Meteorologists gave the models another leg-up by sending up a NOAA jet to sample the atmosphere around the storm, providing extra data for the models to work with. These models do a better job when they start out with better and more frequent data. Sending up extra weather balloons helps set the initial conditions of the weather models. When you plot all of this balloon data on the same map, it paints a pretty good picture of winds, pressure, and moisture through each layer of the atmosphere. These weather balloons tell us temperature, moisture, wind, and pressure data throughout the atmosphere. Much of that data comes from twice-daily weather balloon launches around the world.

The models combine all of this data to simulate what the atmosphere will do in the coming days. They use formulas to simulate the atmosphere and different aspects of Earth’s surface, climatological data as a point of reference for past weather, and observations from ground stations, satellites, and radars to tell them what the atmosphere is doing right now. Weather models ingest data from lots of different sources.

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