LEWISTON — Weather conditions upset another balloon launch Saturday morning at the Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival, for a third time in a row.

“It was the sight distance. We have to have 3 miles that we can see. With the fog this morning, it was only about three-quarters of a mile. What grounded us was the fog,” balloon pilot Joel Jones said. Jones and his crew are in charge of Redeemed, a black balloon with colorful stripes on one side.

“Once the sun gets up too high we don’t fly. In the heat of the day you get ‘thermals,'” Jones said. “Thermals are big bubbles of hot air that leave the ground and create thermal activity. That makes it for an unstable and unsafe ride.”

“You’d rather be on the ground than up in the air, wishing you were on the ground,” said Gail Johnson, a crew member for the Redeemed.

“The ceiling is at the bottom of the cloud. So we need to stay 500 feet (away) from the clouds. But we also need to be 1,000 feet above the river and the pedestrian area. We (also) need to be 1,000 feet higher than the tallest obstacle,” balloon pilot Bruce Byberg said. “That would mean you need a minimum of 1,500 feet from the ceiling. We only have like 200 feet.”

The decision to hold off the launches was made early. Like the day before, festival organizers chose to have the balloons inflated for show. Fewer crews showed up to Simard-Payne Memorial Park. Saturday’s morning show included three standing balloons.

Five specialty shape balloons will be out on the field Saturday evening, festival organizer Mel Hamlyn said, including Spyderpig, Snobird, Alien Rocket, Sunny Boy and Birthday Cake.

John Colburn, left, watches Saturday morning as Hannah Bradbury steadies the crown line at Simard-Payne Memorial Park in Lewiston during the second day of the Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival. They were keeping the RE/MAX balloon in position as it inflated, but did not lift off as the fog and wind canceled the launch for the second morning of the three-day festival. “Hannah asked to help out about five years ago, and she comes back every year. We are training our replacements,” says Colburn. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Tropical Twist was one of the standing balloons in Saturday’s morning show.

“As the sun comes up, fog can burn off. With the meteor conditions this morning, we knew it wasn’t going to burn off before winds started to pick up for the day.  These aren’t favorable conditions to find and it makes seeing power lines and all that very difficult,” said Karen Miller, a crew member for Tropical Twist.

“There’s still hope that we can fly this evening and also put on a glow show. So, we’re not writing that off yet,” Miller added.

Saturday evening looks cloudy, with “a 30% chance of showers in the area,” said Stephen Baron, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Gray.

“It looks like it’s just going to be a mostly cloudy evening. We will see fog again, but not until much later in the evening, toward daybreak tomorrow,” Baron said.

Baron said they were “not expecting any thunderstorms.”

The next balloon launch is scheduled for 6 p.m. Saturday at Simard-Payne Memorial Park, weather permitting. Sun Journal will be livestreaming the launches via YouTube.