Mo grinned and reached out for Agatha's balloon. They'd do this together, and maybe Agatha could even learn how to do the spell herself in the process. Easy as pie, right? Mo placed the balloon over the tip of his wand and held it up to show her. "So first you put the balloon on the wand, and then you flick it like this..." He flicked it to show her.

"And then you say the incantation." And since they were running out of time, Mo did that for her. He flicked the wand and said, "Helic Umtus." Her balloon filled steadily with helium, and as it got neeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaarly big enough, he thrust out both hands at her. "Quick quick quick! Tie off the balloon!"

He actually got her balloon! Ohh, was he going-- HE WAS!!! Merlin, he was the BEST!! The redness on Agatha's face left as quickly as it had appeared and she looked a lot more relieved.

She watched closely as he did the spell for her, with a hint of spark in her eyes. He was SUCH a nice Ravenclaw. If only there were all like him. But then he was telling her to tie off the balloon and Agatha panicked a little on the inside and fow a second didn't know what to do. Oh, tie off the balloon, of course. He had just SAID that. Duh.

"Okay!" She exclaimed as she reached for the open end of her balloon and took it out of his wand, holding it tightly so it wouldn't let out all the gas. "Thank you!" The third year looked up at him in admiration. He was brilliant!

Sooo after a few seconds of struggle, Agatha managed to tie it off. She had a balloon! YES! But wait, there was something else they needed to do. She looked at where all the weird things were and went to retrieve one from professor Airey's desk. She had to look around and check how the others had done it. Then she copied them and attached it to her balloon. HER balloon that was all full and floating and awesome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emms

Simon chuckled and nodded in agreement with Professor Airey's statement about karma. Yes, that was true. "Glad to hear it, Professor!" he said with a happy nod and then saluted his Professor and went back to work. It had just felt very appropriate to salute Professor Flamsteed when he had told Simon to carry on. It seemed like the proper thing to do. Uh-huh. So Simon went back to his table to check on his completed weather balloon.

Radiosome in the right place? Check.

He simply gave the Slytherin one final salute. All good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harry174

Angel was totally upset about the fact she couldn't do the spell, normally she was really good at spells but this was going really wrong. "This is hard." Angel sighed as she thought about what kirk would do.

"Helic umtus!" Angel gave her wand a subtle flick and watched as the balloon started to full up but then stop, why was all the stars against her tonight. She wondered where all her friends were that she could ask but they seemed to be really busy with their own work.

"It is," he confirmed with a firm head now. "Conjuration is NEWT level work, Miss Valentine. Something to work towards. The fact that you are able to produce any helium at all from your wand goes against statistics." Seriously, nothing to get too emotional over. He would have brought in some of those muggle helium tanks had the conditions outside allowed for it for those younger students who could not yet handle such advanced magic....but when life hands you apples, make lemonade!

Wait...that wasn't right...

Checking his sundial watch, he retrieved another balloon from Miss Valentine's bag and filled it up with helium from his own wand, tied it off, and handed it to the Gryffindor. "Just for the sake of time, use this one. You can keep practicing the spell with your remaining balloons on your own time if you wish. Or set up an appointment with me to work on it."

SPOILER!!: FLYING DIMA! /dramatic

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemon

Professor Top Hat talked a LOT, and Dima had little to no idea of what he was saying. Something about being lighter than air... were they going to float?! Were they doing anti-gravity related things? What did that have to do with weather? Did it matter? He wanted to do that! Toussaint vote cast!

... except there were apparently other plans for today's lesson. Sad.

"Helic Umtus." The incantation was pretty easy enough, and the first year had flicking DOWN. At once, he began fixing a balloon onto the end of his wand, doing his best to hold it in place with his non-wand hand. Ready? READY. This balloon was about to get blown.

Flick. "Helic Umtus!" Nothing happened on his first go, seeing as Dima's pronunciation had been tongue-tied. His wand movement was a little exaggerated too, but he amended that on his second try. The words seemed to be sliiightly smoother coming out of his mouth as well. "Helic Umtus!"

Instead of the balloon growing bigger, Dima went flying back into the desk behind him. Whoops.

