Wish Balloon

What is Wish Balloon?

Wish Balloon is a free browser experience: write your own wish, tie it to a bunch of balloons, release it from your city and watch where real winds carry it over the next few days. The route is recomputed every hour from NOAA’s Global Forecast System (GFS) weather data. No install or sign-up — it runs in your PC or phone browser.

How it works

• Write a wish: pick a starting city and write up to 80 characters. Make it public or keep it private.
• Decorate your balloon: choose a main colour and a pattern (dots, stripes, sparkles) and add up to three of twelve stickers.
• Ride the real winds: positions and weather update a few minutes past every hour. Rain brings balloons down, thunderstorms burst them, typhoons are recorded by name, and flying too high can freeze them.
• Change altitude: drop a sandbag to rise or vent gas to sink and catch a different wind — once every six hours, three times each.
• Sky and Earth views: drift among other people’s wish balloons in the sky, or follow the route so far and the next 24-hour forecast on the globe. The ground below the sky is NASA satellite imagery, so you can see what your balloon is really flying over.
• Starwind: very rarely, a balloon that has flown for six hours meets a starwind and leaves on an imaginary special trip to the Moon or Mars.
• Journey log and postcards: finished journeys are kept. Save a postcard image, or share a public wish with a link.

FAQ

Is it free? Do I need an account?

It is free and needs no sign-up. You get an automatic animal name tag (for example, Brave Penguin), and your list of journeys is stored in this browser.

Is the balloon’s position real?

The winds come from real weather data, but the balloon journey itself is a simulation. Positions between updates are estimated from the wind, and forecasts on the globe are labelled as forecasts. Moon and Mars trips are imaginary. None of it says anything about whether a wish comes true.

Can other people read my wish?

Public wishes can be read by anyone in the sky, the list and shared links, so please do not write names, schools or contact details. A private wish takes the same journey, but only you can read the text. You can make a wish private or delete it later.

What about abusive wishes?

Wishes with abuse, contact details or links are hidden automatically every hour, and wishes reported by several people are hidden from others.

Credits

Weather: NOAA GFS · Storms: GDACS · Earth imagery: Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0) · Ground below: NASA GIBS (Blue Marble, Black Marble)