The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Sometimes life imitates music lyrics perfectly. The ones above, from Tom Petty’s “The Waiting” are pretty much spot on for our current situation. The weather forecast has been very accurate so far — windy. However, it continues to promise substantially calmer days ahead, starting tomorrow afternoon. The cards we see are each day’s verification of the previous day’s forecast — hopefully they continue to be correct, and our faith will pay off. For now, the waiting certainly is the hardest part.
Aurora Borealis peeking through the clouds this morning over the top of the AMF-3.
The University of Leeds turbulence package being tested on the ground before making its maiden voyage with the ARM tethered balloon in the coming days (photo: Matt Shupe).
We’ve done our best to keep busy, and we’ve had a bit of help from some of our equipment in doing so. You can always find stuff to do, so for the time being, we fix, we test, we troubleshoot. One of our instruments doesn’t seem to be working quite right, so we’ve been communicating with colleagues all over the world (literally from Guam to Boulder to Germany) to try to figure out what is going on. Additionally, we continue to test the other stuff to make sure that it’s ready to go when the winds do die down, and for the most part, it is. So, we scheme, we plan, we put together flight plans, we troubleshoot some more, we launch a radiosonde, and we try to relax a little before things get more intense.
Josh and Steve prepare to release the 3:30 pm AKDT radiosonde (weather balloon).
If the forecast verifies, tomorrow things die down and we should have some fantastic weather over the rest of our trip (another 9 days). Let’s hope that the waiting is over, and the real fun can begin.
