EARTH · WEATHER BALLOONS · AUSTRALIA
Alice Springs
Alice Springs is an upper-air station in Australia that releases weather balloons as part of the global observing network. It launches at the standard synoptic times used across the global network.Below is the nearest balloon aloft right now and a doorway into the live map, both from SondeHub — shown with the time reported, and never a claim that a specific balloon launched from here.
About this station
Alice Springs sits at 23.80°S, 133.89°E and about 545 m (1,788 ft) above sea level. As a WMO upper-air station it launches radiosondes on the standard synoptic schedule — the coordinated worldwide release times that build the global atmospheric snapshot every forecast model starts from. Whether a balloon is in the air near here at this exact moment depends on the launch cycle and on a SondeHub receiver being in range, so the live block above is the real picture, not the schedule alone.
What a launch here looks like
At each synoptic time, staff fill a balloon with hydrogen or helium, attach a radiosonde, and let it go. The balloon climbs at roughly five metres a second, expanding as the air thins, while the sonde radios back temperature, humidity, pressure and — from how it drifts — the wind at every level. Near 30 km the balloon stretches until it bursts, and a small parachute lowers the sonde back to the ground, often more than a hundred kilometres downwind. If a SondeHub receiver hears one of Alice Springs’s sondes, it appears on the live map above.
Nearby launch stations
The closest upper-air stations to Alice Springs— other places releasing balloons into the same skies.