The Sounding

This is a poem I wrote to illustrate the preparation of a weather balloon sounding based on what I observed during a job shadow at my local National Weather Service forecast office. This poem is also one of my favorites.

A meteorologist grabs a balloon
From his office’s storage room.
Before anything else can be done,
A slew of operations must run.

In the outskirts of the building
There’s an interior for the lifting
Where the balloon starts inflating,
But it can’t yet start collecting.

There’s a missing piece of the puzzle,
But there is no need to hustle;
There is still plenty of time
To make the sounding prime.

A radiosonde¹ needs calibration
Before it experiences the sensation
Of the entirety of its gyration,
So it can spin up its narration.

Now it too can get to the lifting
By the balloon on which it’ll be drifting.
The balloon must be held steady
Until the takeoff is ready.

Now there’s no time to hold off
So the balloon must be let off.
At this point it takes off
And with the wind it drifts off.

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1. A radiosonde is an instrument usually carried by a weather balloon that measures several atmospheric variables and transmits the information back to a receiver on the ground. ↩