Unidentified Fallen Object was a weather balloon

In the classic fairy tale, Chicken Little, the young chick is bumped on the head by a falling acorn, and believes the sky is falling. Had he been in Pleasant View Monday morning, Chicken Little might not have been the only one reaching such a conclusion.
Local police and 911 dispatchers started receiving reports of an object that had fallen from the sky some of which included some exaggerated reports that a hunk of metal had fallen from the sky and was smoking.
Constable Will Leach said he was contacted about 9 a.m. Monday by local resident Wanda Mays, who reported seeing something strange that had fallen from the sky.
“She said, ‘I don’t know if it is a UFO or what.’ She said it came flying from out of the air, and was a parachute,” Leach said.
Leach and Sheriff’s Capt. Todd Shelley responded to Gary Foley’s residence Monday morning to investigate what turned out to be not something extraterrestrial, but more earthbound in origin.
After a few calls by 911 dispatchers, local police learned that the object was a Radiosonde weather balloon, which was released about 7 a.m. in Nashville Monday morning.
According to the National Weather Service website, the Radiosonde are instruments used by weather agencies around the world to collect weather information. The instruments are launched at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. each day, and are carried aloft by hydrogen filled balloons to measure and simultaneously transmit recorded data, which include pressure, temperatures, and humidity.
Winds are determined by using an instrument that tracks the radio signal transmitted from the Radiosonde. Vertical data from the Radiosonde is interpreted at the launching station and entered into a worldwide communications network that relays it to various forecast centers around the globe.
The balloons can reach altitudes as high as 100,000 feet before bursting about 90 minutes after launch.
Leach, who has been in law enforcement for eight years, admits the initial calls were a little strange.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. We were first afraid to mess with it, when we first came up on it until we called 911, and they called the weather station, who told us how to unhook the battery,” Leach said.
The instruments are in a Styrofoam box about the size of a shoebox, and local police followed directions on the package, and are mailing it back so that it can be refurbished, and launched again.
To learn more about the Radiosonde, log onto www.srh.noaa.gov/mob/balloon.shtml.