Ah, a boy after his own heart. Or something. Two peas in a pod? Either way, he didn't feel so bad about being thrown backwards by his own invention now that a student had experiencing the same thing.

Sad...saaaaaaaaaaaaad life you lead, Airey Leighton Flamsteed.

"You alright there, Mr. Toussaint?" Need an ice back for his bum or something?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cassirin

Ah, the professor sounded JUST like him. That was definitely a little bit of a relief. Mo grinned at the professor and gave him a salute. "I don't sing, sir, but I might be willing to give it a go for entertainment value. We could take this act on the road."

"We'll be bigger than The Bent-Winged Snitches," he winked. Was the amusing thing about helium, everyone could sound as good as a high pitch squeaky chipmunk could be with a little dose of helium.

Checking his sundial watch one last time, Airey took a peek out the nearest window and tapped his chin thoughtfully for a few moments before making his way back towards his desk. "Alright everyone, time is up!" he announced, his voice breaking like a teenagers as the effects of the helium began to wear off.

"If you look at the bottom of your radiosonde, you will see a clamp that you need to push on to detach the radio receiver device. Make sure you are holding on tightly to your radiosonde, because once the radio receiver is detached it will become lighter than your helium filled balloon and float to the top of the classroom." Which would just mean they would have to cast a Summoning Charm to get it back, but he would prefer to have as few things flying around the classroom as possible. "When you are ready, head over to one of the windows, open it, and drop your weather balloon out it. Do this as quickly as possible. Those freezing temperatures out there mean business." He gestured towards the window nearest him and began to move towards it. "Now, it doesn't take Rowena Ravenclaw to know that there is a blizzard out there. To make a blizzard we need three ingredients - Cold, below freezing, air to make snow; moisture to form clouds and precipitation; and rising warm air colliding with the cold air to form something called a front which is necessary to form clouds and cause precipitation. And we clearly already have all that, so consider this some practice in reading data."

He quickly opened the window, letting an icy blast of winter air shoot through the classroom, and tossed it outside. "It will take a few seconds for the information from your radiosonde to get to your radio receiver, so what I want you all to look for specifically is if there is any indication in your readings that the snow will be letting up. To do this, you need to check on your temperature readings. There will be two, one for the temperature outside and one for precipitation. You want to watch to see if the precipitation temperature ever goes above 0 degrees Celsius. If we find this as the balloons slowly rise, then we can predict that this winter will be moving on soon."

Hope? Hope was probably a better word.

"So go ahead and launch your weather balloons and then watch the data on your radio receiver."

OOC: you will need just 1 post to accomplish the task of launching your weather balloon. Feel free to make up whatever numbers you want on your character's receiver - we all know muggle things can go wonky at Hogwarts - but nothing should be above 0 C yet

Next post will come approximately 12 hours from the time of this post.

As always, any questions you have please do not hesitate to shoot me a VM or PM or ask to Professor Flamsteed IC

Helium balloon weather forecasting? That was kind of cool! Caleb always loved astronomy - they always did cool things, he wasn't sure if he was GRASPING all of it in his brain but as long as he had fun, right?

He was sure he wouldn't think that way once OWLs came around...

He got his balloon and went ahead to get the balloon. He picked a green one, because SLYTHERIN YO!

"Helic Umtus!" he said loudly, flicking his wand just as Flamsteed had done and watching as the balloon quickly began to fill with the gas. Hehe. Gas. He was SO MATURE.

Once the balloon was nice and large, but not so large that he was afraid he was going to pop it. Alright, all set and ready to go.

Right then, push... this clamp right here an- woAH.

Toby had to quickly scramble to grab hold of the radiosonde because it was already making a bid for freedom. It was yet another case of him having trailed off when he was supposed to be concentrating on instructions, but it was fine. Everything was fine. He still had hold of it.

When Professor Flamsteed was done talking, Toby didn't waste any time before making his way over to the classroom window so he could get started. He flung open the window and let go of the balloon so it was off outside, and then hurriedly pulled it back closed again. But it was enough for him to REALLY appreciate how cold it was out there. Plus, being overly sweaty from all that running in thick layers was going to be a problem. Just that one gust of cold cold wind had been enough to start Toby shivering like mad, and soon enough everyone else would be throwing windows open, and it would get even colder.

