Weather Bureau topics and personnel / United ... - Index of - NOAA

870
spin and whip upward. Bfter jotting down several readings Smith
remarked, “It’s almost in the clouds already. I told you we should
have used a red balloon; this won’t last another 2 minutes!’
Mingewski twisted the horizontal tangent screw to the right, then to
the left, but the thin stratus waa already on the balloon and he could
catch only glimpses of its bobbing forin.
“Can you see anything’?” asked Smith, “I’ve lost it already!’
“So have I; no, Wait-!’
“Personally, I think this run i8 a dead pigeon;’ said tho rccorder,
“but anyway, warning]:---- bad I ” Brnith laughed as he wrote down
the figures. “You know you’re kidding yourself. Let’s call it a day
-! low clouds’- and go home!’
The run had reached that eye-straining stage whcre the ehape of the
‘balloon melts into the cloud contours, emcrgee again to tantalize thf*
observer, and continues bobbing through the veil of clouds until the
observer seems to see twenty different balloon shapes. Mingewski had
a puzzled look on his face: “hold it; I think I see something!’
“Are you crazy? I don’t ace anything, but-ell, there’s a sunspot
showing through the breaks!’ What Smith H ~ W was a sinall, vcrY
bright disc burning through the eheat of stratus to the southeast.
“That’s not the sun;’ Mingewski cried, If It’s our balloon I No sun ever
jumped around like that, and besidee, what would the sun be doing way
off there? The balloon is above the overcast and the sun is shining OD.
the white balloon to give off that glow!’
u What about it?” Smith looltetf bewildered.
If Listen, so long as the overcast doesn’t gat too heavy, 1’In going to
follow that balloon up ten or fifteen thousand feet just by tho roflcction!’
Smith stared at tho shining, untlcniably moving spot of light.
“Alright:’ he said, “I RCC it, but I don’t exactly boliove it. ;inywaY,
warning ! ! -!’
That day Mingewski followed the balloon through a 2,000-foot over.
cast to a height of 14,000 feet. Three day8 later ho tracked mother
white balloon for 10,000 feet through a thin, broken stratus dock Thereafter
whenever the opportunity prewnted itself-when a thin to mod*
erab broken or overcast sky condition existed-he delibcrately sent aloft
a white balloon and, with few exceptions, stayed with the pibal until it
travelled far above the cloud layers. Tho occmional failures of his
’glowbal’ runs he attribute8 to doceptivoly thick cloud layers misjudged
from the ground.