If this works this is huge. It will improve everything from knowing the weather for your weekend hike to hurricane evacuation order lead time and area
Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
91–100 of 173 posts
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. Look at the growth in human buildings in the most at-risk areas and you’ll see why that number is so big now. It’s only slightly due to an increase in severe weather event frequency / severity.
Indeed, and not just building more in more at-risk places but also the cost of building materials, construction labor and code compliance requirements have all generally increased more than baseline inflation. Factors like these tend to greatly increase recent estimates vs historical. I read a paper a few years back which dove into how the data sources for weather damage assessment have changed a lot over the years.…
> Factors like these mean in prior decades the total damage costs may have been more similar to today's than they appear but a lot of the damage data we gather and report now wasn't counted or gathered then
This is definitely part of it. Another part is that people live in more at-risk regions now than in the past (Florida is a great example, population has more than 10x'd since 1950).
Ultimately, the way we think about it is no matter what the underlying cause, weather-related damages could be significantly reduced with better data/forecasts
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#93If this works this is huge. It will improve everything from knowing the weather for your weekend hike to hurricane evacuation order lead time and area
That's the goal. We're all from Florida, so the possibility of reducing the damage caused by hurricanes was a big reason we started the company in the first place.
Our balloons are actually cheap and steerable enough that we plan to fly them into TS/Hurricanes to get data way out in the Atlantic, farther than hurricane hunters can operate.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#94as someone who's worked on a project involving weather data for agriculture over developing regions, I can't explain how bad (sparse and inconsistent) the data is. Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble?
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#95> These conditions make the stratosphere a very difficult place to deploy to prod This sentence is legendary
[flagged]
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#96> In 1981, weather disasters caused $3.5 billion in damages in the United States. In 2023, that number was $94.9 billion ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series ). Does that surprise someone? I think I would not have guessed this growth to be on such a scale. The chart suggests that severe storms are the main culprit.
Definitely a bit of cherry picking. Just 2 years later in 1983 the damages were $36 billion, but that wouldn't make quite as scary of a statement for the website.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is super interesting, I'd never come across ARGO before. Data assimilation is a similar problem for our data, and there currently exist systems for assimilating weather balloon observations into gridded reanalysis data ( https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/ ). One thing we believe, however, is that the reanalysis step in weather forecasting is unnecessary in the long term, and that future (ML) weather models wil…
> One thing we believe, however, is that the reanalysis step in weather forecasting is unnecessary in the long term, and that future (ML) weather models will eventually opt to generate predictions based on un-assimilated raw data and will get better results in doing so. The idea that we'll be able to run ML weather models using "raw" observations and skip or implicitly incorporate an assimilation is spot-on - there's…
> There are massive avenues of scientific research which rely on a fully-assimilated and reconciled, corrected, consistent analysis of atmospheric conditions.
That’s a good point! In fact, the outputs for observation based foundational models will likely include a "reanalysis-like" step for the final output.
Regarding the next 6-12 months, we will be integrating our data with traditional NWP models and utilizing AI for forecasting. We've developed a compact AI model that can directly assimilate our "ground truth" data with reanalysis, specifically for use in AI forecasting models.
Once we have hundreds of systems deployed, we'll use the collected observations, combined with historical publicly available data, to train a foundational model that will directly predict specific variables based on raw observations.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#98as someone who's worked on a project involving weather data for agriculture over developing regions, I can't explain how bad (sparse and inconsistent) the data is. Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble?
What's the project? Maybe we can help!
> Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble?
We actually fall under a weather balloon exemption to the normal FAA rules for unmanned balloon flights. Here’s a quick rundown of the relevant rules and regulations (Part 101.1) for weather balloon flights in the U.S. Our balloons fully comply with all of these:
- Any on-board cellular tracking devices must be set to Airplane mode before takeoff (we don't have any cellular) - Each individual payload box/package must weigh less than 6 pounds (ours is - If a payload has a weight-to-size ratio exceeding 3.0 ounces per square inch, it must weigh less than 4 pounds.
- Calculation: Divide the total payload weight in ounces by the area of its smallest face in square inches.
- The string connecting the payload to the balloon must break under an impact force of no more than 50 pounds (our string is 30g)
- It’s prohibited to design or operate an unmanned free balloon in a way that poses a hazard to people or property.
- Dropping objects from the balloon that could endanger people or property is not allowed.
We don't have to notify the FAA about our operations as long as we meet these criteria. To be super safe, we don't launch near airports or other busy areas.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#99Awesome project. I currently work on flight data recorders. As you are aware, weather plays a big part in aviation. We do collect some weather information and it’s always one of the more exciting topics in the work we do. Understand a lot of the pain points with data and satellite communication. Sounds like something to keep my eye on.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#100as someone who's worked on a project involving weather data for agriculture over developing regions, I can't explain how bad (sparse and inconsistent) the data is. Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble?
What's the project? Maybe we can help! > Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble? We actually fall under a weather balloon exemption to the normal FAA rules for unmanned balloon flights. Here’s a quick rundown of the relevant rules and regulations (Part 101.1) for weather balloon flights in the U.S. Our balloons fully…
I had idly wondered about FAA restrictions on (non-passenger-sized) balloons, but never learned about them.
Is there any history of weather balloons having caused damage to aircraft? It seems like it could be really bad, but that the aircraft would also have to be exceptionally unlucky.