Clouds,
blowing snow and winds continued to dog the team today. Volodya and Tom
stayed at the station, where they were able to communicate remotely
with their instruments and take some pictures of our 1815 UT (1:15pm
local time) ozonesonde launch, which today was shifted in time to
better match the closest of the ACE satellite overpasses. At PEARL,
Cristen completed her lamp calibration tests and now has the PEARL-GBS
software successfully communicating with the filter wheel. The
instrument and its tracker are ready to be installed in their new home
in the PEARL roof-top penthouse. Now we just need the weather to help
us out - the current high winds and nasty wind-chills make moving the
dome to install the instruments on the roof impossible. In the
FTS lab, the clouds coming and going also kept Rodica and Felicia busy
determining when measurements could be made, but they were both pretty
successful in getting a good number of spectra before the big clouds
rolled in. By evening, the clouds were in to stay, and the DIAL team
busied themselves doing data analysis instead of measurements.
Temperatures at the weather station have warmed up considerably (now
both the station and the lab are around -30C) but the winds and blowing
snow make being outside rather miserable. Bring back the calm cold
weather and clear skies!