Today
was a day of mixed success. Blowing snow continued to obscure the
southern horizon, but once the sun was clear of that, good FTS
measurements were made through little cloud for several hours. The wind
had died down a bit, allowing Cristen, Matt and Pierre to install the
PEARL-GBS tracker under the dome on the penthouse roof. It was a cold
job, as the wind was by no means dead, but they were successful in
getting the tracker leveled and the dome replaced over it.
Unfortunately, the PEARL-GBS had plans other than moving into the
Penthouse, as it resumed the sporadic communication errors that have
been plaguing it over the last few weeks. At least Cristen now knows
that the problem is not the laptop, or lack of memory (which had been
the prime contender for the cause of the problems), and has tracked the
issue to a communication problem as several programs attempt to
communicate through different ports. Strangely, MAESTRO-UV is also
having communication issues and Tom and Volodya have been busily trying
to identify the cause of that. Today was also a bad day for the
SPS, as its pointing prism stopped turning. Late in the day, it was
bought inside to warm up and came down to the station with us so that
it could be fixed. FTS measurements were bought to a standstill
early in the afternoon, when the haze and cloud became thick enough to
obscure the sun.
The wind at the station had also picked up by early evening, and the
met-techs again launched a Totex balloon to carry our ozonesonde to
11.21 hPa.
Bernard and Emily decided that the clouds looked like they would thin,
and headed up to PEARL after dinner. This turned out to be a superb
decision, as by the time the DIAL was ready to go, the wind had
completely stopped and the clouds were all gone. They had a fantastic
night of observations, running right through until 5am.
Meanwhile, back at the weather station, several of us joined the
station staff playing BINGO. The prizes were well distributed, with
every-one except Al (the station manager) winning a round. Fortunately
for us, Al took it well, and there were plenty of laughs to go round.
The station crew are wonderful and welcoming, and have been taking
great care of us - even if they also beat us at a few games of pool,
shuffleboard and table-tennis!