Summit Frustrations…Largely fixed

2007-03-18 05:30:53.000 – Jim Salge,  Observer

Sliding rime…

Yesterday was a rather frustrating day at the Observatory for a number of reasons. First off, and likely most notable for those who checked in during the storm yesterday, the weather wrecked havoc on our internet link. Water got into a connector in the antenna cable, and that was the end of it. After many hours working on the wire, and working with a soldiering gun that just couldn’t keep up with the wind, we had a breakthrough around 8PM last night, and things now seem (temporarily?) normal. We will be replacing the entire cable, and reconfiguring the connections on the next ‘nice’ day.

Next frustration…no internet meant no radar, no satellite, no forecast. In other words, we had a very real sense of the present and no real future. Yesterday we became a throwback, a very much ‘back-to-basics’ weather Observatory. It was kind of nice for ourselves, but we also realized how much people look to our data, especially during a storm.

And the last frustration…with no models, maps or weather data for 24 hours, we were taken quite by surprise how warm it got on the peak yesterday. I’ll have to go back and look at the exact storm track, but winds remained east and south for much of the storm, and temperatures shot up to 33 degrees, with snow changing to sleet and freezing rain, and even briefly rain. All while the colder valley’s remained sleet. The picture above shows what the slightly above freezing weather did for our rime ice. The shot was taken by one of our Edu-Trippers, June Trisciani, and shows the rime ice in a state between solid and liquid.

Jim Salge,  Observer