{"id":77,"date":"2016-10-16T04:49:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T04:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/?p=77"},"modified":"2016-10-16T05:13:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T05:13:08","slug":"77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/2016\/10\/16\/77\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter is coming…"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"A

A snow-bow over Oliktok as the tethered balloon crew operates their system (photo: Carl Schmitt).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arriving in Northern Alaska in October and not seeing anything white was quite a shock.\u00a0 Having it stay that way for a week was even more amazing.\u00a0 But today we finally started to get a taste of winter, with slightly colder temperatures and snow!\u00a0 To be honest, the team couldn\u2019t be happier to see it.\u00a0 One of the objectives we have for this trip is to get some solid measurements of clouds and snow, and today provided a good opportunity to do so. \u00a0The winds were down this morning, and so we set out for the AMF ready to fly both the DataHawks and the tethered balloon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Snow

Snow flakes falling through the NASA PIP instrument while the tethered balloon crew gets ready to fly this morning. Those orange reflective vests really leave a trail!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In general, everything went well.\u00a0 We got two very solid DataHawk flights in this morning, each being around 45 minutes, profiling the lower atmosphere from around 20 to 200 meters altitude.\u00a0 There was continuous cloud cover and precipitation, making the visibility a bit tough, but we had no problems tracking the plane up through these altitudes.\u00a0 At the same time, the tethered balloon crew got the balloon flying, providing a platform for the VIPS and the turbulence probe to take to the Arctic skies.\u00a0 In total, the balloon was up for nearly eight hours!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Steve

Steve pilots the DataHawk over a newly-frozen tundra landscape.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Gijs

Gijs monitors the ground station during one of this morning’s flights (photo: Steve Borenstein).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"img_3575\"

A DataHawk circles overhead under the tethered balloon (it’s the small spec just to the left of the aircraft).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Carl

Carl (left) and Matt (right) help to get the tethered balloon flying.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"VIPS

The balloon taking a tethersonde\u00a0up into the Arctic sky.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the afternoon, the winds picked up a bit and again got to be somewhat gusty.\u00a0 In combination with some heavier snow squalls, this limited the DataHawk operations for the rest of the day. \u00a0I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m not a little disappointed \u2013 the forecast had the winds staying down most of the day, and the jump back up to 20-25 mph was not completely expected (though not surprising). \u00a0We definitely went out and stood at the end of the runway considering a few extra flights, but the gusts were quite good at\u00a0convincing us it just wasn’t to be. \u00a0Fortunately, the expectation continues to be for an extended period of lower wind speeds next week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Carl

Carl with the VIPS instrument after it was done flying on the balloon for the day.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-10-15-at-8-57-28-pm\"<\/p>\n

\"A

A couple of ice crystals observed by VIPS during today’s flight.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The

Eric, Al and Bruce\u00a0bringing the balloon down after a successful day of flight.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tomorrow, assuming the weather cooperates, we\u2019re hoping to get some flights in in the morning before Steve has to head to the airport around midday.\u00a0 He heads back to Colorado, and will be replaced by Doug Weibel.\u00a0 Doug\u2019s been to Oliktok several times now and knows this site really well.\u00a0 I feel a bit bad that we didn\u2019t get more flight time for Steve while he was up here, but ultimately, there\u2019s not much we can do about the weather.\u00a0 Doug is just coming off of a vacation \u2013 I hope he\u2019s well rested because it looks like there is a lot of flying to be done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Arriving in Northern Alaska in October and not seeing anything white was quite a shock.\u00a0 Having it stay that way for a week was even more amazing.\u00a0 But today we finally started to get a taste of winter, with slightly colder temperatures and snow!\u00a0 To be honest, the team couldn\u2019t be happier to… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 03:48:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}