Launch?!

Well, today I had a nice Sunday of freshies for brunch and a pressure ridge tour. Then we CREAM folk met for dinner and then headed out to Willy Field on Ivan at 9p. We have begun our pre-launch sequence under the midnight sun and hope to fly at 7a Mon (NZ time).

You can watch it happen! (or not, depending on how the winds go -- so far so good!) In ballooning, this is about as much notice as you get.... wake up one morning and off you go. Also, the local weather conditions as observed and reported by Ross, our local weatherman.

As to why we've waited until now to launch, as you see in the following plots, the stratospheric winds have only just set up over the pole, giving us reliable circular orbits.
Dec 10:
Dec 15: