I came close to launching a weather-balloon with some simple hobbyist sensors for a school project back in 2011 but my team ultimately ended up going with something much less ambitious. Now I'm a little horrified that we came so close to picking the weather balloon because I realize how irresponsible it would have been (although I'm still more horrified at how we were going to just assume the parachute works with no testing or understanding of wind currents; this thing could easily have killed somebody if we had made it and it went down over somebody's house or place of business or a highway).
Another group at my school did actually end up picking the weather balloon project and it landed in a tree in Amish country in Pennsylvania after having been launched from northern VA (somewhat ironically, it was the only tree in a wide open farm of dozens of acres). I wonder how many hobby weather balloons there are up there every day?
I wonder how ironic the tree landing actually is. Assuming a weather balloon doesn't land vertically, but drifts at low altitude for several miles, it probably acts as a kind of tree-finder.
Another group at my school did actually end up picking the weather balloon project and it landed in a tree in Amish country in Pennsylvania after having been launched from northern VA (somewhat ironically, it was the only tree in a wide open farm of dozens of acres). I wonder how many hobby weather balloons there are up there every day?