The rain let up just enough Saturday afternoon to provide a window for the launch of the College of DuPage’s fist-ever weather balloon.
“If we could do anything about the weather, we probably wouldn’t have picked this day,” Paul Sirvatka, professor of meteorology, said with a laugh.
He spoke to about 100 people, many of them current or former students, in the Homeland Security Education Center, from where the balloon was prepared and launched.
The lift off was at 2:30 p.m. and the balloon quickly began heading West behind a wind of 35 knots.
After only a few minutes it was directly over Wheaton’s Chicago Golf Club and looked to be headed toward Rockford and points West.
But earth science professor Victor Gensini pointed out that the wind was only headed West at launch time.
When the balloon ascended farther into the atmosphere — able to go as high as nine miles — the winds would likely change and head back East.
“This balloon is going to do a little circle,” Gensini said noting that it could end up bursting over Lincoln Park or in Lake Michigan.
When the balloons burst, the attached small box of instruments that collects data in real time, parachutes to earth.
The data collected includes information on temperature, dew point, barometric pressure and relative humidity, all of which is used for predicting weather pattens.
The National Weather Service sends up 90 balloons per day from various weather stations around the country, with a recovery rate of about 30-40 percent.
The availability of the balloon program can only help bolster COD’s reputation as one of the leading schools in the nation at providing entry level education for meteorology students.
“We are one of the largest feeders to Northern Illinois University’s program,” Gensini said, noting that NIU, Penn State and the University of Oklahoma were among the top schools for the subject.
Sirvatka and Gensini both stressed that education was the primary motivation in beginning the balloon program, scheduled for use in COD’s 11 meteorology courses and when Sirvatka embarks on his now-famous storm chasing trips throughout the Midwest and South.
The program will cost the college just under $20,000, and that will be picked up by a grant from the federal government.
“This is great opportunity,” Tom Schrader, Associate Dean of Math and Physical Sciences, said.
He praised both Sirvatka and Gensini, pointing out that Gensini was a nationally-known expert in the field of tornado debris patterns.
“This (program) was entirely faculty-driven,” he said.
One of Sirvatka’s former students came back for the inaugural launch.
“I was always into thunderstorms and tornados as a kid,” Michelle Mila said.
Mila, who currently works for the Village of Bloomingdale in its Geographic Information System department, noted that the collection of data by the balloon was not dissimilar to what she did everyday in her career.
Many of those present had majors unrelated to science, but were drawn to the college’s meteorology classes by the reputation of the faculty and for practical reasons.
“Of all the physical sciences you can take, it’s the most practical,” Becky Fiala, a sports broadcasting major, said. “It affects everyone.”
Business major David Bobek said “it’s really interesting. I can interpret weather data and the weather channel more easily now.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for The Naperville Sun
