Thursday, August 13, 2009

Day 7 - morning PBL campaign

Today, I learned these things about field work. (1) You have to get up at zero-dark-thirty - not my idea of fun (unless it's for a flight to an exotic location!) (2) You might ram into something large on the highway due to driving while groggy. (3) After all the fuss, the stupid instruments might not work. On the plus side, you might see into something large and fun on the highway while driving, and you might get some good data, and have fun along the way!

OK...to elaborate! (1) We gathered at 5 am. Funnily enough, we had set the students free the night before, free to roam and graze alone in town. Specifically in the watering holes in town. This accounts for why they arrived back at the hotel at 1:45 am :-)

(2) One the way to the RAWS site, located 45 minutes northwest of FLG, and on the way to the Grand Canyon, we encountered a HUGE buck elk standing in the middle of the raod. MANY points. VERY impressive. The female in the road about a mile on was less impressive, but STILL...! If we had hit either, this would have been a big negative, but instead goes into the positive column!

(3) OK, so we arrive. Oh and by the way, the "managed" fire in the region had laid down overnight. Hence - huge smoke cloud at the surface. The RAWS site was luckily between the two thickest spots, otherwise we'd probbaly still be lying out there having choked to death (and "found two week s later by hunters"). We bombed along the dirt road, and did a speedy balloon release. So far so good. And now, the moment of truth - we set up and turned on the SODAR (like radar but with sound). Power up, wait, wait, wait (repeat for many moments), and ... nothing. Fizzle. Sodar not working. Craig assuring us that it worked on campus.

This is the part about the bloody instruments not working! So we turned the thing on and off many, many times, as one does (right???), and finally Dais stood next to it and cooed something in its ear - and it turned on! Joy of joys!

OK so the sodar starts to ping happily away, one ping every 2 seconds I think. Meanwhile we are standing around yapping about weather, smoke, data etc. etc. When we realize there is dead silence, i.e., the sodar has died. More turning on and off, some gentle cursing, a great deal of sighing. And then, when all hope seemed lost, the dang thing burst into life again (ha! bet you thought it was gonna burst into flames!). And stayed alive!

So much joy this time that we ALL jumped into the vans and sped off to the tiny town of Valle, to partake in breakfast. The nice folks at the (only) restaurant managed to seat us, coffee us, and provide an excellent repast - thanks! Have you ever been in a restaurant and seen a group of 13 get seated and think "we'll never get our food now"? Well, we were that group of 13.

Back to the site. We ended up there from post-breakfast (8:45-ish) to noon, launching balloons to watch the development of the morning boundary layer. At some point the smoke had lifted and was now drifting to the northeast - the early low-level wind had been steadliy from the southeast before the low-level inversion mixed out.

We gave up after the noon balloon, and went back to town. Where some students fell into a coma for the afternoon :-)

Mike left (pre-arranged), so the story continues with just Craig and Alison in control. Dum-dee- dum-dum.

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