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 100oF. Half hour later, already up to 103oF - 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!!!
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