CCUSD: UP, Up & Away! Weather Club Launched Weather Balloon.

Posted By The Peak on Jun 1, 2019

May 30, 2019

Courtesy of Cave Creek Unified School District

Lone Mountain Elementary School’s, located in the Cave Creek Unified School District, Weather Club launched their weather balloon on May 24, 2019.

Mr. Greg Quinn, Meteorologist, heads up the club at LMES.  He said that, “Our Balloon traveled all the way to Winslow, AZ.  It landed about 9 miles southwest of Winslow, 7 miles south of I-40 and about 10 miles east of Meteor Crater.  The balloon got to 100,538 feet and was above 99% of our atmosphere.  The balloon crossed over Horseshoe and Bartlett Lakes, Payson and the Mogollon Rim and north toward the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest.  At achieving >100,000 ft. altitude this was the second highest flight we have had and the first time we were able to get video up to 100,000 feet. The balloon was basically on the edge of space.  This is a fantastic achievement as the balloon we used (600 gram balloon) normally gets to ~85,000 feet.  The only other time we achieved greater than 100,000 feet was in 2014 with a much larger balloon (800 gram).”

The balloon had two mounted cameras, one was a GoPro 5 Black and the second was an inexpensive Vivitar.  The Vivitar was used for the down-looking launch video and for early images (30 minutes) and then the GoPro for the rest of the flight.  The GoPro did capture 2.75 hours of high definition video (the flight was over 3 hours) and about 20 minutes of decent.

Administrator in Charge at LMES, Ms. Cara Herkamp said, “The whole process is amazing; the staff enjoyed watching the launch.”  She went on to thank Mr. Quinn for leading the charge with the Weather Club.

Mr. Quinn is planning a “Watch Party” this summer complete with pizza for the Club.  Thank you, Mr. Quinn!

Lone Mountain Elementary School is an A+ School of Excellence and a STEM school.  LMES students received personalized learning and Chinese K-6.  For more information, please contact the school at 480-437-3000.

Assembling the Baloon..

Best,

Julia Scotto
Executive Assistant to
Dr. Debbi Burdick, Superintendent & Governing Board
Cave Creek Unified School District
480.575.2016 Phone/480.575.2092 Fax
jscotto@ccusd93.org

“You are what you do, not what you say” – C.G. Jung

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