Sisters youth grabs a U(F)FO

On the afternoon of September 27, Sisters High School freshman Evan Kolar and his neighbor Bill Hull had a close encounter with a U(F)FO (an Unidentified Formerly Flying Object).

The two were in the forest near Pole Creek southwest of Sisters gathering spruce trees for replanting (carrying the required permit) when they came upon the crash site. Before them was an odd entanglement of latex rubber, a piece of orange cloth and several lengths of cord attached to a white box-like device dangling about six feet off the ground from the branch of a ponderosa pine tree.

Only after Kolar and Hull got close enough to read the printing on the instrumentation package was the mystery resolved. They had stumbled upon a radiosonde launched by the National Weather Service (NWS) that fell from the sky when the balloon carrying it burst.

A radiosonde contains an assortment of instruments that measure air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, and wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere as it is carried aloft by a large helium-filled balloon. The information is radioed back to receivers on the ground and stored for later analysis.

Balloons are released twice daily, at 00 hours and 12 hours UT, from more than 800 stations worldwide. These balloons can ascend to a height of more than 22 miles and stay aloft in excess of two hours before "popping."

As the radiosonde falls from the sky its rate of decent is slowed by a small parachute, allowing it to make a relatively soft landing. Less than 20 percent of the approximately 70,000 radiosondes released by the NWS each year are found and returned for reconditioning.

Meteorologists rely heavily on the data collected by these instruments. From this information they produce charts showing the strength and location of ridges, troughs and the jet stream at various altitudes, which is critically important for making accurate weather forecasts.

"The weather instrument we (Bill and I) found is a first for me," explained Kolar. A list of his many hobbies and activities include target practice, playing the piano, participating in the Sisters Folk Festival's Americana Project and ... weather. "I like to watch the Weather Channel when forecasts are made for our area. Then I try to figure out how well they did," said Kolar.

Another of Kolar's hobbies is geology. Last March, Friends of the Sisters Library and the Sisters Astronomy Club teamed up to bring meteorite expert Dick Pugh to town from the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University. Kolar was in the audience at that presentation, with a possible meteorite specimen in hand.

After the talk Kolar showed the rock to Pugh, asking him if it was a meteorite.

"He (Pugh) took a few shavings of the stone to analyze in the laboratory. I heard back that it was just an ordinary piece of iron," said Kolar.

Radiosondes are sent aloft from just two locations in Oregon: Salem and Medford. It's likely that the "sonde" Kolar and Hull recovered floated eastward across the Cascades Mountains from Salem. It will be packaged up and mailed to the NWS in Kansas City, Missouri to be restored. Perhaps it will be re-launched and again serve as a U(F)FO to another unsuspecting person or persons.