Regional Weather
Regional weather today is primarily determined by weather balloons. They
are sent from National Weather Service offices across the US every day at
5:00 am and 5:00 pm. They find the temperature, barometric pressure, and
wind data of the different regions throughout the world. This information
is then compiled into a report available to news and other weather
services.
Now a $4.5 billion modernization effort is equipping the National Weather
Service with more powerful satellites, more sophisticated radar and new
automated ground observing systems, whose atmospheric information is more
precise than that of even two years ago.
All of this means that prediction of general weather for your area is
getting more and more sophisticated, and less likely to be wrong.
Eventually, it will be good enough to tell you almost certainly if it will
rain tomorrow or not.
Regional Weather Expressions
Hurricanes occur in many parts of the
world. People in the Philippines call them 'baguios'. In India they are
called 'cyclones'. In the far East they are called 'typhoons', and in
Australia, 'willy-willies'. In North America and the Caribbean they
are called 'hurricanes'.
Tornadoes are also called twisters and cyclones. And people refer to Kansas
as the Cyclone State.