It was best to move away from the windows, which Toby very quickly did whilst keeping a careful eye on his receiver, practically willing for the number on the precipitation temperature thing to go above zero degrees. Every now and then the Hufflepuff gave a shiver, because it really was very cold (and he was considering chucking another sweater back on) but kept his eyes trained on the receiver. The highest it would reach on his was about -10 degrees, but there was still time, right? He'd just keep watching.

Great! They were moving on. Adi listened to Flamsteed explain the necessary stuff and what not. Eyeing the bottom of the radiosonde, he did see the the clamp. Push it to detach the radio thingy? You got it. Grasping the radiosonde, Adi did just that.

That done, he bustled over to a window, threw it open and dropped the balloon out. But not before being his with the cold from outside. Brrr! Backing away from the window, which he had closed (but still, it felt like he hadn't done that at all), Adi glanced at the receiver. The precipitation temperature to be precise.

Ah yes. Here was a reading. -19 degrees Celsius.

Sophie turned her attention to the professor when she heard his voice booming over the crowd. Okay, time to put this thing into action. Hopefully she'd done it the right way, and it wouldn't just fizzle out and earn her a T for this class. Sophie peered at the bottom of the radiosonde and located the clamp. She then carried the instrument to one of the openwindows and very quickly stood before it.

"HOLY MERLIN!" she called out. It was C-O-L-D out there. O_O

Sophie shivered and tried to ignore the chattering of her teeth as she stood there and attempted to look at the readings on the radiosonde. Waiting...waiting...waiting...

Nope. Not above zero, and the balloon didn't even rise. Sophie closed the window she'd been working at and stepped back inside. "Err, I don't think it's planning on letting up anytime soon..."

It was time to set his little weather balloon up into the air. He glanced down at it and smirked. Good riddance. He wouldn't admit it but he had sort of become more or less ambivalent towards balloons during this lesson. He figured that it was a better mind to be in at the moment than the one he had been in when he entered the classroom. However, he quickly jumped from that topic onto the blizzard. His eyebrows raised when Airey mentioned the blizzard. Ooh, now the Professor had his attention.

Ensuring that he had a firm grip on the radisode, Simon pushed the clamp and detached the radio receiver from the device. After this was done, he made his way over to the open classroom window and carefully dropped the balloon outside of it. He shivered as a frigid cold blast greeted him. Squinting his blue eyes as it was hard and bright to see out there, he tried his hardest to read the temperature. The temperature probe dropped below freezing rather quickly. His eyes widened as he saw the numbers jump around. Eventually the temperature stabilized out around -16 C. Just as Simon was about to take note of that, he noticed that the temperature dropped even lower. His blue eyes widened to -25 C? No, no, no, that couldn't possibly be right. After waiting a couple of seconds, he was about to write that number down too when the number jumped up in temperature this time to -17 C? He waited for the number to settle for a little bit longer before jotting the final temperature down.

Alright, -17 Celsius. That was frigid. Way too frigid.

Merlin, for once, he was so glad that he was inside.

He raised his hand, "Uh Professor Flamsteed, is it normal for the value of the temperatures to jump around a little bit? Does that mean its just adjusting to the temperature?"

Mo saluted Agatha before reeling his balloon back in and sauntering for the window. This was actually a pretty cool experiment, even if his voice was chipmunky and he was freezing and a little lightheaded. He'd made a barometer today. And learned a new spell. And been called stellar at least once. Maybe more. Good day all around.

At the window, Mo released his balloon, which bobbed along twice before jerking to an abrupt halt. What the... oh. It was still tied to Mo's wrist, much like a small child would have at a theme park. Mo untangled the string, checked the security of his device, and then tossed the thing out the window again. It bobbed along merrily this time, slipping out of sight almost immediately as it rose up along the castle wall and into the cold air of the troposphere.

How cold was it? Very very cold. Mo stepped back from the window to let someone else take a turn as he fiddled with his indicator. He was glad it was the balloon out there, and the Mo was in here.

Ian heard the professor speak and he turned to listen to what was going on. Time to get ready to release his balloon. He walked over the the window and let his balloon up. He waited a little bit to see what results may come. He looked back over to see if AJ was going to follow.

