The sky is falling

Gary Hickman, who lives out in the back-of-beyond near Fryrear Butte, wondered what was hanging in his juniper tree about a football field away from his living-room window.

"The story is basically this," Gary said when he called me. "A couple of days ago my wife, Vikki, said to me when I got home from work, 'I noticed a kid's parachute toy up in a tree down by the pond. It's probably from one of the kids that were out here when you had that summer party for your work team.'

"I was a little surprised because I go down to the pond all the time. And that party was way back in August. I'm not exactly dead to the world, and thought I would have noticed it. Then I started noticing it high up in the tree while sitting in my favorite reading chair in the house. It looked like a bright orange parachute.

"It sort of bothered me, kind of like a piece of trash that was out of place in my back 40, so I finally thought I'd climb up in the tree and either get rid of it or return it to whatever kid may have left it out here.

"When I went down there to begin my climb - hatchet in hand to help clear branches - I noticed a long string attached to it that led down to the ground. That's when I discovered the little box identifying it as not dangerous, but a weather instrument, with mail-back instructions.

"Anyway, that is pretty much the story - except - where it came from and what was its mission?"

The first thing I did after talking to Gary was send an email to our local weather guru, Ron Thorkildson of Crossroads. And, as he always does when I have a question regarding weather, Ron wrote back saying, "The instrument is a radiosonde and they are normally launched via a balloon twice a day from various sites around the world to measure air temperature, dew point, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction at various heights above the ground, and used to depict conditions in the upper atmosphere."

And he provided me with a phone number to call a big, high-powered National Weather Service (NWS) weather station in Portland.

According to Tyree Wilde, weather scientist in the NWS Portland office, a weather balloon is released twice a day from 90 locations, nationwide - one at 4 a.m and one at 4 p.m. - carrying the radiosonde as high as 80,000 to 100,000 feet above sea level (ASL). It takes from 60 to 90 minutes for the balloon to reach an altitude where the balloon bursts - usually around 40,000 to 60,000 feet.

From the moment of launch the radiosonde is transmitting data back to the mother computer where it is analyzed and shared with other weather centers worldwide.

The units are manufactured in Mexico (is there anything made in the USA?) for Lockheed Martin, and to help keep costs down it is hoped that whoever comes upon a radiosonde will follow the instructions and use the shipping materials to send it back to be recycled.

Due to the lack of population in our "Outback," a lot of these instruments probably don't make it back. According to Wilde, the furthest away a balloon released from Salem has been found is Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho. That leaves a lot of weather apparatus slowly decaying on the Great Sandy Desert and other remote locations.

So, keep your eyes open for a bright orange parachute hanging up in a juniper or pine or draped across the sagebrush when you're out deer hunting, hiking or bouncing around in your ATV.