IU weather balloon launch: Data for scientists, dramatic backdrop for musicians

On Sunday morning (Feb. 22), a 15 mph northwest wind whipped light snow flurries across the Northwest Quad just north of the Geological Sciences building on the Indiana University campus, which made the 22 F° temperature feel 10 degrees colder.

It was the staging area for two separate but related missions.

One of the missions was scientific—the launch of a weather balloon with an attached instrument package, led by Travis O’Brien, an associate professor in IU’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department and the principal investigator on the project. O’Brien described Sunday morning’s launch, supported by a dozen students and faculty in the department, as part of a broader international program—coordin­ated radiosonde releases ahead of “impactful weather” to help produce better forecasts.

The data collected from morning’s balloon, O’Brien added, can help with East Coast storm forecasts in the coming days. Balloons were also launched the day before and a couple more were scheduled for later Sunday afternoon.

The other Sunday morning mission was cultural. Local band New Semantics used the launch as the backdrop for a promotional video. The shot they wanted was simple—the balloon rising into a gray sky behind them, as the band played. As simple as that concept is, the timing would involve some luck.

Videographer Thomas Pigott was hoping for a shot when the lyrics fit the moment. The embedded 10 seconds of video included below provide evidence that the cultural mission was a success.

On the scientific side of things, O’Brien said the information collected by such weather balloons would have been useful for forecasters a few days earlier, when a tornado hit the west side of Bloomington. If the program had been fully in place then, O’Brien said, they might have sent up a balloon earlier in the day on Thursday so that the National Weather Service would have had a more precise idea of what temperature, humidity, and winds were like ahead of the bad weather.

The launch of the balloons also provides some basic field experience for atmospheric science students, like Quentin Condra and Cooper Haughawout. Condra wielded a hand-held gadget to measure wind speed and direction. The wind out of the northwest meant the balloon was launched from the northwest corner of the quad to ensure it was able to clear the Multidisciplinary Science Building II, which forms the eastern edge of the quad.

Haughawout described how the balloon was being inflated to the point when it would lift a counterweight—a coffee mug filled with water.

The instrument package came from International Met Systems, a Grand Rapids–based company whose equipment was feeding live readings to a laptop computer screen set up on a makeshift platform of an instrument case laid across the top of a trash can. Quick reflexes from Alana Dachtler, vice president of International Met, saved the laptop from crashing to the ground when a wind gust threatened to send it tumbling.

Radiosondes, Dachtler said, have been around for decades—she called it a relatively old technology that has been refined over the years.

By design, the balloons eventually pop, and the instrument package is supposed to float back down to earth with its attached parachute. A balloon launched the day before made it across the Ohio border before it finally burst, Dachtler said. Not every launch goes as smooth as Sunday’s, she added—sometimes the balloon pops before it gets high enough, or the instrument package will get tangled in a powerline.

The bandmates from New Semantics were tipped off about the balloon launch by Rocco Fugate, their lead guitarist, who is a weather science student—which meant he was not in the video. After testing out the sound and the camera angles, drummer Nick Carlson and lead singer Maxwell Dogwood repositioned their setup a little closer to the weather balloon launchpad.

They were not certain when exactly the balloon would be released, but the frigid conditions meant that playing continuously until liftoff wasn’t really an option—Dogwood’s fingers might have frozen to his frets.

Luck was with the band.

Video: “You're not the one but I’d hate to lose ya ...”

Photos: Feb. 22, 2026 weather balloon launch

[Click on any photo, to arrow or swipe through all the images at full-screen size.]