NATCHEZ — A glimpse at the heavens on the second day of the Great Mississippi River Balloon race would have shown onlookers blue skies, a handful of clouds and no hot-air balloons.

Both race events scheduled for Saturday were canceled after wind conditions proved too volatile to fly safely.

Flights are still scheduled for 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. today, weather permitting.

Ernest Etheridge, the meteorologist who handles daily weather predictions before each balloon  light, said conditions should be better this morning.

While some river fog may come in to play in the morning, Etheridge said the conditions would likely be different than those that generated the thick fog that ultimately led to the cancellation of Friday morning’s flight.

Friday’s fog was caused by moisture trapped in the soil that was warmer than the cool air at ground level, he said.

“If we have fog in the morning, it will not be the same type of fog and we should be able to fly,” he said.

Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies with easterly winds blowing between 3 and 6 miles per hour.

Saturday afternoon’s flight was called off after an hour-and-15-minute delay in which winds of 10 to 11 miles per hour kept pilots from going up, and when the wind died down sufficiently, it changed to a more southerly direction, which would have taken pilots downriver and away from the festival.

“It’s 55 minutes to sunset and the winds are blowing at 6 to 8 miles per hour,” Balloon Meister Bill Cunningham said at the time. “The direction is terrible, and we have too few places to land (in that direction), and we don’t want anybody to get hurt here.”

Pilot David Miller of Pineville said a second day of no flights was not ideal but not without redemption.

“Flying is a real privilege for all of us, and Natchez is a really good place to fly, one of the premier races in the country,” he said.

“Flying is a really big part of it, but we also get to see our friends who are pilots, so it is a social event as well. We all came to fly, but you can’t dictate the weather, so you make the best of it.”

Pilot Relations Director Curtis Moroney said he wanted to extend a special thanks to Cunningham and pilots Kennie Gibson and Karen Kent for inflating their balloons, which were attached to tethers at the balloon race festival site, and giving the public a chance to see the balloons Saturday even though they did not fly.