How do meteorologists predict the weather?
You check your phone: sunny tomorrow. You make plans. But how does anyone know what the sky will do before it does it? The answer lives in a dance between satellites in space, balloons floating through clouds, and computers racing through millions of math problems per second.
It starts with measurement — thousands of thermometers, barometers, and wind sensors scattered across the planet, each one reporting back every hour. Weather balloons rise twice daily from hundreds of launch sites, carrying instruments up through the atmosphere, radioing down temperature and humidity readings as they climb to 100,000 feet. Satellites orbit overhead, photographing cloud formations and measuring heat radiating from ocean surfaces. All this data flows into weather centers like rivers converging into a lake.
