Cloud-Fest

Dave Thurlow, Host

Hot Air Balloon

"Here in upstate New York we can be granted some of the most beautiful autumn weather in the country. Our clear blue skies are the backdrop for shiny hillsides burnished with copper, red and bright gold. It's to show off this beauty that we have the Adirondack Balloon Festival every autumn, attracting hot air balloonists and enthusiasts from everywhere and eager spectators from the whole region. But our autumn days can also be grim and gray, and our clouds love the Festival too.

The Festival often starts nicely enough with an early evening launch in a pristine sky just before sundown. But somehow it seems almost every year the clouds hear about the festival too, and spread the word. And morning dawns dimly as the clouds stoop down to watch the hopeful balloonists spread their own colorful clouds across the ground. And the balloonists stare up as the clouds stare down. Early risers sit in their cars clutching cups of hot coffee to stay warm, waiting to see what will happen.

Tempers flare: Balloon pilots test blasts of their hot air and in response the clouds blow back. And often on those first mornings of,the Festival, it's a showdown.

Fortunately clouds are impatient and easily bored. So eventually they drift off to more exciting pursuits, like swallowing mountaintops whole. And the balloonists win again, and launch their bright clouds with huffs of hot air, and the clear sky takes them in like they're old friends."

Weather Notebook Commentator Marilyn McCabe is a nature writer from Middle Grove, NY. Support for our show comes from Subaru, and from the National Science Foundation.

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Soul of the Sky - "Exploring the human side of weather"  NOW AVAILABLE Compiled and edited by: Dave Thurlow & Ralph Adler. North Conway: Mount Washington Observatory, 1999. Paperback, 150 pages.   Soul of the Sky is a different kind of weather book. It's not preoccupied with charting fronts, defining what an isobar is, or trying to get you to memorize the conversion formula from degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, it's a collection that illustrates how the weather can inspire and terrify, connect us and urge us on to new adventures, and invite us to gain a deeper appreciation of how weather and climate affect our everyday lives.