Little Breezy Today

We had a fun-filled day of operations today, more so because the large-scale surface winds were sustained at 40+ mph at times than because of the storms, which were actually on the marginal side. We figured it was going to be difficult to launch just because it is harder to launch a giant weather balloon in windy conditions, but we had no idea just HOW hard it was going to be until our first attempt.

We fanned our teams out in a line about 30 miles apart along I-80 in Nebraska for our initial operations today, and went for our first launch around 2 pm. Bryan (my NCAR buddy today) and I found a nice open field to launch from. We got the sonde ready and then went to fill the balloon, hoping to use the truck as a bit of a wind block, and as shelter from all the dust/debris being kicked up. As you can tell from some of the pictures in my other posts, these balloons are rather large, about a 3m diameter when fully inflated. Usually when it's windy we have one person operate the helium tank and hold the neck of the balloon, while the other kind of bear-hugs it to keep it from blowing around. Given my rather large wingspan, I'm usually a pretty good balloon bear-hugger. However today as we attempted this it was apparent that no measure of bear hugging was going to work. Our first balloon got away from me and started whipping around as Bryan tried to fill and hold on to it. It ended up twisting around causing a pocket of helium to form right above the neck, a relative weak spot. Before we could react, POP! the pocket burst, and we were left holding the neck of the balloon, while the rest of it floated/blew away quite rapidly. Mind you, there weren't even any storm nearby at this point, it was still sunny out, and these were just the background winds.

Undeterred, we grabbed another balloon and started filling. This time we just let the balloon stretch into the wind (and stretch it did!). We got it filled, and then came the challenge of attaching the sonde. It went something like this: Bryan held the sonde while I held the balloon with both hands, it whipping around wildly and effectively pulling my 200lbs down the road (seriously), while trying to thread and cinch a zip tie around the sonde clip to attach it. Trying to thread a zip tie through the little zip tie closing mechanism under these conditions was darn near impossible. After what seemed like an eternity, I got the sonde attached and cinched down. Balloon was still inflated, sonde now attached, I was barely keeping my feet planted, Bryan checked the computer and we were good. I let the balloon go and it shot away so violently that the string attached to the sonde snapped and the sonde fell into a field about 20 ft away as the balloon raced sky-ward.

Before a third try we checked in with the the sounding coordinator (Dr. Parker) to find out that everyone else was having similar problems. We scrubbed our launch, and we all regrouped, working in teams of two trucks, giving us 4 people total to manage the balloon. We joined up with Casey and Heather in the other NCAR truck who had figured out that there was enough room in the back of their truck to fill the balloon and attach the sonde inside, relatively sheltered. However, this still took some refinement, as during our first attempt using this method the balloon once again flew away so quickly that the string snapped off and we were left this time holding the sonde as our balloon cruised away. We eventually worked out a system of counting to three and simultaneously chucking the balloon and sonde out of the back of the truck, which managed to work. The only thing we had to worry about now was making sure we had plenty of open space over which the balloon/sonde could rise, as the strong winds caused the whole system to move laterally a considerably amount before gaining enough altitude to clear things like trees and telephone poles. One of our other teams reported getting a successful launch only to see their sonde bouncing along the ground behind their balloon before it was able to gain enough altitude. The same team reported nearly hitting a light pole during one of their launches, on the opposite side of the interstate from where they launched! All in all, it was a wild day for balloon operations.

Our story does have a happy ending though. We recovered our first sonde from the field intact and it went on to fly successfully by the end of the day. An important achievement when one considers that these sondes runs about $180 a piece!