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The world of weather observation is definitely high tech, with its radar, satellites and computers. These technological breakthroughs of the last fifty years have allowed us to essentially, as Judi Collins wrote, look at clouds from both sides now...but that song wasn't about weather it's about something else...anyway, today's high technology wasn't always available. I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook.

Around the turn of the century, the high tech way of exploring the upper atmosphere was kite flying. Twenty-seven kite stations were set up around the country by the U.S. Weather Bureau in the1890's. A typical weather kite was a black and white box kite about the size of a small truck, tethered to the ground with piano wire. A collection of recording weather instruments were attached at intervals along the wire as the kite pulled away.

According to Sandra Wiche in an article for Weatherwise Magazine, a starter kite would be flown first to help get the big kite of the ground, then additional kites would be attached as the piano wire kite string payed out to a distance of up to 8 to 10 miles. The US record for kite elevation was set by one of these weather kites at, appropriately enough, Mount Weather, West Virginia in 1907. It reached 23,000 feet, nearly four miles high.

As you can imagine, the set up for these kites was pretty elaborate, consisting of a rotating house that contained the one ton spool of piano wire. By the late twenties, lightning had knocked out a few kite stations, Ben Franklin would have been proud, and balloons were gathering weather data, making weather kites obsolete. So, in 1933 the last U.S. kite station, located in Ellendale, North Dakota, closed for good. These days all the same information is gathered via satellites and radar and by the click of a mouse.

The Weather Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory in cooperation with New Hampshire Public Radio... funded by The National Science Foundation, and underwritten by Subaru -- the beauty of All-Wheel Drive.