Environment Canada says it’s not giving up on weather balloons

Current contract for release of weather balloons in Kelowna to be cancelled this Friday

Atmospheric information gleaned from weather balloons launched in Kelowna is “not essential” to local forecasts, Environment Canada says.

Nevertheless, the agency plans to resume the twice-daily launching of the balloons once a suitable new release site is found.

“It was always and remains our intention to resume balloon launches once a suitable permanent location can be obtained and the proper equipment installed,” Pierre Manoni, Ottawa-based spokesman for Environment Canada, wrote in an email.

“We need a site that offers protection for the observers as they are preparing the equipment for launch,” Manoni wrote.

“The site also needs to have a large outside area free of vertical obstacles, and tripping hazards, and be in an area where the launches will not disrupt air traffic, as well as take into consideration the directions of the most frequent winds and storm paths.”

The current launch site, immediately next to the Mountain Weather Station at the UBC Okanagan campus, cannot be used once the university converts the grassy area into a parking lot. That project is expected to start within a few weeks.

Afe Mekonnen, the contractor who has been releasing the weather balloons from Kelowna for the past 12 years, raised concerns last week about the suspension of the program.

Mekonnen, whose contract will be cancelled this Friday, said the quality of local forecasts could be degraded if the balloons are not gathering information on such things as air temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind direction and wind speed.

There are 31 weather balloon release sites in Canada, including four in B.C. A large percentage are in the Arctic. While information from each station is useful in weather forecasting, Manoni said meteorologists also have many other sources of data.

“The data (from balloons) is not essential to weather forecasting for the immediate area,” he wrote.

“The data is an important source of information in the computer models, and there is a correlation between the amount and quality of data going into the computer models and the quality of the information they generate.

“That being said, it is difficult to quantify the impact of one missing station for the model as there are many other sources of information being ingested at the same time including observations from aircraft, and a high volume of data collected by satellites,” Manoni wrote.