Tomorrow’s Tech Treepowered by Astra

Weather & Forecasting · Recorded milestone

Radiosonde weather balloon

Recorded year1930

Pavel Molchanov launches a balloon whose small radio sends back temperature and pressure as it rises, giving forecasters the upper air every day.

Explore this milestone on the interactive map

Built on

Transatlantic radioRecorded · 1901enables
Triode amplifierRecorded · 1906enables

Led to

First tornado forecastRecorded · 1948enables
Computer weather forecastRecorded · 1950enables
Daily computer forecastsRecorded · 1954requires
World Weather WatchRecorded · 1963enables
Smart balloon sounding swarmsForecast · ~2028enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.