SPOKANE, Wash. — "What the heck is that?" one person is heard asking on one of numerous videos circulating online, showing a white dot in the sky.
What that dot is is a matter of who you ask.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brid. Gen. Patrick Ryder says, “It’s a surveillance balloon. Right? So, there is a surveillance capability under this large balloon.”
The Chinese government, which admits the craft is from their country, says it's a 'civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes.' The government says it was blown off course.
KREM 2 wanted to know what weather balloons look like and how they're used, so we asked the National Weather Service in Spokane.
“The data we collect here can help New York in a few days," says general forecaster Krista Carrothers as she fills a large balloon with hydrogen.
The NWS launches these balloons, which measure about three feet across when fully inflated, twice a day. Carrothers says other NWS stations across the country are also launching them at the same time to gather data using a small device tied to the balloon.
“The sonde? It does temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and pressure," Carrothers says.
The Chinese balloon is believed to be as large as three buses.
While NWS cannot comment on the suspected surveillance balloon, Carrothers says their weather balloons do get pretty big.
“Once they get up into the atmosphere they expand to about the size of a small house even," she says. "They get very large and then they pop.”
The Pentagon says China's balloon is flying around at 60,000 feet.
“They go about 100,000 feet, so 20-22 miles," Carrothers says of the NWS balloons. "Yeah, they go quite a bit.”
She says the balloons do end up all over the place.
“However the wind takes it," she laughs. "So a lot of ours do end up in Montana because that’s the general flow pattern is to west to east.”
Though the balloons biodegrade once they land and provide useful weather info within an hour of launch.
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