Day nine - Sat Aug 11

These summer convective storms! They JUST will not leave us alone!!

So we managed mysteriously to get away from Flagstaff at 7:40am (target time was 7:30, so - not so bad!) Flagstaff at 7:40, Kingman about 2 hours later, Barstow about 3 hours after that. PHEW was it hot in Barstow. Hot like when you open the oven door! We did a fast-food lunch stop in Barstow, after a fast gas stop in Kingman, and before a fast gas stop outside Ridgecrest. So you get the idea - lots of driving with minimal stops.

So along the way there was a lot of convective activity in southern California (as well as the FLG area). In particular we ran into a decent cell around Barstow. It generated some strong local winds which did a lot of dust lifting. At the same time there were good-sized cells down around Apple Valley and around Temecula.

And then as we ran up the Owens Valley, we saw very dark storm clouds over the western side of the Sierra, spilling over to the Owens Valley. Up around Big Pine a big cell had just gone east, but all we saw was more evidence of gusty winds - in the form of lots of dust lifting.

Right now (8:15pm), the big question is: Will the skies clear to allow us to see the Perseids Meteor Shower? Right now, it's looking doubtful. Sadness...

Mammatus over the Owens Valley...

Dust lifting in the Owens Valley out ahead of a thundershower...

A rain shaft just east of Bishop...

and a double rainbow over Bishop!

Day eight - Fri Aug 10

Today was Instrument Recovery Day. Meaning...we have sited various instruments in various locations during the week, and since we are leaving tomorrow, we need to get them! The SODAR team headed NW to recover the SODAR, which took MANY willing hands to drag into place since the ground was so soft from the monsoonal rains. A second team headed to Merriam Powell to pack up the radiometer, and also recover the RAWS we set up. The third team has the easiest job - a quick dash 10 miles east of town to grab a second RAWS that has been out since Tuesday.

So we are now in possession of large amounts of data and three dirty vans. My plan for today is to gas up and clean the vans ready for tomorrow. My plan for the students is to do some data analysis! Since we haven't seen much of Flagstaff yet, we are going to head into the downtown area for lunch and a short walking tour.

Here is the RAWS site...Mt. Humphries in the background...

Day seven - Thu Aug 9

MIDTERMS!!! Yay!!!
OK so every class needs a midterm, right? And we offer our midterms "on site",meaning that one day on the trip is midterm day (and the day after we get back is the final!) This year, the final was on Thursday morning from 0830 to 1000. I guess it went OK - I haven't heard any negative feedback yet!

And after a midterm? A break in the form of a short trip to see the Grand Canyon. This year we went in three groups: (A) shopping group - headed for the gift shop, and a drive along the rim stopping every 100 yards; (B) the manic hike group - some kind of serious hike down and up; (C) the mini-hike group - a mild version of manic.

The big story of the day was the weather (duh! That's why we're here!) As we drove NW towards Valle, storms were forming and raining NW of FLG, so we drove through heavy rain, and saw beautiful rain shafts & threatening clouds. As true weather weenies we had to keep stopping to take photos, so it took forever to get to the park.

Our team ("shopping") lunched in Tusayan outside the park, so we didn't roll in till 2:30, at which time a BIG cell was dumping over the entrance area. Lots of lightning, but we still didn't get any good lightning photos. After gift shopping, and driving east along the rim, we joined many others who had pulled over to see - hail covering the ground, like fresh snow! After a lengthy investigation, we decided to call it as "dime-sized" hail. And even when we left the park an hour later, we still found hail on the ground! We also measured an air temperature of just 64^oF!! One other thing we saw was a BIG elk on the road!

Both the hike teams were impacted by the weather. One had to shelter under an awning for 30 minutes to stay out of the pouring rain and hail. Some of these groups ventured out, and got as soaked as if they had jumped into the pool! So there were some cold kids back in the hotel tonight!

So all in all, given that we had expected NO weather, we were all delighted to see these storms, which later moved to the southwest (?) over Kingman. Viewing conditions weren't perfect due to cloud cover, but the canyon will be there for the rest of our lifetimes!

Sun dogs!

Day six - Wed Aug 8

Extreme awesomeness in the form of amazing weather. And lots of measurements. And lots of photos. So here we go...

We are settling into a routine of having a morning weather discussion. We are less tired, and can spend more time discussing - and learning - as opposed to if we do this late in the evening. So again, to our surprise, conditions looked good for convection along the rim. And again FLG looked to be a good location for convection. Hence we decided to split again into three groups...

Group 1 grabbed the SODAR (like radar but instead with sound) and drove north out of town to a site. They managed to set up the SODAR and get it running, so it will sit there for 24-48 hours measuring the state of the lower atmosphere. The group then planned to do some more radiosonde balloon launches, but had left a vital piece of equipment back at the hotel...

Group 2 headed east to check on the status of a RAWS station we left out there a couple of days ago. After which they had permission to go wherever to find storms. Not quite sure which way they went, but they found storms!! And here's the evidence:

Kudos to Chris Mitchell for the lightning photo (and he has more to come!)

