The National Weather Service station in Key West releases a weather balloon twice a day. They capture information about what's going on in the atmosphere around the southernmost point in the continental United States.
On Sunday, the station released an extra balloon — at the request of NASA researchers who are studying snowstorms that hit the east coast. The study is using information from flights, radar, satellites to try to understand better the bands that can dump heavy snow and improve the modeling of those events.
The Key West weather station often releases extra weather balloons for tropical storms and hurricanes, even when they're not forecast to hit the island chain directly.
This is the first time the station has been part of a study of snow storms. The release came as a storm system crossed the region, bringing snow as far south as Georgia.
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