ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, AUGUST 17, 2001, 3:00 P.M. CDT (20:00 UTC) -- More than 10 hours of flying through thunderstorms and a weather system that blocked any straightforward passage across the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans did what a dozen days of slow flying across Australia and the South Pacific failed to do: stymie Steve Fossett in his attempt to become the first solo balloonist to fly around the world. The balloon landed near the Brazilian city of Bage at about 7 a.m. CDT Friday.
According to meteorologist Bob Rice the problem developed like this:
A stalled cold front in the vicinity of Montevideo, extending east/southeast into the Atlantic, produced instabilities that led to thunderstorm cells along the eastern border of Argentina. While these cells had been expected to dissipate they failed to do so. The balloon managed to slide past a couple of them, but it finally drove into the rain and wind of a dissipating thunderhead and later into the fragments of another thunderstorm, which produced both snow and turbulence. “It made for a very stressful day for the pilot,” Rice said.
Although Fossett and Solo Spirit ultimately managed to wend their way through the storms -- capable of rupturing the balloon and injuring the pilot -- the storm-generating system continued to block their way into the Atlantic. Or to quote Rice: “The same frontal system was expected to remain nearly stationary over the Atlantic where the balloon track would have to be, if it were to find its way past the southern side of a mid-Atlantic blockage. To attain that track, the balloon would have to fly below 15,000 feet, exposing it to weather associated with the front. A higher path would result in a very slow northward detour.
“All of this would have been a very demanding chore for a pilot that had already flown almost 13 days. Senior members of the staff recommended to Steve that he not proceed; he very reluctantly agreed.”
On another note, Fossett's latest mission attracted worldwide multimedia interest. For instance, Washington University Radio Actuality Service received calls from 770 radio stations worldwide since the beginning of the mission. On the day the mission ended 356 stations accessed the service.
According to David Butler, Washington University manager of engineering web services and affiliate faculty member in computer science, since the mission began August 4 the web site received 11,600,000 hits. Between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. on the day the mission ended the web server handled one-half million hits.