And lastly Group 3 headed back to the Merriam Powell Research Station (MPRS). They have been kind enough to host us for the last two years. We had the radiometer shipped there, and it has been sitting outside sounding the entire troposphere 24-7 for several days. Today's plan was to check on the radiometer, and set up a RAWS at the same site. And roughly 2 seconds after two students had finished the set up, an intense convective cell rolled over us. So we spent the next 30+ minutes "sheltering in place". We got to see heavy rain, hail - enough to cover the ground! - and plenty of lightning strikes about two feet overhead!

Hail...video pending (pending blogger talking to my iPhone)

Panic due to lightning...

Midterm tomorrow at 0830, so we spent the evening studying etc. Here is Dr. Chiao giving a lecture about convection...

and here I am talking about inverted troughs...

Day five - Tues Aug 7

Day five...day five...what happened on day five? Well mainly we split into three teams, and I have incomplete stories from the other teams about what they did! The overarching idea was to "chase" and release balloons. One van headed west to the Seligman area, where we expected storms to form. The expected storms failed to materialize, so this group spent a lot of time driving, but not so much doing balloon releases. One van had the IMET radiosonde system on board, and we are about ready to take that thing out and shoot it. The sonde has trouble talking to the software, and I think we may only have one successful sounding with it.

A second van started to head west, but quickly realized that most activity would be in the FLG region, so they stayed locally, and got two good soundings with the GRAW system.

The third van headed east, making it to out near Winslow to follow a big storm. As we got closer we could see three distinct rain shafts associated with the three radar echoes we had been tracking. Since we didn't have a radiosonde system, we set up a RAWS and mostly took photos.

In terms of monsoonal activity, this was a very good day! Lots of storms, and all near FLG!!!

Photos - storms & clouds

Here are some amazing cloud & storm photos we've taken so far.

Saturday Aug 4 near Edwards AFB in the Mojave Desert.

Sunday Aug 5 outside Seigman, AZ.

Sunday Aug 5 on the road into FLG.

Nice eh? On I-40 heading east towards Winslow. From a distance it looked like one cell, but as we got closer there were clearly three cells.

Dum dee dum dum....if you look very carefully, you can see dust being blown up by the gust front winds out ahead of the storm (basically right under the car mirror near the ground, but you have to look closely).

Photos ... students in action

Tuesday, and I am "trapped" in the hotel by pouring rain plus lightning & thunder! Lucky me!!
So this is the perfect time to upload some photos etc. To start, here are "student photos".

Here we are testing our new rain jackets outside Edwards AFB!

Broiling in Needles calibrating our kestrels. Temperature around 103^oF!

Students multitasking: eating hotel breakfast, checking model runs and preparing the weather briefing.

Students crammed into a hotel room for a discussion about instrumentation.

A team of students sets up a RAWS weather station. Storm approaching in the background.

Monday downpour north of FLG. Most of us spent time standing in the ankle-deep puddle. Wind chill in the 50's meant we had the heaters on in the van afterwards!!

Day four - Mon Aug 6

Well - despite the heavily advertised GIANT high pressure system due to roll in and squash all convective weather like a bug, a 40% chance of showers and thundershowers was forecast for today. And would you believe it - we got showers and thundershowers aplenty!

We decided to split into two radiosonde groups of nine per van, with the rest (NOT to be called the dregs!) were on RAWS alert. A RAWS is a Remote Automatic Weather Station, i.e., a bundle of instruments which sits all day and gathers data without complaining (unlike certain people!!!) So our RAWS group (for you see, I was in it) steamed off eastward in search of storms and a good place to set up and deposit the RAWS. There was an entertaining interlude which featured us driving along (and mostly up) a muddy dirt trail, before we decided a U-turn would be in order, followed by a retreat to real roads! We found a nice meadow to set up in, and got the RAWS assembled. There was some gloom (see previous posts on how disappointing instruments are)(always) when it was realized that the power supply had been put away switched ON, but hopefully the solar panel is trickling enough charge in... After that we shot eastward towards a pair of really good-looking cells. Since we had only kestrels, we had no choice but to stand out in the rain and wind some more. Measured wind gusts over 15 knots with the storms!

Now - a radiosonde group had been dispatched westward to Seligman, following cells. They didn't have much luck, arriving always right after a cell. And again they had trouble launching the radiosonde - but they are positive they know what to do tomorrow! Apparently this group also had an interesting experience with steep, rutted dirt roads :-)

The other radiosonde group chased just west and then east of FLG, and got two good launches off with good data (although none of us have seen it yet!) And they had some interesting experiences with lighting! As in lightning striking VERY close!!! So they had to cancel a launch or two!!

It was another good day, apart from the part where Drs. Bridger & Chiao somehow missed the turnoff for the airport when sent to pick up Neil Flaiz, and ended up halfway to Phoenix (cursing up a storm).

And as a footnote, there are subtle changes to the various area forecast discussions (AFDs) from Vegas, Flagstaff, Phoenix & Tucson. Subtle as in retaining chances of showers and thundershowers further into the week. So we are all happy!

