Pacific Southwest

Title: Field computation of winds-aloft velocities from single theodolite pilot balloon observations

Author: Ryan, Bill C.

Date: 1976

Source: Res. Note PSW-RN-320. Berkeley, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. 6 p

Station ID: RN-PSW-320

Description: The ability to determine wind speeds and directions in the first few thousand meters of the atmosphere is important in many forestry operations such as smolce management, aircraft seeding and spraying, prescribed burning, and wildfire suppression. A hand-held electronic calculator can be used to compute winds aloft as balloon observations are taken. Calculations can be made in the field with any calculator with trigonometric functions, programmable or nonprogrammable, by the method described.

Keywords: wind velocity; wind directions; electronic calculations; forest meteorology

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Citation

Ryan, Bill C.  1976.  Field computation of winds-aloft velocities from single theodolite pilot balloon observations.   Res. Note PSW-RN-320. Berkeley, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. 6 p.