Friday - Day 1 (photo added)

The word of the day is: "almost". We almost did this, we almost saw that, we were almost rained on etc.

To begin, we were wheels rolling at 8:55 am, which was not bad. Stopped in Needles to see how hot it was and raid the Food Mart @ Chevron! It was 106^oF and only 7% RH - yikes! Despite the heat, the students managed to throw a football around. The football will no doubt come back into the story this week.

Sharp downhill run to the Colorado river, followed by a climb back up onto the plateau. One nice thing (there are many more!) about the drive from Needles to Kingman to Flagstaff is to watch the vegetation change as we drive east and climb to over 5000'. Kingman looks dry as a bone, with scrub vegetation and the odd cactus (which look to have a lot of new growth this year due to the rainy winter - El Nino?) And let's not forget that Kingman is one of those places that attracts "survivalists", if you know what I mean! As you head east, pine trees begin to appear, and the land looks greener, no doubt due in part to the heavy monsoonal rains over the last 2-3 weeks. And by Flagstaff, lots of pine trees. Forests even! Also, you get winded more rapidly as you dash to the gas station restroom, for dash you must in order to beat the crowd and not have to wait in the line!

Anyway, as we bombed eastward - AZ freeway speed limit is 75, which we stuck to, as we have no papers - the skies to our east looked more and more "stormy", and we were all furiously updating laptop and cell phone radar displays. Problem was...the good, big stuff had fired up earlier, and while we were an hour west of FLG, the good stuff was an hour east on I-40. As Mike said: "We should have left Barstow at 8" (which got earlier each time he said it). Turns out there were roadworks at FLG, and we lost any slim chance of a late chase due to being motionless. Can't chase when there are stationary semis ahead, behind, and beside you :-(

So by now we were on plan C, I think, which was to head to the hotel, check in, and use the wireless to check developments. This led to plan D, which was to head back WEST to try to chase a small cell moving NNE. We almost got under it, which would have been fun. But due to roads, and the cell's decision to decay, we didn't quite make it. Again from Mike...well, you can fill in here!

We DID release balloons, however. Again the almost word crops up. The 1^st balloon almost worked, which means we let go, but then had zero communication with the receiver, and thus - no data. In Craig's words (roughly): "Stupid German radiosonde system". Which is why we launched the 2^nd balloon with a second radiosonde system. At least we got a temp sounding to 375 mb from that one!!! However, the RH came in at 99% for the entire ascent, and even I know that's fishy!!! Let's hope tomorrow brings better luck on the radiosonde systems. Here are the students getting ready to release the balloon.



Plan E...head back to hotel, eat dinner, start forecasting for tomorrow. Craig (in jest, he now claims) suggested power bars and Amps for dinner, and blast on somewhere to watch lightning and/or chase. Right after that, we all saw lightning from a storm east of FLG, so of course this led to plan F = eat at McDonalds (or somewhere else fast), and bomb east to watch lightning. But once the fries and burgers hit our systems, and we saw (again) that the cells were dying (again), and that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time (again), we decided to bag it in favor of the hotel.

Which explains why yours truly is now in the hotel lobby, blogging here fingers to the bone, while the students polish off their forecasts. As I end this, it's 9:57 pm and most are still here, even tho' the pool closes in 10 minutes!

We are pretty confident that tomorrow is the best-looking day of the trip for widespread convection, some of which may generate problems. So the broad idea (plan A for tomorrow!) is to hope for clear skies early, strong heating of favored locations, and updrafts tapping into the incoming moisture surge. And then - color us in the middle of it all!

Lots of driving today. Author too pooped to upload photos - hopefully I can slot them in later!!!

Blast off!!!

If it's Thursday, it's blast off! As you might guess there was the usual running around, but nothing (really) bad happened and we left earlier than planned!

