I think I spoke too soon...

I awoke to find that Michael had not made it up to the lab last night. There was snow and cloud overhead so he figured it would not be worth the trip. It did not look promising when we headed up the ridge but we hoped that the conditions were clear above.

Unfortunately, our hopes were dashed when we found that the winds were higher at the lab and that the visibility was down to several road edge markers at some points. The day did not get any better.

On the positive side, SAOZ and DOAS had essentially frost free windows and these two instruments and SPS and MAESTRO can continue measurements through the clouds. Michael had decided to come up to the lab during the day to start cleaning up and to prepare for hibernating the eximer laser. He got some work accomplished on these tasks.

There was no joy in the FTS lab but Keeyoon and Richard M. tried to see a silver lining to the cloud. They decided to do the gas cell intercomparisons that they have been meaning to do for the last several days. Both the NDSC HBr cell and the Waterloo low pressure N2O cell were used.

The exictement for the afternoon was when Keith, Annemarie, Jennifer and Michael went for a ride in the track truck down to the iceberg. They set out at 1:30 PM and arrived after much bumping and sliding an hour later. Jennifer provided a screaming commentary each time Keith decided to take the track truck off road ("What are you doing? Where are you going now!"). The iceberg was spectacular despite the overcast skies. The colours of the ice were unbelievable. Jennifer and Michael had lost the coin toss and had to sit in the rear compartment of the track truck. They wimped out on the trip back and called Paul to come and pick them up at upper Paradise so they would not have to ride back up hill in the back of the track truck. Keith and Annemarie bumped their way back up the hill (both on and off road) to arrive at the lab at a bit before 4 PM.

The daily ozonesonde was launched at 23:15 UTC with the synoptic radiosonde using a Raven balloon. The sonde reached a height of 7.5 mbar. Michael was right on with his guess!

Best regards,
Kaley.