Mother Nature wouldn’t cooperate with a media flight Friday morning to promote the Glass City Balloon Race, and forecasts for the weekend event itself did not look promising.
Skies were nearly calm at the surface at sunrise Friday when crews began inflating two hot-air balloons in a field next to Total Sports in Rossford. But there was enough wind a few hundred feet above the surface that the balloons’ pilots decided it would not be wise to lift off.
Particularly problematic, event leaders said, is that the wind was out of the south, which would have blown the balloons toward downtown Toledo and Lake Erie — a direction in which there aren’t many good landing spots for balloons.
The balloon-themed festival at the Compass Road site was scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Friday, with events until 11 p.m., then resuming Saturday from 3 to 11 p.m.
But by 4 p.m., rain was moving into northwest Ohio from Indiana, with showers and steadier rain tracking to the northeast ahead of a storm front, while breezy conditions present throughout the day persisted.
The National Weather Service office in Cleveland said showers and thunderstorms were likely to reach Rossford after 5 p.m. and persist until shortly after midnight, then redevelop during the predawn hours.
The agency’s forecast for Saturday was similarly unfriendly for balloon flight: a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a southwest wind of 7 to 9 mph shifting to the northwest in the afternoon and swinging to the northeast in the evening.
Balloon flights typically are scheduled first thing in the morning or early in the evening, when wind typically is weaker than during the middle of the day.
Jake Tyler, a Whitehouse resident who has organized the event with his wife, Jessica, since its start four years ago, agreed Friday morning that the forecast was “not favorable” but that flying will be an on-the-spot decision.
If balloon flights have to be scrubbed, Mr. Tyler said, the 10 participating balloonists will inflate their balloons if at all possible at sunset for a “balloon glow” display. If the weather does not allow even that, they will fire up the propane torches they use to heat their balloons’ air for a “candlelight glow.”
Jessica Tyler said other festival events, including live music performed by Mustang Sally and the Menus and fireworks displays scheduled for 9 p.m. each day, will occur even if the balloons can’t fly, although rain could also interfere with the planned pyrotechnics.
First Published September 27, 2019, 3:20 p.m.
