For those not aware, the UK research community has an aircraft that they use to do in flight measurements and is quite fascinating to see what is being done and how it is achieved...
Here is a link to the FAAM site which I hope will be of interest to everyone reading this thread:
http://www.faam.ac.uk/
There are a few others worldwide as well and they do provide excellent insight into areas we can't traditionally get measurements to check the forecast models, satellite images, etc...