Now it was time to make Dorothy fly. Jasmine glanced over at Leah to see how she was doing with her helium. While she waited for her to finish, she decided to start the last portion of the activity. Holding on to her radiosonde, Jasmine looked for the clamp that she needed to push. Finding it, she pushed down and the radio receiver detached. Figuring that she was as ready as she would ever be, Jasmine walked over to the nearest window.

Jasmine knew that she was going to have to move fast because otherwise, she might freeze on the spot once the cold air hit her. Quickly opening the window, Jasmine threw her balloon outside and shut it immediately. Taking a moment to recover from the arctic blast, Jasmine waited for the readings to register on her device.

When the data finally began to register, Jasmine looked for her temperature readings. She was hoping against hope that the number would be above 0 degrees, but alas, it was not to be. It looked like the groundhog saw its shadow and they were in for six more weeks of winter because the temperature said -15 degrees. Maybe the balloon hadn't reached its final height yet and the temperature would increase. Heat was supposed to rise, right? Well one could only hope.

SPOILER!!: don't worry, I know we posted only minutes a part, just playing it IC <3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lissy Longbottom

Helium balloon weather forecasting? That was kind of cool! Caleb always loved astronomy - they always did cool things, he wasn't sure if he was GRASPING all of it in his brain but as long as he had fun, right?

He was sure he wouldn't think that way once OWLs came around...

He got his balloon and went ahead to get the balloon. He picked a green one, because SLYTHERIN YO!

"Helic Umtus!" he said loudly, flicking his wand just as Flamsteed had done and watching as the balloon quickly began to fill with the gas. Hehe. Gas. He was SO MATURE.

Once the balloon was nice and large, but not so large that he was afraid he was going to pop it. Alright, all set and ready to go.

"Hurry up, Mr. Newell," Airey said, tapping his sundial watch and clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth to mimic the sound of a clock.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anna Banana

Nope. Not above zero, and the balloon didn't even rise. Sophie closed the window she'd been working at and stepped back inside. "Err, I don't think it's planning on letting up anytime soon..."

"Give it a moment, Miss Newell," he chuckled. Although he agreed that chances were that there was no way this storm was letting up. "You may see some changes in your readings yet."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emms

He raised his hand, "Uh Professor Flamsteed, is it normal for the value of the temperatures to jump around a little bit? Does that mean its just adjusting to the temperature?"

Airey's brows knotted as he paced back and forth a few steps before answering. "Perhaps, although the real underlying problem may be due to the magical interference effecting muggle electronics. Some precautions have been taken to try and stabilize this issue, but it is not a guarantee."

There was...another theory, but he was rather reluctant to speak it right now. Students were already on edge with this weather, no need to upset them over nothing.

Unless it wasn't nothing....

Magical interference? He blinked. Merlin, he'd never thought of that before. That was probably it anyway- there was nothing to worry about... But what else could affect his readings? The storm? Sure, that could be it. His blue eyes widened in realization that it could be a combination of these two possibilities. Was the storm caused by something magical so then it was also causing the probes to mess up? A couple other thoughts flooded into his mind.

Focus Simon. You're in class. It's not time to start thinking about other things.... It was that moment, he realized that he had taken a moment to acknowledge Professor Airey's answer. "That makes sense," he said and then eyed the other temperature probes to see if they were getting similar readings to him. Simon continued to keep watching the ever-changing number.

"You're welcome, Head Girl!" Ethan beamed at the student leader and gave her a high five back. It was always awesome to work with your fellow housemate, yeah? It felt rewarding really. Teamwork is always, always good. "Come on, let's go get those." The younger Slytherin walked towards Airey's table, got himself the thing-o-mometer and went back to his seat.

Merlin.

How do you attach a balloon to it? Ethan looked at the others and watched how they did it. Oh...so you attach the string to the balloon. K. Got it. Ethan got the string off the thing, then attached it to the end of his balloon.

All set!

Now...to launch it! Ethan did exactly what Flamsteed told them to do...and watched his device for any changes.

Nothing. Meeh.

