Inflatable bounce houses have become a staple at birthday parties and other celebrations around the world. It doesn't take much wind for them to be blown over though. Since 2000, there have been at least 136 wind-related bounce house incidents worldwide, resulting in 489 injuries and 28 deaths. Perhaps just as surprising, many states in the U.S. have inadequate or no regulations regarding bounce house safety.
How much wind does it take to blow over a bounce house? What weather events are causing these incidents? How can we make bounce houses more wind-resistant and what can you do to help ensure your children stay safe? Dr. John Knox from the University of Georgia joined the podcast this week to answer these questions and share more of his research on this unique topic.
More information
- Read the research: Wind-Related Bounce House Incidents in Meteorological, Regulatory, and Outreach Contexts
- Weathertobounce.com website: Information on past incidents, policy information, and safety recommendations for your next bounce house rental.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Welcome, everybody to the Across the Sky podcast, our Lee Enterprises National Weather Podcast. I'm Joe Martucci based in New Jersey. Along with me this week, meteorologist Sean Sublette over in Richmond, Virginia, and Matt Holiner in Chicagoland. Here we are talking about bounce houses and the weather. Bounce houses were first invented in 1958. I think all of us here on the podcast have been in a bounce house.
You've probably been in a bounce house before, but there are some weather concerns with bounce houses. In fact, somebody in a whole research study on this wind related bounce house incidents, it's not just that one viral video you see on TikTok or Instagram of a bounce house flying in the air like it's a cow in the tornado and one of those bad weather movies.
It is a is a real deal here. There have been 209 injuries in the United States from 2000 to 2021, from bounce houses in relation to the weather actually knocking over to bounce house or causing it to fly around. And three fatalities, unfortunately. So for this episode of the Across the Sky podcast, we are talking with the lead researcher of this project, John Knox.
He's coming up right now. And we are really happy to have on John Knox to talk to us all about the bounce houses in the wind, in the weather, a very relatable podcast. I think it's going to be John is a Josiah MIT Megs excuse me distinguished teaching professor of geography and undergraduate coordinator of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, where he's been on the faculty since 2001.
John has authored over 65 peer reviewed research and education articles, is also the coauthor of the award winning Introductory College level Textbook Meteorology Understanding of the Atmosphere. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society. That is a big deal for everybody listening, and he has many former and current students, including ABC News chief meteorologist Ginger Zee, Colorado State University, atmospheric sciences professor and Jeopardy!
Tournament of Champions winner Rush Schumacher. And more. So John, thanks for joining the podcast here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Yeah, no, absolutely. And we know you're also housed in the the same building as one of our complimentary podcast, the Weather Geeks podcast hosted by Marshall Shepherd. So we appreciate you taking s
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