BALTIMORE — WMAR-2 News was greeted by a special visitor Thursday.
It's a bird, it's a plane... nope... as it turns out, a weather balloon landed right in our back parking lot.
Although not totally uncommon, seeing one up close and personal was a unique experience.
The first thing that stood out was a strange white rectangular box with some sort of metal censor or antenna attached.
At first glance the box appeared to be made out of plastic, but upon further review it's just Styrofoam.
A label on the box stated "this is a radiosonde, a balloon-borne instrument used by the NOAA National Weather Service to obtain data aloft for weather forecasts and research, it is not dangerous!"
Our next question was what to do with this thing?
That part was kind of confusing because the radiosonde said "do not return" and "recycle or dispose of properly."
While that sounds easy enough, the radiosonde was accompanied by approximately 75 feet of string at the end of an orange parachute and popped balloon.
A tag affixed to the balloon read "call your local law enforcement office or fire station for disposal assistance."
Now the choice was to recycle or call the fire department?
Neither! Our team of meteorologists were so excited, they insisted on keeping it in our weather office.
As long as they're deflated, weather balloons are not harmful.
Some fun facts we learned — weather balloons are launched twice daily at 91 different National Weather Service offices across the country.
Usually they go up around 6am and 6pm or 7am and 7pm eastern standard, depending on daylight savings time. Local air traffic controllers are supposed to be notified before each balloon goes up.
The balloon itself is latex filled with enough helium to lift 1,100-1,600 grams. Normally they measure five-feet in diameter.
Once airborne the balloon typically flies for two hours, reaching over 100,000 feet in altitude, which can lead it to drift 100 miles away from the original launch site.
Balloons have been used since the 1930s for research and to predict weather forecasts.
As for the radiosonde, its job is to detect temperature and humidity via GPS antenna tracking that gets sent back to the National Weather Service.
Have you seen a weather balloon lately in your neighborhood? Let us know on our Facebook or Instagrampages.