Huh...? They were already gonna throw them out the window? Okay... The Gryffindor walked towards the open window rather reluctantly. MERLIN. Holy freezing cold weather. No wonder they were trapped inside. This was definitely no joke. Goodness those winds. It was all so violent. Yeah, Zander had a feeling that their radio thingies wouldn't predict any winter shift because this weather looked like it was making a permanent stay at Hogwarts.

Anyways, with his machine thing in hand, he did as Professor Flamsteed instructed. Woaaaaah his meter was going all wonky. It kept bouncing back and fourth between -25 and -10, but never went a degree over. So... This meant that it was cold, right?

Phew, just in time for the next task. Agatha smiled one last time to the nice Ravenclaw guy as he saluted her and paid attention to what Airey was saying.

Wow, that was a lot of information and not everything made sense to her. So she decided to wait and see what her classmates were going to do so she would go along and copy whatever it was.

She looked down at the bottom of her radiosomething and pushed the clamp like everyone else was doing. She had to quickly grab the balloon as it almost flew awya from her reach and breathed when she managed to get it before it was too late.

Nooww.... people were going towards the windows. Where they crazy??? They knew how cold it was out-- and they opened the windows. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr MERLIN. Agatha pulled her cloak closer and tightened her scarf before going to a window herself and holding her thing with the balloon out. Was that right? She squinted her eyes to look at the thing with a number and noticed it was doing stuff. So it was probably working. Or so she hoped. The least it could do was work, honestly! Agatha was FREEZING and did not want this to be a waste of time.

Wwwwwwhat now. The temperature showed -35ºC on the thing. What was this madness? SIGH. This could only mean her thing didn't work well. Well, great. Frown.

"I'm good, sir!" Or at least he was TRYING to be. Bums were sensitive things, okay?

After offering another grin to the professor, Dima trudged over to a window and opened it up. It was COLD and he hadn't brought his scarf, but Mr. Top Hat wouldn't let him freeze, right? With that thought in mind, the first year extended his hand to drop his balloon outside, immediately recoiling.

DID HE HAVE IT? Did he HAVE the FROSTBITE?

Nah. All good! Whew. Breathe, Toussaint.

He directed his attention to the receiver on his radiosonde, waiting for it to get a reading on the temperatures outside. The process didn't take long, and Dima found himself inching even further away from the window before his balloon had risen all the way. That wasn't cold, that was Antarctica.

Angel smiled when the Professor gave her a balloon and she went and got a thingy-magiggy for the bottom of her balloon, she just couldn't remember what the Professor had told her about it.

Angel really wanted to learn the spell and she was going to try on her own first and if that didn't work she'd set up an appointment with the Professor though he had best be ready for tears if she couldn't do it, because she had never failed at anything in her life before and she didn't want to start now.

Angel looked at the thingy-magiggy and attached it to her balloon, she had seen how everyone else had done it, she pushed the clamp like everyone else was doing and grabbed hold of her balloon.

Angel then went to the window and shivered as it was so cold. She decided to quickly release the balloon and then she went back to were it was warmer. Angel was pretty sure she didn't need a reading because it was freezing out there.

-19

O________________o

"Professor, I have a feeling this weather is here to stay." Angel then though of something. "Are we becoming the next Pole?" Angel wondered what they would call it if they did become one.

Ian began to monitor his radiosonde receiver jobby for measurements. He noticed the wind seemed to be very active...and not just in one direction. He could feel it even without the receiver showing the speeds. He wondered how much had to do with the castle's shape and how much was the actual movement of the wind. It almost felt like the balloon was an indecisive girl trying to figure out what she was going to wear on the date tonight. It was going this way and that and very quickly as well. He made a point to note that in his journal.

He then tried to determine the temperature. The higher the balloon traveled, the colder it got. It started out about -8C and by the time the balloon had been about about 5 minutes, he saw the temperature plunge to a frigid -15C and then down to -25C it really was rather chilly outside. He wrote those down in his journal. It was going to be frigid, but he sort of expected that based upon the weather he could see outside.

Next was the barometric pressure reading. 998.7mBar. He didn't know what that meant, but he made a note anyway. All of this was sort of weird and crazy and he didn't expect to get any meteorology lessons in Hogwarts, but perhaps it was to be expected with the current weather conditions. Hopefully this snow would eventually end.

