Weather or Not

Wind Shear

There are days when it seems perfectly flyable on the ground.  BUT.. In some cases the wind just above the tree tops is scooting along real good.  This is what we call a "Wind Shear".  There are several problems with high winds aloft.  First is that your ground team can not keep up.  The recovery team must travel about 2.5 times faster on the ground that you are flying in the sky in order to keep up.  The balloon is going cross country and the ground team is on roads that may not go parallel to the balloons flight.  On the ground they must deal with turns, stop lights, Stop Signs and TRAFFIC.  If you are flying along at 25 miles per hour they must be doing 62.5 constantly to keep up.  Another problem and more severe is what the shear does to the balloon.  Lets stop for a second and explain a shear.  This is a point in the sky where two different layers of wind have A). a significant speed difference or B), a considerable difference in direction. When a balloon hits a wind shear it can collapse the side of the balloon causing the pilot to burn thru the skin of the balloon or the balloon can literally skip off the shear like a rock on water.

Think of it like this.

Here is a great analogy:  Imagine we have placed a hula hoop about 250 feet out in a lake.  You have a rock and you have to skip the rock off the water and make it stop inside the Hula Hoop.  Sounds nearly impossible,  Now, You get one chance at it and your betting your life on it.  We won’t do that.  Flying a balloon when there is a significant wind shear at low levels to the ground is simply not safe.