Tero - sounds like there is some wacko, escaped, gigantic weather balloon headed in your direction :
August 30, 1998
Balloon Heads Toward North Pole
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Filed at 10:29 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) -- Against all odds, a giant runaway weather balloon appeared
headed toward the North Pole on Sunday after eluding another attempt to
catch up to it.
A U.S. Navy pilot who believed he spotted the 25-story balloon on Sunday
had to return to a NATO base in Keflavik, Iceland, when his plane developed a
propeller leak, said Halli Sigurdsson, deputy director of Air Traffic Services in
Iceland.
''We are fairly optimistic the balloon has been found,'' he told The Associated
Press. He said another navy plane will be sent to try to catch up to it.
Canadian jet fighters fired more than 1,000 rounds into the helium-filled
balloon on Thursday, but it remained aloft.
The balloon disappeared off radar screens late Saturday night about 200 miles
north of the Arctic Circle. Sigurdsson said its disappearance is worrisome
because of the possible interference with air traffic.
Airplanes from Canada, Britain and the U.S. military in Iceland had been
tracking the runaway balloon, and air traffic controllers had been diverting
planes from its path.
The balloon is not equipped with transponders that emit navigation signals to
alert airliners to its presence.
Sigurdsson said the Navy believes the errant balloon is now east of Greenland
and north of mainland Norway.
''If this is the balloon, it looks like it's heading towards Spitsbergen,'' a remote
Norwegian island on the Arctic Circle off the country's north coast, he said.
The wayward balloon, an unstaffed research station used to measure ozone
levels over Canada, can be seen from about 40 miles away. It was launched
Aug. 24 from Vanscoy, Saskatchewan, just outside Saskatoon. |
