There’s an old story out there about how weather forecasting first got started. The story goes like this. Settlers who had moved further west than those that had stayed on the east coast noticed that weather was always moving west to east. So, whenever it would start raining or snowing, one of them would jump on a horse and head east as fast as they could to let people know of the upcoming storm.
If this is true or not, I can’t be sure, but I suppose it’s possible. Today, things are a little different. We have satellites up in space keeping an eye on things for us now. There are geostationary satellites and polar satellites that carry instruments that can monitor visible, infrared or microwave radiation. This information is sent to the earth numerous times a day giving us the data we see during the weather segment on the news every day.
The geostationary satellites are usually about 23,000 miles above the earth’s surface and spins around the earth at such a speed that it appears to be over the same spot of the earth all of the time. The polar satellites are only about 500 miles up and orbit the earth around the two poles. Each of these satellites gives us different information, but all the info is equally important to our weather forecasts each day.