Departure 2008-06-13 10:56:25.000 - Kyle Paddleford,  Observer As Stacey alluded to in her comment yesterday, change is in the air at the Observatory. More tourists are frequenting the summit, alpine flowers are blooming at certain elevations, and the sedge is transitioning from brown to green. Those are all changes that are expected as the calendar pages quickly turn. When I told Mike Finnegan the news a few weeks ago he was definitely surprised judging by the look on his face. This may in fact be the most surprised look I have ever seen in my life. The news for all

Changes 2008-06-12 15:27:51.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Meteorologist crepuscular rays The sedge is turning green, the first round of alpine garden bloom has come and gone, and only a few patches of snow remain on the eastern sides of Clay and Jefferson. Another season is here, and before we know it, it will be gone. Time flies on the summit. I’ve been here for almost a year, and it feels like I have begun just yesterday. We’ve said hello and goodbye to observers and interns and volunteers, on a semi-annual, seasonal, and weekly basis. Well, there is something constantly in the

Volunteer notes 2008-06-10 16:34:23.000 - Diane Chamberlain & Laura Cran,  Summit Volunteers Us. We arrived on Wednesday in the fog. In the flurry of activity getting the supplies down to our living quarters we really did not see much. After getting settled Brian gave us the safety tour. When we finally had time to go outside we were in a thick cloud and some of the time could not even see the Cog in front of the building. The food prep was a little tricky at first. We had some things to learn about high altitude cooking and baking, but

Fixing Lakes 2008-06-09 20:00:19.000 - Brian Clark,  Observer NULL In my comment the other day, I talked about how I ventured down to the Lakes of the Clouds AMC hut to check out a broken, well actually missing, temperature and humidity sensor that we have down there. Today, after recovering nicely from an extremely nasty cold that severely limited my productivity yesterday, I took intern Ted with me back down to Lakes to attempt to get the site back up running.We headed down the Crawford path with, hopefully, everything we needed to get the job done. We had a new

Nice Day 2008-06-08 19:24:54.000 - Ted Letcher,  Summit Intern View of Clay with Mysterious Snow Field After spending the first half of the shift awash in a thick swampy fog, I was not about to let a day like today be wasted inside the observatory. So I used an intriguingly symmetric stain on a distant snow field as an excuse to hike over to Mt. Clay. So I packed a bag of gold fish and a couple of small granola bars and set out to investigate the snow. Upon arrival I was disappointed to find that the mystery stain was

Trip to Lakes 2008-06-07 17:27:54.000 - Brian Clark,  Observer I made my first trip of the summer down to the Lakes of the Clouds AMC hut yesterday after my shift was over. My trip had two purposes. First, one my friends, Caty, is a member of the croo at Lakes (as the hut is affectionately known) and yesterday was her birthday. So, I braved the less than ideal hiking conditions (thick, wet fog with 40 mph winds) to bring her birthday wishes and a birthday card.The other reason I went down there was to take a look at a temperature

This is a test... 2008-06-06 22:53:03.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Meteorologist What do you see? I enjoy the fog, I will admit it. It is not that I do not like our views. It isn’t because fog weather observations are easier than non fog observations. And although I like the cool, damp experience fog provides, that is not the main reason either. I like the fog because everything becomes fairly monochromatic to me and the rest of the people around me. To a person with excellent vision, this might not be that great but for extremely color blind people like me,

Carbon Footpring Project 2008-06-05 17:06:55.000 - Natalie Martin,  Summit Intern Spring Commute Lisa and I have been working on calculating the observatory’s carbon footprint and hope to complete our project this summer. I have been figuring out the transportation side of the equation with help from the auto road. We can now calculate how many gallons of gas and diesel we use each year, our miles per gallon for our vehicles, and a conversion factor to find out how many pounds of CO2 the vehicles produce each year. With preliminary numbers in place it is looking like we are doing

Carol 2008-06-04 06:22:43.000 - Summit Volunteer,  Summit Volunteer Enjoying the weather room Eight days on the Summit for a first time volunteer have just flown by... so many new and exciting experiences to share, starting with 70MPH winds gusting as we were greeted at the Summit by the downgoing crew who helped unload our gear. Next we met with the previous volunteers who gave an update on the pantry, then on to the weekly crew meeting! The Observatory windows were covered in ice, but by the afternoon we were treated to the big view and we got outside to take

NULL 2008-06-03 11:16:17.000 - Summit Volunteer,  Summit Volunteer Me enjoying the sunset This is my second tour volunteering and it's even better than last. Wearrived early Wed morning to see rime ice coating everything. Just enoughfor us to marvel at it's beauty in late May and then it melted later inthe day. The first two days were clear, we could see forever and then thefog set in. Count out about 50 rocks and that's it. I could hear the cogtrain and people but couldn't see it when it stopped here at the peak tolet off passengers. Other days, the train