First, thanks to Josh Diamond (pre-trip SJSU major) for bringing in coffee and donuts! Homer Simpson would love to meet you Josh! Second, thanks also to Josh for calling Steve Paulson at channel 2 (KTVU) and giving them a heads-up about the trip. Thanks in turn to Steve Paulson for mentioning us and the trip on-air! I'll see if I can post a link.

Craig had already organized all the met instrument gear, so it didn't take long to haul it and all our luggage downstairs. At first, almost everything was carefully packed into the trailer we had planned to take. And then on a whim (luckily while I was upstairs), it was decided to deep-six the trailer. Hence, unload everything and stuff it in the vans.

The only thing left, of course, was to re-attached the bone I found last year on the trip to the front of "chase 1" - the van on the right below. Up close, the bone looks bigger (probably from a cow).


And thus it was that at about 10:45 we left! Craig got, maybe, a mile from campus before he had to come back for more spare parts. Thanks to Enterprise Rent-a-car for giving us a van with the AC power outlets disabled (deliberately). Which limits the instrumentation we can run to - none. So we are now playing "hunt the fuse" to see if we can get the power back on.

The drive southbound on I-5 and eastbound across north Bakersfield on 58 was grim, as usual, but at least it was cooler than it could have been (only 90's). We rolled into Barstow at 6 pm (lunch stop and 4pm cold drink stop, if you're wondering why it took so long).

As I write this, the students are quietly looking at zillions of weather products on the class web site, and working on their forecasts for the Flagstaff (FLG) region for tomorrow. Assuming there is some storm activity when we roll into FLG tomorrow, we may well just keep going and chase it down!

Fingers crossed!

T-1 and counting!

"How do instruments work?" "What can go wrong with instruments?" How do we analyze the data?"

These were all questions posed by Dr. Clements in his all-morning lecture on meteorological instrumentation. At least presumably...I had to skip the class to take care of all the mickey mouse last-minute chair stuff.

BUT...I caught up with the class after lunch on the roof of our building (Duncan Hall) where they were doing their first radiosonde release.



Here we all are on the roof on a lovely day, with temperatures in the mid 70's, clear blue skies, and fabulous views of the southern end of the Santa Clara valley.

As is ALWAYS the case with instruments (in my limited experience!), something went wrong. In this case, the balloon sailed off, but the software package didn't receive anything (reminds me of last year!!!) We think the balloon was under-inflated and rose too slowly (and thus fooled the software). But the students all got the gist, which was the main idea!

Once that was done, really the only thing left was packing! The forecast is looking good for Saturday - fingers crossed!

T-2 days and counting!

Woo hoo! Here we go again! Our second annual field trip to study the Southwest Monsoon...destination Flagstaff, AZ.

Everything last year went fine - except for the stupid monsoon itself. The 2009 monsoon was a very sporadic, and virtually non-existent when we were there. So the only thing we are hoping for is - monsoonal activity, as in thunderstorms! And remember - we chose this time (first two weeks of August) because statistically it's the most reliable time for experiencing the monsoon. Hmmm. The monsoon has been roaring for the last two weeks, so naturally it is now dying down - just as we are getting ready to depart. Dying down - but not dying!

Today was the first day of class, and we welcomed ten students in for day one - an all-day forecasting refresher and get-to-know-you session. Laptops handed out, sparkling new 4 Gb thumb drives ready for oodles of data. We have four current SJSU students, four new/incoming grad students, and two "guests", one from SFSU and one from U Illinois. We are very excited to welcome such a diversity of students on the trip! I am hoping they all join in the blog so that you can meet them. The class website is here if you want to follow along meteorologically.

Tomorrow will be an all-day instruments refresher. Maybe we can squeeze in a "learn matlab in 30 minutes" session after lunch :-)

And then on Thursday, after we toss all the instruments and luggage in the vans and/or trailer, it's blast off. San Jose-Barstow on day 1; Barstow-Flagstaff on day 2.

I'll post photos tomorrow!