11 balloon reports flagged, satellite sector moved
Satellite moves MDS STATUS...
Each GOES weather satellite has two “mesoscale sectors” — small, movable windows that the satellite photographs roughly every 60 seconds, far more often than its routine full-disk and continental scans. Forecasters aim them at whatever is most important that day. This section announces where they are being pointed and for how long.
GOES-West is pointing mesoscale sector 1 at a point about 120 mi W of Durango, CO — to support flash flood and heavy rainfall forecasting. That means this patch of sky gets a fresh satellite image about once a minute instead of every 5 to 10 minutes, so forecasters can watch storms develop almost in real time.
- Centre point
- 37.0°N, 110.0°W view on map
- Window
- from until
- Reason given
- excessive rainfall ops across the Four Corners region
Balloon reports 00Z NAM RAOB RECAP...
Twice a day, NWS and partner agencies release weather balloons that carry a radiosonde — a small instrument package that radios back temperature, humidity, pressure and wind as it climbs. Those soundings are one of the main ingredients in a forecast model’s starting conditions. This section is the roll call of stations that had a problem for the 00Z run of the NAM.
11 stations were flagged: 2 sent no usable sounding at all, 7 reported a numeric status code, 1 had a balloon burst early, 1 had bad data removed by quality control. A handful of gaps is normal and is not by itself a sign of a forecast problem — the models are built to work with an incomplete picture.
| Station | Where | What happened | As printed |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDB 70316 | Cold Bay, AK | No weather balloon data from this station reached the model for this cycle — either no launch happened or the data did not arrive in time. | No report |
| ADQ 70350 | Kodiak, AK | No weather balloon data from this station reached the model for this cycle — either no launch happened or the data did not arrive in time. | No report |
| OTZ 70133 | Kotzebue, Ralph Wien, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| BET 70219 | Bethel/Bethel Airport, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| SNP 70308 | St. Paul Islands, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| AKN 70326 | King Salmon, AK | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| TWC 72274 | Tucson, AZ | The station reported status code 10159. NWS does not publish a public legend for these codes, so we will not guess at what it means — it signals some problem with the launch or the data. unrecognised status code 10159 | 10159 |
| NKX 72293 | San Diego/Miramar, NAS, CA | Ground equipment failure — the station’s tracking/receiving equipment was down, so no usable sounding was produced. | 10142 |
| GCM 78384 | Owen Roberts Airport Grand Cay · Cayman Islands | Ground equipment failure — the station’s tracking/receiving equipment was down, so no usable sounding was produced. | 10142 |
| SYA 70414 | Shemya AFB, AK | The balloon burst early. It stopped reporting at 700 mb, so this sounding only covers the lower part of the atmosphere — forecasters and models got no data above roughly 3 km (10,000 ft). (700 mb ≈ 3 km (10,000 ft)) | Short to 700.0mb |
| FFC 72215 | Peachtree City, GA | Quality control removed part of this sounding before it reached the models: temp, moist 560 to 544 mb. The rest of the sounding was still used. | Purged temp, moist 560 to 544 mb.. |
Notices & outages
An operational notice from the Senior Duty Meteorologist.
Show the original message
Exactly as NWS transmitted it. Everything above is our plain-English reading of this text — if the two ever disagree, this is the authoritative version.
000 NOUS42 KWNO 010125 ADMSDM SENIOR DUTY METEOROLOGIST NWS ADMINISTRATIVE MESSAGE NWS CENTRAL OPERATIONS COLLEGE PARK MD 0125Z SUN NOV 01 2026 MDS STATUS... GOES-W MDS Sector 1 will be centered over 37N/110W from 0900Z to 02/1300Z in support of excessive rainfall ops across the Four Corners region. 00Z NAM RAOB RECAP... `70316/CDB - No report `70350/ADQ - No report `70133/OTZ - 10159 `70219/BET - 10159 `70308/SNP - 10159 `70326/AKN - 10159 `72274/TWC - 10159 `72293/NKX - 10142 `78384/GCM - 10142 `70414/SYA - Short to 700.0mb `72215/FFC - Purged temp, moist 560 to 544 mb.. There were 8 Alaskan...25 Canadian...64 CONUS...13 Mexican... 7 Caribbean and 9 Pacific stations available for ingest. Green/SDM/NCO