Hey, everybody.
Chief meteorologist Brad Panovich here
I am actually my backyard right now.
I live in South Charlotte.
And as we were talking about yesterday,
we were going to see this Chinese
spy balloon come over the Carolinas.
I want to show you where it is right now
because I'm looking back towards the West.
And so this is due West.
It's pretty low on the horizon.
Let me see if I can zoom in on it.
That was going to see if I can zoom in on it.
It's not going to let me on the on my
cell phone, but I do have my camera.
Here set up and.
So I'm looking off in that general direction.
That's due West, by the way.
And if you look on my camera here,
I'll try to focus in.
Sorry about the.
Focusing we're going to.
Do a little bit of focusing here.
We're going to go above these trees.
And I'll show you.
Where it is, it's drifting closer.
Gotta go over to the left a little bit.
Let me pan back out. Whoops.
So on on the camera it's
kind of hard to tell,
but it's just above this tree line,
right in the middle of the screen.
This is the only part when you're zoomed in.
It's like doing astrophotography.
It's a little hard.
It's right in the middle of the screen.
So let me zoom in on that.
We'll try to focus.
OK, I'm gonna pan up a little bit.
Right there, you guys see it.
There's the camera zoomed and
I'm gonna zoom in even closer.
Oops. Let's try that again.
It's a little iffy,
but so I'm looking due West.
If you're in Charlotte,
go outside and look due West.
So there it is on my camera, zoomed in.
I'm going to tilt this just a little bit.
So that's the there it is
right there on my screen.
So that's I'm using a 300 millimeter lens.
And I got it zoomed in pretty tight there,
trying to focus in.
Sorry for all the shaky,
I'm kind of holding my phone here,
so we'll try to zoom in again.
We keep having trouble with the zoom here.
OK, let's try this again.
We'll zoom in even tighter.
There we go.
So that's about as tight as
I can get with digital zoom.
It's really shaky, so I'll pause it.
So there you go.
There it is on my camera.
So you're looking through that,
you're looking through my LCD on the back
of my camera and I'm looking to do West.
So there it is.
I'm gonna take a picture real
quick while I'm zoomed in here.
It is drifting again.
A lot of folks are asking me,
hey Brad, when can I look at it?
Just go outside right now.
If you have binoculars, it looks better.
But you can see I'm looking
with the naked eye right now,
even with my cell phone camera.
I don't know if you guys can tell,
but because the sun is behind us and
we're looking W it's illuminated by the sun.
So it's just above these trees right
there with the camera kind of refocus.
But looking on my back of my camera,
it's pretty. Pretty impressive.
So I'm gonna try to zoom
in one more time here.
There it is.
Pan over a little bit.
About center, frame it for you.
There you go. So there it is.
Let's try to zoom in.
Let's focus that a little bit better.
That's pretty clear.
I'll take one more shot.
So there it is,
on the back of my camera.
That is the Chinese.
Spy balloon,
it is drifting over the Carolinas.
It's was initially spotted
this morning over Gatlinburg,
TN, Eastern Tennessee.
Now it's moving into the western
sections of North Carolina and
it's crossing the Piedmont.
It's getting higher in the sky
because obviously it is starting
to come over the Piedmont.
To me it looks like it's going to be close
to the North and South Carolina border.
So folks to the South
probably have a better view,
but I mean it's clearly visible and I
don't even have my glasses on right now.
I'm looking.
Over the edge of my house right there.
Let me, let me see if you guys can see.
I don't know if you can see that white dot,
but there it is in the sky.
And again there it is in the
back of my camera.
So again, head outside if you
want to check it out and see it.
It's looks like it's pretty high up there,
still maybe 60,000 feet.
I'm going to try to get
some more pictures here.
And if you do spot it and you post
pictures or videos and you tag me on them,
please give me location and time.
That'll give us a good idea on
where it's going and, you know,
maybe we can help the government.
Tracked this thing.
I don't see any plane
circling today like yesterday,
but with it heading towards
installations in eastern North Carolina,
I think you might see some military
aircraft scrambled and maybe circling around.
So Chinese spy balloon passing
over the Carolinas right now.