[Iqaluit - Day 5] Mounting Responsibilities

The last couple of days has been quite productive compared to that of me being in my office back in McGill. I've been working on my reading course whereas I have to read articles answering questions me and my supervisor agreed I should answer in my thesis. I can't say I have actually been reading them in full, I've been mainly looking at the abstract and conclusions for key points and then skimming the parts of the paper for explanations if needed. In the end is my hope to have the background work of my thesis written before January (ya .... probably won't happen as planned).

Aside from that, I've also been involved in the actual STAR (Storm Studies in the Arctic) project up in Iqaluit. Granted, I'm only up here for 10 days but I've been taking part in the daily tasks in the Weather office. In the last 2 days, I've launched 3 weather balloons. The first one was just a walkthrough with me releasing it at the end. The second time I did the whole process of setting up/calibrating the radiosondes (a GPS atmospheric sensor measuring temperature, humidity, wind speed, and pressure) and prepping the balloon myself but under supervision. The third time was done without supervision so it is safe to say I can successfully launch a weather balloon when need be. We don't always launch weather balloons since we only have so many radiosondes and balloons for the entire project, so we only really use them during storm events. Under storm conditions, a weather balloon is ideally launched every three hours, usually at 0Z, 3Z, 6Z, and so on (0Z is defined as midnight GMT, 8pm EST). Sometimes they will be done every 6 hours depending on the severity of the storm. The launches at 0Z and 12Z are not done by us, however ... instead it's done by people from Environment Canada since they do more detailed measurements of the upper atmosphere that are outside our expertise.

I suspect more weather balloon launches to come because of a possible small storm event entering the region later this week. Gabs and Robyn will be leaving for Pangnirtung on Thursday to take radiosonde measurements up there in anticipation of what may be a somewhat severe storm event while me and Robert (another grad student on the project list) will be taking care of radiosonde measurements here in Iqaluit (which means more balloon launches ... yay!). The forecast models say the system may yield precipitation but knowing the arctic and the sometimes unreliable forecast, this storm may be nothing spectacular. Let's just say none of us are really holding our breath.

Anyways, aside from launching weather balloons, we also have to download data from various meteorological instruments every day and store it on the main hard disk. Some of these instruments include the camera, radiometer, and sonar. Not much is involved here, it takes about 30 minutes or so to download all the data and enter into the computer, which happens to be an Apple Powerbook G4 with a 1TB external hard drive connected. So essentially, when I'm not downloading data or launching balloons, I just sit in the Weather Office working on my reading course. It's usually a slow day when everyone is at the office but when Robyn and Gabs leaves for Pangnirtung in a couple of days, Robert and I will be doing more than we have been since the beginning; including taking notes during our daily conference call with Ed Hudson and writing to the STAR blog (both of which are usually done by Robyn regularly). I'm sure there will be other things I will have to do while they are gone for a few days but I won't know that before tomorrow.

I do have to say though that it often gets quite windy up here during the evening, as I saw myself. At the end of the day today, it was 530pm and I was leaving the weather office for the day. It was dark and windy ... so much so I could barely keep my body facing the wind without snowflakes and ice crystals blowing into my face (they feel like needles when they are blown at 35 km/h into the face, and even with glasses it was hard to keep my eyes open ... I should have brought ski goggles). I couldn't even see Frobisher Bay from the road leading away from the station.

On a different note, I came within a couple feet walking distance from one of the huskies used for dog sleds. It was around supper time and I was walking back to the hotel when I passed this one husky digging up the ground on the side of the road. Of course he wasn't tied up or anything so I was very hesitant to approach it closer than I was already doing, yet alone padding it on the head like I would with most dogs. He did look at me with a confusing glare, though.

So much left to see, and time running out very quickly ... and as if a pink VW Beetle wasn't enough, there's also a pink pick-up truck here too :P

More to come another day, with pictures this time.