Palatine Fire Department Responds to Unusual Call Tuesday

Palatine firefighters responded to a call Tuesday morning in the 100 block of Greenwood Avenue from a homeowner that found an unidentified object on her backyard deck, with an ominous warning on it.

The woman called 9-1-1 around 9:45 a.m. Tuesday and told dispatch she found a parachute, and an object that had verbiage on it that stated "the balloon may contain flammable gas so contact your fire department if found", said Bill Gabrenya, deputy fire chief. 

Gabrenya said firefighters were on the scene by 9:49 a.m., and when they got closer to the balloon, additional smaller wording stated it was a NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) weather instrument. 

The fire department took all the debris, which included a parachute, a broken balloon and the device and will ship it all back to the National Weather Service, as is instructed on the device.

Firefighters were later able to determine it was a Radiosonde Lockheed Martin Mark 2A weather instrument, which was sent from the NWS in Davenport, Iowa on Monday at 5 a.m.

The time it landed in the Palatine backyard cannot be exactly determined, because the homeowner had just arrived back into town on Tuesday.

What is known is that a typical weather balloon can stay in tact after landing on a surface for roughly 2.5 hours. 

Radiosonde weather instruments have been sent out by the NOAA National Weather Service since the 1930's to measure temperature, pressure, relative humidity and other weather calculations.

According to the NWS, only 20 percent of the devices are ever recovered.