Day three - Sun Aug 5

Day three in a nutshell: from boiling hot to having the heat on in the vans. What???

We got an early start from Barstow, leaving at 07:37am, gassed up and all. And after all - is there much else to do in Barstow on a Sunday morning??? Two hour drive down to Needles, CA, where we always stop to find out just how hot it is!!! This year we calibrated the "kestrels" on our Needles stop. A kestrel is a hand-help weather monitoring device. It measures basics such as temperature, dew point temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction and much more. When we arrived (roughly 9:45am), it had just gone over 100^oF. Half hour later, already up to 103^oF - gasp!!!

Another two hours took us into Seligman, AZ, after a steady climb to a higher, cooler, and greener location!!! Seligman is the home of the fabulous Roadkill Cafe - a favorite of the field trip. Unfortunately, we got there just after a group of about a dozen bikers from Spain (yes!), and just before a group of 40 Swedes, so the place sure was hopping! Took two hours to all eat.....

But luckily as we were inside eating, storm clouds were gathering outside (*rubs hands together in glee!*), so we jumped about a mile out of town and embarked on our first attempted radiosonde launch of the day (using the IMET system). As usual, the darned instrumentation was troublesome. Really - I have no idea why people work with instruments. Modeling rules!!! It took for EVER to get the launch away, but in the final analysis we DO seem to have gotten good data. No time to plot it yet!!!

At this point, a good-looking cell was heading straight for Flagstaff, so we decided to try to intercept it. Since we could not get to FLG in time, we drove to Williams and headed due north towards the Grand Canyon. Then we turned southeast at Valle, heading towards that lovely BLM spot where we have often set up the sodar and RAWS. This was a good choice - since soon we ran into very heavy rain. And of course, being all kids at heart, we donned our new rain jackets and jumped out into the rain. This explains why - 30 minutes later - many of us were frozen and shivering. The wind chill during the storm was well down into the 50's, and we were all soaked from the waist down!!
All this time, Jon C. was trying his best to get another radiosonde away, and it finally worked. Which meant most of the group had to stay behind and wait for the balloon to get to a decent level. This explains why we had to put the heat on in the vans - six hours after 103 in Needles!! What a day!

We drove down into Flagstaff, and checked into the La Quinta Inn (as we have done every other year). Many hot showers followed!!! It was a long day, but successful in that we got to stand in the rain, plus did some launches, plus identified what a total pain our radiosonde systems are!!!

MANY photos have been taken, and WILL be uploaded, so peek back later!

Also, Usain Bolt won the 100m!!!

Day two - Sat Aug 4

Day two is a longish drive: San Jose to Barstow. The day starts with getting to SJSU by 0830, only to find the painters have arrived (on Saturday) and covered almost the entire department in plastic! But luckily we were able to find the pile of stuff we needed. Luckily also Josh Diamond showed up with a box of donuts! Mmmmmm...donuts!! Packing was pretty easy, probably because we have 3 vans and the sodar trailer to cram everything into!

First exciting news was the appearance over the southern horizon of what looked like virga! Sure enough, radar revealed a line of showers (yes!!) moving northwestward up the Salinas River valley. So there was a certain amount of grumbling along the lines of "We are driving to a heatwave Arizona when we could have stayed here?!?!?!?!" WHATEVER!!

It turns out to take a LONG time to eat lunch when there are 22 of you! As we found out at Subway in Coalinga!! Will have to plan this better tomorrow. But by about 4 we were climbing up over the Tehachapi Pass onto the high desert, driving towards a nice cell moving northward over Edwards AFB! Naturally like a bunch of little kids we had to stop and look for lightning (we haven't had time for the "lightning safety" lecture yet!) And then we had to pull over again when it started to pour, and we got to test out our new rain jackets that we got for the trip (having rain jackets will definitely put a hex on the best of trips!!)

Tonight, after the usual trip next door to Sizzler and then a jump into the hotel pool, the students are hard at work getting their forecasts ready. Every student submits a forecast every night for two locations: Flagstaff (our home base) and a random pick. Tonight's random pick is Needles, which was at 108^oF when I checked as we rolled into Barstow.

Day one - Friday Aug 3

First day of class!!! We are ready and raring to go! This year we have 18 students attending - a big group! Roughly 2:1 undergrads to grads, with a good group of new grad students. The target again is the North American Monsoon, with our home base in Flagstaff, Arizona. And as usual we are hoping for sustained monsoonal activity, although it does look to be dying down over the next few days.

In class today, we are reviewing the forecasting tools and sites we'll be using for the course, and students will make their first forecast today! In the afternoon they will be reviewing instrumentation, and conducting a balloon launch from the roof of Duncan Hall.

This is our 4th field trip to Arizona, and we've learned a bit more every year. We are looking forward to integrating it all into a wonderful course this year! If the monsoon fails to materialize, there are still plenty of measurements we can make!

If anybody would like to do a rain dance, feel free to get started!