LAKE ARTHUR - Father’s Day brought a unique surprise to a young man who was visiting his grandparents’ house by the lake. Porter Melder, 10, of Delcambre, noticed a brightly colored object falling from the sky.“I live on Pleasant Street and Porter spotted the object crashing down,” said his grandmother, Cheryl Thackston. “At first glance, he thought it was a kite.”Being the ever-curious young boy, he told her he was going to get it.“We did not know what it was at first,” Thackston said. “What he found was the bright orange parachute and long strings that had been attached to a weather balloon, which belonged to the National Weather Service.”She said Melder really enjoys science and weather so this was an extraordinary find for him. Also attached to the parachute was a capsule.“Inside was instructions on what to do if it was found,” she explained. “There was a large envelope with a return address in Missouri. We did mail it back and are currently waiting to hear a response.” Thackston said Melder made sure to include a letter requesting a response.“Once he found it, we began researching weather balloons,” she said. “We also made a call to the weather station in Lake Charles.”Thackston said they discovered that thousands of weather balloons are launched each year and only around 20 percent are ever recovered because many of them fall into bodies of water or get caught in treetops.
