Yesterday I officially started volunteering at the NWS-CHS. I shadowed the intern at the office, who is in charge of upper air which basically means that he launches the weather balloon and does quality control on the raw data. The goal of shadowing was to give me experience so that I can get a better score on NWS applications. With that in mind, this is what I did last night...
I went in at 4:45 and stayed until 8:30. When I got there the intern (Doug) went over what we were going to be doing and gave a little more in depth tour of the background operations of the NWS. After that we went and got the weather balloon ready for launch. Dough allowed me to do as much as I could so that I can put on the applications that I have actually done it. After that we went and got the rawinsonde ready for the launch. We got everything ready and he allowed me to launch the balloon. Pretty cool! We then went in and watched the data coming in. We continued this for the hour and a half while discussing with other meteorologists about the future of the NWS and possible career tracks. Very informative.
The flight ended after 103 minutes and went as high as 10 mb! After that I shortly left but it was a great experience. We are currently working on me coming back during a severe weather event and to shadow a forecaster. The main thing I got last night was that if confirmed that I made the right career choice!
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