Hot air balloon hits power pole near Napa

A downdraft caused a hot-air balloon with 20 passengers to land on a power pole north of Napa Sunday morning, according to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies responded to a report at 8:33 a.m. that a balloon owned by Balloons Above the Valley, a company offering aerial tours of the wine country, had gone down near Carrell Lane west of Highway 29, according to Lt. Pete Berg. The pilot, Scott Carroll, encountered wind conditions that made it impossible to gain altitude, Berg said.

The balloon touched a power pole, burning part of the aircraft’s nylon envelope and disrupting power for area homeowners, according to Berg. The aircraft then rose again and traveled about 1 mile southwest before finally coming to rest at Alston Park, a common landing site for local touring balloons.

Bob Barbarick, owner of Balloons Above the Valley, said the balloon was one of three to lift off from Yountville at about 7:45 a.m., shortly after sunrise. The other two crafts were flown to Napa Valley College in south Napa without incident, he said.

According to Barbarick, the condition that drove the third balloon to Carrell Lane likely was subsidence, in which air cools, becomes denser and hovers close to the ground, forcing warmer and more buoyant air upward.

“This situation (the pilot) got into, it’s unusual, but we had a very cold day on the surface and that’s what caused the downward shift in air movement,” said Barbarick, referring to temperatures that were slowly climbing from near the freezing point before daybreak.

It was not immediately clear how many PG&E customers lost service, and a call to a utility spokesperson was not immediately returned.

No one was hurt during the collision or landing, but Berg reported that one female passenger injured her leg while climbing out of the balloon’s passenger basket. There was no reported ambulance response, he said.

via – Napa Valley Register.