rogerflies
Oct 31, 2005, 02:17 AM
About nine o'clock in the morning with clear skies and very light winds. I spotted a bunch of orange balloons with blue ribbons attached (probably from a Florida State University homecoming celebration) descending over the road. I stopped to watch for about ten minutes.
They got down to about ten feet, then caught a thermal which carried them up just high enough to clear the HV power lines. Descended again, then back up to several hundred feet. Up, down, up, down. The balloons would swirl in a counter-clockwise direction each time they went up in a thermal, and the overall movement was CCW in a larger circle about 1/4 mile in diameter.
It looked like there were lots of little thermals feeding into a larger thermal, but the bouyancy of the balloons wasn't enough to get them above several hundred feet.
Roger
They got down to about ten feet, then caught a thermal which carried them up just high enough to clear the HV power lines. Descended again, then back up to several hundred feet. Up, down, up, down. The balloons would swirl in a counter-clockwise direction each time they went up in a thermal, and the overall movement was CCW in a larger circle about 1/4 mile in diameter.
It looked like there were lots of little thermals feeding into a larger thermal, but the bouyancy of the balloons wasn't enough to get them above several hundred feet.
Roger