Party City is not alone, meteorologists also struggle with the ongoing helium shortage
This scientist for the National Weather Service in Rapid City, North Dakota struggled to launch a weather balloon in the middle of a blizzard sweeping through South Dakota on March 13. They launch the balloon twice a day. Despite the bumpy launch, the weather balloon launch was a success.
Despite the universal abundance of helium, many entities are struggling to find enough to complete their jobs. Party City made headlines this May, when the company announced that it would close 45 of its 870 stores in 2019, causing a whirlwind of speculation that the global helium shortage was to blame. The company is largely known for its bright-colored, helium-filled balloons.
“Because of this global helium shortage, fulfillment of balloon orders may be affected at your store,” Party City wrote in a statement on its website. “We’re working to replenish the helium at the affected stores as more supply becomes available.”
Helium is the second-most abundant element in the universe, but some contractors are struggling to capture this finite resource.
Party City is not alone. The shortage in available helium is affecting others as well, including meteorologists who use weather balloons to collect important weather data. Weather offices, mainly in the eastern United States, are feeling the impacts of the helium shortage.
A team prepares a weather balloon before releasing it to perform research during the solar eclipse Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, on the Orchard Dale historical farm near Hopkinsville, Ky. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
At the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Raleigh, North Carolina, the shortage in helium impacts their ability to send up weather balloons to retrieve important weather data.
NWS Raleigh typically launches weather balloons twice a day at the Greensboro site. However, the contractor that provides helium to the site has been dealing with a shortage. Due to the limited amount of helium, the NWS office only uses weather balloons during extreme weather, according to Jonathan Blaes, the Science and Operations officer (SOO) at NWS Raleigh.
Hydrogen may be used as a supplement for helium in select NWS locations, but due to its dangerous and highly flammable characteristics, many locations may opt out of this alternative due to safety concerns.
“It's one of the things we've tried to manage, in terms of making sure we have adequate resources, in terms of the helium for higher Impact weather days,” Blaes said. The office has been conserving helium for severe weather days, when the data will be most critical and most helpful.
Radiosonde launches, or weather balloons launches, provide important weather data for forecasting, such as altitude, pressure, temperature, relative humidity and wind data.
“Radiosonde data is arguably some of the most important information meteorologists receive to create their forecasts,” said AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Rossio. “Without it, forecasting accuracy would be severely impacted.”
The upper-air data received from radiosondes is ingested into numerical weather models and assimilated to initialize where weather patterns are located to the best possible accuracy. This allows meteorologists to more accurately predict where they will end up in the future, Rossio said.
There are other options to retrieve some of that information, such as observational data from aircraft, satellite sounders and model data. While other data collection methods are not a complete replacement, they do provide some information to supplement the missing data, Blaes said.
“We'd love to have the radiosondes out there in the normal sense, where we get them twice a day and we don't need to worry about this kind of issue, but folks are working on finding alternate supply sources,” Blaes said. “We are working with our contractor to get the resources we need.”
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