[Iqaluit - Day 11] Final Day

So ... my 11-day journey has come to an end. I wish I can say I decided to stay here a little longer but the more classes I miss the more I will have difficulty getting back into the swing of things (not to mention I do have a midterm to write ... which I probably should study for :S).

However, not all trips ends on a smooth note. I did fall ill late Saturday into early Sunday morning and was in no position to be going anywhere yesterday so I stayed in my hotel room all day yesterday watching The Movie Channel. Whatever ailed me did more or less go away by early afternoon but at that point I didn't find a good enough reason to go to the office that day. That also meant I didn't go to the Frobisher Inn Sunday night, which I wanted to go to at least once but I was in no condition for a large meal. Oh well ... maybe next time (I knew I should have eaten the caribou back at the Waters' Edge ... argg!)

Anywho, this trip was well worth the time taken away from McGill. By this time tomorrow, I'll be back in McGill sitting in class and taking notes but given the chance to come back to the arctic (and I hope there will be another opportunity), I wouldn't hesitate. Well, depending where and what time of year (I'm not too sure I would enjoy constant -25C temperatures). If anything, I think Iqaluit is worth another look during the summer months when all the snow has melted ... especially the parks (apparently there are three national parks in the area, two of which is accessible by boat).

I still have a handful of pictures I still have to upload to my online web album but I'll only get to that after returning to MTL. Aside from that, I'll leave you with a few interesting tidbits of info about the wonderful world that is Iqaluit:

- gas costs 97c/litre
- all taxi fares are at a constant 6$ per person ... regardless of the distance you want to travel
- there is no such thing as persistent weather (highly variable weather ... and at times, unforgiving)
- alcohol isn't served pass 4pm at some places
- the price of baby food is actually on par with that found in Montreal
- milk is 7.50$ for a 2 litre carton
- jet fuel is something you don't want to smell while walking pass the airpiort (kind of unavoidable if you happen to walk to and from the weather office when a plane is landing or taking off)
- dogs occasionally walk unattended through the streets of Iqaluit (both big and small) ... not sure if they are wild or not, however
- high turn-over rate for employment
- as much as there is beauty in a tropical setting, ice and snow can impress you just as much

[Iqaluit - Day 9] Sun one day, snow the next

Today is Saturday, but it doesn't feel like a Saturday. Today in Iqaluit, we're experiencing snow and some wind making this a snow event. Mind you, it isn't that impressive of a snow event for we're only expecting 2-4 cm of snow today continuing into tomorrow morning. However, it is a snow event none the less and it is expected from us (being Robert and I) to do the weather balloon launches and a new task, taking pictures of the snowflakes using a high resolution SLR camera every hour. The fun just does not stop around here :P

Luckily, we only have to launch two weather balloons, one at 18Z today (2pm) and another at 06Z Sunday morning (2am). I already did the 18Z launch so I'm covered for the day. Robert will be doing the 06Z launch and it seems he's more than happy to do the late launch so I will not argue. As for the taking of the pictures, I'll be doing them every hour until 7pm, at which point I will call it a day and Robert will take more pictures when he does the 06Z launch. My supervisor, Ron Stewart, didn't feel that we needed to take pictures round the clock. Ideally in the end, I will end up taking 5 sequences of pictures while Robert will do about 3 sequences.

Now that it is November, more people are starting to show up in the weather office. Today we were 9 people, most of which are other distinguished researchers participating in the STAR project, including John Hanasiak. The arrival of so many people is tied in with the airplane from the NRC arriving yesterday. Much of the project will be accomplished within the next 3 weeks so it will be a busy place around here starting on Monday ... the same day I head back for Montreal :(

Anyways, I should talk about yesterday. Knowing that it was going to end up being a busy day today and the fact it was a perfectly sunny (but cold) day yesterday, I had decided to do a few more things I had planned to do/see. One of which was to go to the edge of the waterbreaker that stretches out a fair distance into the bay from the mainland. It was probably the closest to the water I was going to get while I'm here but I think it was close enough. It provided a really wide, unobstructed view of Frobisher Bay with the fishing boat out in the distance. The bright sunshine really helped in bringing out the beauty of the natural landscape ... as well as Iqaluit which was behind me.

