Story: Weather forecasting

Weather balloons

Released three times a day from eight places around New Zealand, weather balloons are tracked by radar to show wind speed and direction in different levels of the atmosphere. At some of these locations, the balloons carry a box of instruments called a radiosonde, which measures temperature, pressure and humidity, and transmits the measurements back to earth.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Dominion Post Collection (PA-Group-00685)

Reference: EP/1998/0278/2A

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Erick Brenstrum, Weather forecasting – Recording information, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/7580/weather-balloons (accessed 10 June 2026).

Story by Erick Brenstrum, published 2 March 2009, updated 1 June 2016.

Comments

Steve
02 December 2014

At 1300 hrs on 2/12/14 several of us saw what we thought to be a weather balloon above the Te Kowhai area in the Waikato. It was very large and traveled slowly in a North East direction. Was that one of yours?