By Mary O’KEEFE

Last week I wrote of the weather balloon that started the Roswell UFO legacy. But balloons floating along the horizon have always sparked imagination, whether having several of them attached to the home of an elderly widow who just wanted to fulfill a promise to his late wife in “Up” to that “silly old bear hovering under the honey tree” or terrifying us with the floating red balloon in a storm drain with Pennywise extending an invitation to join him in Stephen King’s “It.”

Balloons have been a part of our childhood and adulthood, even though we might take them for granted. It may seem strange that a weather balloon system that was used to collect weather data over 120 years ago is still an active and important piece of scientific equipment. It is still relevant in this space age period and the system is still going strong.

One of the earliest documented uses of weather balloons was by French meteorologist Leon Teisserenc de Bort as early as 1896. His work was instrumental in the discovery of the tropopause and stratosphere – unique layers in the atmosphere. In fact his work was so beneficial he was honored by having a crater on the Moon and one on Mars named after him. Weather balloons were used throughout time and in the 1950s James Van Allen, who later discovered Earth’s Van Allen Belts, performed many important weather balloon experiments, according to High Altitude Science.

The predecessor to the weather balloon was the kite; however, with the invention of aircraft things changed. In 1909 Weather Bureau stations began to track small free-flying balloons, like pilot balloons, with an optical theodolite to obtain winds aloft information. At night a small light was attached to the balloon to aid tracking, according to the National Weather Service. From 1925 to 1943 the Weather Bureau operated a network of up to 30 aircraft stations across the country that collected aircraft observations. However, the aircraft could not be flown in poor weather and the data would not be analyzed until the planes landed.

Although we now have satellites and other ways of mapping and predicting weather, the weather balloon is still an active monitor.

“Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide. This includes 93 released by the National Weather Service in the U.S. and its territories. The balloon flights last for about two hours, can drift as far as 125 miles and rise up to over 100,000 feet [about 20 miles] in the atmosphere,” according to the National Weather Service.

The weather balloons are made of latex or synthetic rubber and are filled with either hydrogen or helium. They start out at about six feet wide before their release and then expand to 20 feet in diameter as they rise. They will often endure temperatures as cold as -139 degrees Fahrenheit, ice, thunderstorms and wind speeds of about 200 mph. There is a parachute attached to the balloon that allows it to fall slowly to the ground after the balloon bursts.

Don’t put your sleeveless tops away yet as this weekend and next week will see temperatures climbing back from “hot” to “oh my gosh I thought we were done with this.” Today the high is expected to be in the high 80s … and that will be our coolest day for a while. By Friday temps will be back to the 90s and Tuesday will see 96 degrees with temperatures that may even climb into the triple digits. Nothing but sun with no rain in sight.

The evenings will at least be milder than the last heatwave with lows in the 60s and 70s.