Met Office gives tour of operations
Whether it is rainy or sunny, the weather is an important feature of our daily routines. But few know the intricacies of putting the forecast together. And with the recent floodings, a News Five team headed to the Met Service in Ladyville for a behind the scenes look at the local capabilities. Jose Sanchez reports.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
From Monday to Sunday you can either hear about it on the radio or see it on television. And today we decided to take a tour of the headquarters of the MET Office to find out what goes into forecasting the weather. Our first stop was at the Chief Meteorologist’s Office where we met Ramon Frutos.
Ramon Frutos, Chief Meteorologist
“The MET Office’s mission is to survive life and property first and foremost and that’s what we exist for and basically, to provide a service to the Belizean public for the socioeconomic development of the country. So we are a service oriented department and our image is portrayed out there in the public for the service that we provide; timely service and as accurate as possible. So that’s our goal, to serve the people.”
Frank Tench, one of the forecasters at the MET Office, took us on an informative tour showing us the instruments used for observation, analysis and forecasting. Tench says to observe the temperature, wind direction and wind speed their work starts on the ground.
Frank Tench, Forecaster, MET
“In here you have the instrument plot where weather instruments are housed. For instance, you have the rain gauge. The basic principle of the rain gauge is to measure rainfall and rain fall is collected in a bottle there and we measure how much rainfall using the gauge. Over there we have the sunshine recorder to measure the duration of sunshine. This instrument ere is an automatic weather station with all the sensors here and the recorders are inside the office. You can access the data via the internet because it’s logged on to our website. Over here we have an evaporation pan. The principle of that, that measures how water evaporates from the earth’s surface each day. Information here is very useful for people in agriculture. This right here, this is an anemometer, measures the amount of miles of wind that passes each day. We have the dry bulb thermometer which measures the actual air temperature. Then on the right here this is the wet bulb thermometer to measure the wet bulb temperature and together with both temperature readings you can calculate the humidity and the pressure. These thermometers that are lying horizontally, this one measures the maximum temperature, this one measures the minimum temperature each day. The screen is painted white for a special reason because white tends to reflect energy and we want to get as true a representation of the air temperature as possible and that’s the reason why it’s painted white. The instrument tower you see atop there, that has the instrument for measuring the wind direction and speed. The cups that spin gives you how fast the wind is blowing and the vane that moves back and forth tells you what direction the wind is blowing from.”
Other instruments on the ground measure soil temperature various feet below the earth’s surface and are useful for those involved in agriculture. The balloon that they launch for upper air observation is connected with a radio sun instrument that has a transmitter and devices to measure humidity and temperature.
Frank Tench
“This is the inflation room. The first step in preparing the balloon for flight is to fill it with hydrogen gas, as you see happening here. It’s being filled with hydrogen gas and when it has the required amount of pounds of air in it, it stands up in the inflation room and it’s ready for launch. The next step, we attach the radio sun instrument at the base of the balloon then we bring it out into the open for release for a flight. All the monitoring of the data the radio sun is recording is tracked by an antenna that’s on top of the building there. So this is the antenna that’s used for tracking the …in that dome. This is the antenna that is used for tracking the radio son equipment. If you notice, it’s much smaller than that we have in the yard on display and all the wires are connected to the computers in the office so the operator just sits at his computer there and he gets back all the information it’s recording. It’s much smaller; it’s much lighter so it’s able to track the radio sun quite easily. In this room are the transmitters and the receivers that are connected with the radar antenna.”
Located inside a dome that resembles a football, the largest and newest instrument that the MET office has acquired is the Doppler, which they hope to be operational in a few months.
Frank Tench
“This is what we call a Doppler Radar. The previous radar we had was what we call an analogue radar and it was only able to locate shower echoes and tell you where it is. The difference is the signal that this returns when it observes shower echoes allows you to actually tell how fast a shower echo is moving either towards you or away from you. This is the antenna for the radar. When it’s in operation, the antenna can make a rotation of three hundred and sixty degrees and make a scan of the atmosphere and pick up any showers it sees. Also, we can stop the antenna and make it do vertical swats to study any particular cloud system it sees. This is the pedestal to which the antenna is attached. When in operation, this antenna will work twenty-four hours a day, constantly scanning the atmosphere for any shower echoes it sees. This instrument in here measures the wind direct and speed. The dial here gives you the direction from which the wind is blowing, this one gives you the speed. The actual instrument is in the plot, as you saw, but the actual measurement goes on in here so the observers don’t have to be outside. They can just look at the dial and he gets an idea of the wind direction and the wind speed.”
After gathering information for the forecast, the last item on the cycle fort he weathermen is to disseminate the information to the public through the Met website, radio interviews and of course on the nightly televised newscast. Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
