Literally "not wet", containing no liquid.

An instrument which indicates the presence of precipitation. The ombroscope consists of a heated, water-sensitive surface which indicates by mechanical or electrical techniques the occurrence of precipitation.

A wind vane used to obtain the horizontal and vertical components of the wind.

A general term to designate apparatus designed to observe the details of weather during thunderstorms.

A small balloon used to determine the height of the cloud base. The height can be computed from the ascent velocity of the balloon and the time required for its disappearance into the cloud.

For a given cloud or cloud laver. the lowest level in the atmosphere at which the air contains a perceptible quantity of cloud particles.

Clouds which cover between 6/10 and 9/10 of the sky. See Sky Terminology.

An area of low atmospheric pressure which has a closed circulation that is cyclonic (counterclockwise in northern hemisphere and clockwise in southern hemisphere).

An instrument for collecting liquid water from the atmosphere.

Same as atmometer.

Cathode Ray Tube. A display element, consisting of a vacuum tube and screen, used with computers.

Radio Direction Finder.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard code used to represent data using 8 bits (7 data bits and I parity bit) per character.

The rising of cold water from the deeper areas of the ocean to the surface. This phenomena often occurs along the California coast during the spring and summer.

A protective coating applied to circuits.

The process by which events in the real world are translated into machine-readable signals.

An instrument for recording ocean waves. Most recorders are designed for recording wind waves, that is waves of periods up to about 25 seconds, but some are designed to record waves of longer periods such as tsunamis or tides.

Lacking a relationship to a time base or clock. In asynchronous communications, individual data characters are sent at an arbitrary rate.

A buoyant balloon kept from rising freely by means of a line secured to a point on the ground, as opposed to a free balloon. See kytoon.

Same as constant-level balloon.