National Weather Service Upton Open House At Brookhaven Lab

I went out today for the one day a year that the "New York, NY" forecast office of the National Weather Service opens its doors, as part of Brookhaven National Lab's Summer Sundays series.   I have "New York" in quotes in the previous sentence, because the office is located about 60 miles east of NYC out in Upton, Long Island (although they do monitor the Central Park weather station from there).  I've long been interested in remote sensing technology, automation and weather, and so this was a very cool visit.  (Remember, the word "geek" is in the title of this blog).

Here's the radar which covers most of downstate New York, and about 1/2 of Connecticut:

It's controlled by this system:

Live image from this radar here.  This station is just on the right side of the main forecasting center:

This meteorologist is working on the short range forecast:

He draws out the forecast conditions graphically, and then the system automatically generates forecasts for individual locations from that graphic:

This system takes the text forecasts and generates the automated voice broadcasts on NOAA weather radio:

 These cool old phones apparently go to the "Hurricane Hotline", FEMA, and NY State:

 The NWS also launches, twice a day at 7am and 7pm local time, weather balloons that carry these transmitters:

I wrote up weather balloons previously, they were launching a special one later in the day but I didn't have time to wait.  This was a very cool trip for any weather geek, so I'll try and be there next year!  Oh, and if you do go next year-get there early!  Most of the (free) tickets for admission were gone by 1pm today.

More photos here.