...and that was NOT what Sophie was expecting the response to be. She was thinking more along the lines of 'let's close all the windows then and just accept the terrible weather'. Instead...she had to do it all over again just to see if anything changed? She peered out the nearest window and looked at the snow, which felt like it had been coming down for weeks and weeks and weeks. It didn't look like it would be letting up anytime soon.

She nodded anyway, though. "Okay, Professor," she said, and then she headed to that open window she'd just peered through and tested her instrument again. She looked down at the readings, and this time, she decided to just wait a bit and see if anything changed. She didn't think it would, but maybe...

Lucy listened the instructions of the professor..
She grabbed the radiosonde, then she went to the window and she threw her ballon out..
Lucy was shivering from the cold..
With trembling hands she looked at the receiver...
She read: -15 degrees Celsius...
The temperature was very low..

Well, she was definitely different than other Hufflepuff's he knew. She actually had some backbone and although Kevin didn't like her. He liked no one. He still thought it was cool. What she said next made him glare at her again though. "I'm twelve! at least i can still make mistakes, you're old so if you still make mistakes you're dumb" true story. Oh and he smiled while saying that.

Crap! She had heard that please. Kevin grumbled a few words under his breath as he looked around. He was really behind now and he looked back at the balloon in his hand. With a frustrated sigh, the Gryffindor pushed the balloon in her hands and folded his arms. "If you mess it up i'm gonna tell the ..crazy space man.." he meant the Professor of course.

Anyways, while she was busy with the balloon, Kevin made his way over to the front of the room to grab a radiosonde from the Professor's desk. He turned to walk back to Elodie but then stopped, sighed and grabbed a second radiosonde for her as well. When he came back he placed her device on the table. "Here" he mumbled and then gave her a glare again. One word about this!

LAUNCHING--launching without them being on the balloons. See, she would have deflated like immediately but then the Professor opened a window and the cold outside could give a Cold One frostbite. It was ridiculous! No wonder they were snowed in with no hope of end in sight? Holy Kneazle, sweet Circe, just wow.

Lex waited until everyone else had released their balloons before doing the same with hers. The readings could tell whether or not they'd be doomed to suffer through this for another few months? Was it bad she was hoping to see something like...maybe 100 degrees somewhere up there in the clouds? Massive heat wave to melt the ice and get them out of here?

Too unrealistic?

Yeah, she figured as much.

Alexa watched the balloon ascend higher and higher into the clouds before her eyes turned to the readings. Something hopeful please. This was getting depressing--"WHAT??" -40?? What? Whaaaat? No. Oh come ON. Seriously?????? They were dooooooooooooomed.

Cassia followed Ethan and grabbed one of those thingies that they needed. As the Professor went on explaining she turned around the radiosonde in her hands. Then as he started explaining how to attach it she immediately did as he said because she probably was going to forget afterwards or be hesitant whether she remembered right. So that attached to the balloon! This part done.

She looked over at the windows and waited till someone finished. Lex just did, so Cassia took her place. The Gryffindor looked really surprised by what she saw on her device.

The second the snake approached the window she felt a chill run through her body. Better get done with this. Without hesitation she stuck her arm out and let for of the balloon. Brrrrrrrr. And now to wait, no?

It didn't take long and it wasn't also quick but she was glad she finally saw a number. And at first she thought it was totally normal but then the fact that it was in negative downed on her. -37. Minus for Merlin's sake!

Open window plus frigid weather equals a grumbling, mumbling Beverly Wayne. She was all for trying new things, which included this muggle weather contraption thing, but the cold...it DID things to her mood. Not very pleasant things, at that.

Tugging her cloak tighter around herself and slipping her mittens back on, she grabbed her things and headed over to the window. The Slytherin glared at it as if it was its fault there was a blizzard. Gently letting the balloon out she glued her eyes onto the readings, hoping there'd be a sign of future warmth. Hopefully tomorrow, y'know. A sudden miraculous warm front hitting Hogwarts, melting the snow in one day, giving them PROPER spring.

....

She blinked at the reading. What do you MEAN - 28 and STILL decreasing. For Fawke's sake! They were going to freeze. She just knew it. They were going to freeze and some future human race was going to find them and defrost them and--

Dramatic Wayne is dramatic.