the screen on the left shows weather model data used to help generate forecasts. The screen on the right is showing satellite data, radar and a gridded weather forecast.

From all this baseline weather info, different formulas are used to create hundreds of computer models to predict likely weather scenarios. “We look at the past to forecast the future based on balloon and surface observations,” Colton explains. Supercomputers plot where both high- and low-pressure systems are, as well as the location of strong winds and jet streams that steer the weather — information that the NWS shares with airline pilots who like to take advantage of riding the jet streams moving east, adds Colton.

“We adjust the model data and look at pattern changes to make adjustments to forecasts,” and to issue warnings and advisories, Colton says. Detailed spot forecasts are delivered as needed for emergency managers, land agencies and sheriffs’ offices. Aviation forecasts are sent out four times a day to airports on Colorado’s Western Slope, as well as those in Eastern Utah.

The NWS also keeps track of record temperatures, like Grand Junction’s record low of negative 23 degrees Fahrenheit on January 13, 1964 and its record high of 107 degrees Fahrenheit on July 8, 2021.

While a big storm inspired Colton to learn meteorology, a lack of storms is what prompted Grand Junction television weatherman Russ Pappas to study the science. He was working as a ski chairlift operator at a Vail ski resort when he became frustrated at predicted storms that failed to materialize. “I was tired of having big storms on the way and then not happen,” he recalls. “I was upset about missing storms; how does that happen? That’s what started it.

Pappas ended up working as a weather forecaster at the local Vail TV station where older, seasoned TV weathermen told him he had a knack for the job. He went on to earn a broadcast meteorology degree, and, after working at TV stations across the country, he returned to Colorado where he is now chief meteorologist at KREX News. The televised broadcasts primarily serve Montrose and Mesa counties, although the signal sometimes extends to Delta, Gunnison, Cortez, Rangely, Silt and the Four Corners region.

Pappas interprets data he receives from the NWS to create his nightly forecasts. He looks at hundreds of climate models and refers to a chat window for NWS emergency management to build on what he’s been observing about weather patterns over the past days and weeks. “I’m always looking upstream to verify with actual observations,” he says.

Pappas pulls data from collegiate weather sites, as well as from Mexico, and occasionally compares information with what’s going on in Europe. His phone beeps at all hours of the day and night with weather alerts and messages.

“For fun,” Pappas will look at “extreme” climate models — not to use on-air, but to keep in the back of his mind in the event weather conditions start to head in that direction.

“In Western Colorado, a lot we do is weather-driven,” he says. “The data allows us to understand patterns. We’re lucky to have this technology, this science.

Originally published in the Spring 2023 issue of Spoke+Blossom.