Tucson Weather Balloons Back Online | Tucson News

Tucson News Today | 2 Min Now | The Daily News Now! · Aug 5, 2026 · 1m

Tucson’s weather forecasters are back in the balloon game—sort of. Since late January, their twice-daily weather balloon launches have been on hold, not because of helium shortages, but due to a logistical switch to smaller, safer tanks that required a complete overhaul of their storage and launch setup. While they’ve been relying on data from Phoenix and computer models, the missing real-time atmospheric snapshots are still sorely felt—especially for predicting monsoons and flash floods. But the fix is almost ready: new plumbing and storage systems are nearly complete, and soon, Tucson will…