Balloon Festival Barely Gets Off Ground : Flights Are Cut Short as Fog Puts Damper on Big Event Near Poway

Some things in life you think you can count on. Lowlanders look to the Julian apple harvest in October. Firemen worry about hot Santa Ana winds blowing in September. The weatherman can predict gloom in June. And Hans Petermann figured on clear morning skies in August.

So five months ago he invited 60 of the nation’s finest hot-air balloonists for some flying fun at the end of August near Poway. It’ll be a great time to fly, he told ‘em; maybe a little haze but heck, it’ll burn off with the morning sun and in no time at all we’ll be turning a blue sky into polka dots.

Hey, what could go wrong? This is San Diego, where the weather is as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Someone better check for the sun.

Scrubbed by Fog

What was to have been the greatest liftoff of hot-air balloons in San Diego County was reduced to a handful of balloons lifting off during a free-fly period just to grab some air time while the sun was shining. The two headliner events, though, were scrubbed by fog.

Fog? An early Santa Ana, maybe. An earthquake, maybe. But fog?

Strike up another victim to San Diego’s non-summer.

“Here we are in sunny Southern California where the weather’s predictable 99% of the time. Who would have thought, when we began planning this event five months ago, that this would happen?” asked Hans Petermann, shaking his head in disbelief.

“We even planned two days of flying in case it even rained one day,” he said. “But to lose two days of flying to fog? C’mon!”

Petermann was the balloonmeister--head honcho--for the Carmel Mountain Ranch Hot Air Balloon Festival, a combination promo for a large development on the east side of Interstate 15 at Carmel Mountain Road, and a fund-raiser for the nonprofit Visiting Nurse Assn. of San Diego.

The event attracted more than 30,000 people over two days, organizers said, and while there wasn’t a lot to look at in the sky, visitors had plenty to see on the ground, including huge inflatables and a handful of hot-air balloons that were fired up, albeit tethered to the ground for static flight, to allow close-up viewing.

Petermann had planned two mornings of so-called Hare-and-Hound competition in which chase balloons try to bean bag-bomb a target dropped by a lead balloon. There was $500 in prize money for the winner of each day’s contest.

A free-flight session was held at dusk Saturday, unhampered by bad weather, which got 20 balloonists into the air, to the ahs and wows of thousands of spectators who hung around the festival grounds.

Morning Flight Time

The morning flights had to be aloft by 9 a.m. because later flying would be jeopardized by thermal updrafts--large-scale, invisible dust devils generated by surface heat that could really ruin a balloonist’s day.

Furthermore, the Miramar Naval Air Station had granted clearance to the balloons only through 9:45 a.m., not wanting to tangle any top guns with top balloons.

Both Saturday and Sunday, the fog did not burn off until well after 9 a.m., and Petermann scuttled the flights.