Bible School’s Balloon Makes It to Minnesota

Granada Hills First Presbyterian Church officials said Thursday they were astonished to learn that one of 190 helium-filled balloons made it about 1,500 miles to near St. Paul, Minn., a day and a half after vacation Bible school students released it.

“I don’t want to say that it’s a miracle, but it could border on being a miracle,” said Harold Carson, a seminary school graduate and director of education for the church.

The 158 kindergarten through 6th-grade students in the church’s vacation Bible school released the balloons, which had Scripture messages attached to them, about noon last Friday as part of a ceremony marking the end of the Bible school session, Carson said.

One of the balloons, which also carried the church’s name and telephone number, was found Saturday evening in the front yard of Nancy Klees’ home in Eagan, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, Klees said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Klees, formerly a Presbyterian but now a Methodist, said her son brought in the 12-inch-wide, white balloon, found floating 5 or 6 inches off the ground.

Checked Phone Book

Klees said that she and her husband, Tom, checked their telephone book to see what city went with the area code on the note attached to the balloon with a piece of ribbon. When the two discovered it was in California, Klees said, “We decided we better call.”

“It’s almost unbelievable,” Klees said.

But Mike Smith, a meteorologist for WeatherData, a company that provides weather forecasts for The Times, said he was not surprised because winds in the upper atmosphere during the time the balloons were in the air were blowing to the northeast at about 70 m.p.h.

“It looks quite possible, though looking at the weather maps I would have guessed northern Iowa,” Smith said about where the balloon might have been expected to land.

For one of the balloons to have traveled from Los Angeles to St. Paul, it would have had to reach altitudes between 8,000 and 35,000 feet, Smith said.

“It’s not that unusual,” Smith said. “Like any sample, if you take 100 balloons, some will burst in the first minute or two and others, by some quirk of manufacturing, will have a little tougher rubber wall and survive for much longer.”

No one else has called the church to say that they have found one of the balloons released by the Bible school students, Carson said. But he said he hopes that others will find them.

“We would like to think that we are spreading the Word,” he said.