By Charles Miller
A story that has been all over the news for weeks now is those spy balloons of alleged Chinese origin that the U.S. Air Force has been shooting down. This apparently inspired a talented undergraduate student in a computer science program by the name of Kevin to create his “spy balloon simulator” online. He writes, “My goal is to solve the world’s many problems using science, technology, and machine learning.”
Kevin certainly did solve the problem of tracking what is likely to happen to balloons that are launched from any point on the globe. He created a website that uses actual atmospheric records from the historical ERA5 database provided by ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). The centre has one of the largest supercomputer facilities and meteorological data archives in the world. Kevin taps into this to create a fun demonstration of where spy balloons might go as they follow the jet stream high in the earth’s atmosphere.
This website is available to the public and well worth a visit. The address is a bit of a long one, so I will put it in quotes. Point your browser to “https://spyballoonsim.hornetsnestguild.com” (No www and there are no hyphens in the address. So if it is broken across two lines in the print edition, please omit any hyphens).
When I launched a trial balloon from San Miguel de Allende, it made a beeline to Havana, Cuba, then turned south to Costa Rica, then crossed into the Pacific Ocean, where it spent days looping around over open water off of Acapulco.
Trying again, I next launched a balloon from my old hometown in East Texas, and wow! This time my spy in the sky completed five full circumnavigations of Earth, passing over Madrid, Istanbul, New Delhi, Tokyo, Seattle, Dallas, Philadelphia, Reykjavik, twice near Moscow, Wuhan (believe it or not), Baja California, Morocco, Egypt, and China for the third time, before eventually splashing down in the Great Slave Lake in Canada.
Kevin’s disclaimer says the results will not be accurate enough as a credible source of military intel, and that is absolutely so. Over a period of several days I tried launching spy balloons from China. The first one flew over Canada. The next one headed straight for Mexico but became interminably becalmed south of Hawaii, but the next time I tried launching from Beijing I did get a flyover of the USA.
The maps on this site are provided by OpenStreetMap and are accurate down to street level. Use the wheel on your mouse or click on the plus [+] icon to zoom in. Now you can practice launching balloons 10 days ago or 30 or 60 to see how close you can get to having one fly over your house.
Kevin’s website is a lot more entertaining than the earliest video games of the 1980s and is much more educational. Anyone who tries launching a few spy balloons is guaranteed to come away with a much better understanding of the Earth’s wind patterns and its weather.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