Iqaluit as seen from the breakwater

Frobisher Bay as seen from the breakwater

After my little walk, I then had a chance to see the NRC plane .. .again ... which landed here earlier in the day. I previously saw the plane last winter (March) when Ron took our ATOC 646 class to Ottawa to see the plane at the NRC hangers and get a small tour of the facilities. It seems smaller this time around but I was assured it was the same plane. The plane itself is a nice piece of technology with all the latest atmospheric instruments onboard. This plane is capable of flying through a hurricane if need be (which would be so fun to be onboard for :D). It's first operational flight isn't scheduled until Monday so I may not get to fly through a storm this time around (unless I choose to come back to MTL on Wednesday instead of Monday ... hmmm). The plane is being kept at a DND (Department of National Defence) hanger next to the weather office where it will be maintained and fitted for various flights. What the people forgot to check was to check that the plane can actually fit into the hanger ... which they saw it can't (wing span too large)

National Research Counsil (NRC) airplane (note the size of the propellers)

Later that evening I went to this restaurant called Waters' Edge. It was recently built about 1 month or so ago as part of this new hotel that was built relatively recently and is located about 2 minutes away from our hotel. It was a nicely built restaurant and the food was really good ... which was a full rack of BBQ Ribs. Yes, I know I have to eat caribou up here but that will be tomorrow night at the Frobisher Inn (another hotel, but it's the largest in Iqaluit). The meal was 36$ before taxes which isn't terribly bad considering the same dish could run as much as 25$ in Montreal. They did serve a caribou dish and that costs 50$. It may be more expensive at Frobisher Inn when I go tomorrow night but I'll find out once I get there. I wasn't alone as my supervisor (Ron), Robert, John Hanasiak, and a couple other people on the project were also there. As a small tidbit of information given to us from our hostess, if you wanted to live up here, rent can cost you upwards to 1600$/month for a two bedroom apartment. Water, electricity and sewage is separate.

[Iqaluit - Day 7] A Walk Through the Park

Today feels like another day in the office. We had our usual conference call with Ed Hudon at 1130am about the weather outlook for Iqaluit and Pangnirtung for the next couple of days. It turns out that the "storm" that was originally forecasted to maybe hit Pang won't hit at all. It's actually sunny up there right now ... and here too. In fact, It's a very sunny day here in Iqaluit with light winds and moderately cool temperatures. This is actually the brightest day I've seen so far. In Montreal, you may get this 5 days out of 7, but up here it's more like 5 days out of 14.

Gabs and Robyn left about 30 minutes ago to fly up to Pangnirtung. There is a possibility of a small storm event this coming weekend for here and in Pangnirtung but we need to get the weather instruments up there set-up and functional before the aircraft from the NRC (National Research Council) arrives tomorrow and is flight operational by Tuesday. The ultimate plan is to have everything set up in both Iqaluit and Pangnirtung so that when there is an actual storm, we'll be able to collect data from our ground based instruments as well as from the aircraft since it will be flying through these storms collecting data. So much work left, so little time to do it all in. The plane is only here for three weeks, I should add.

So for the most part, me and Robert are the only ones left here. William and Scott (another scientist who just arrived earlier today) were outside working on the confused Radar, trying to get it to work properly. There is somewhat of a high hope. Another guy is expected to arrive later today but I forgot his name. He won't be here before 3, so I have been told. A whole bunch of people should be coming in during the next several days so it will get busy around here soon enough.

Anyways, this post isn't about today, it is about yesterday. Since yesterday was a nice day for a walk, I decided to take a walk around the Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park. It was a nice, bright day with temps in the order of -3C with very light winds, perfect for a walk in the park ... I don't think I could have picked a better day for this ... well, maybe today would have been a nice day too but there was no way for me to know for sure. Some pictures are posted here directly but the main pictures are on my online album.

The "entrance" into the park was around the corner from the weather office. I had to walk up a fairly long road to get to the beginning of the trail but I didn't even notice it. I took many pictures along this walk through the park whereas you will find some posted below. The rest will be in my Iqaluit web album (link on the left). I have to say, I was not disappointed. It was a very beautiful park and the fresh layer of snow that fell the previous night, along with the sun getting through the clouds, made for a wonderful walk.

However, the fresh snow did pose a bit of a problem. About 5cm of snow fell Tuesday night into Wednesday early morning and with the wind blowing during that night, it caused half of the trail to disappear underneath the snow. At the beginning it was fine because the trail was lined with large stones but after about 5-10 minutes of walking along the trail, the stones disappear and I had nothing to lead me through the park (the trail essentially went around the mountain, as you will see in the pictures). There were also wooden post/markers but they were far in between and they were difficult to see from a distance since it blended so well with the terrain. The only thing that really guided me were the tracks of a single dog that seemed to know exactly where the trail was ... more or less. There were no other tracks except for this single, relatively fresh dog track. I don't know how fresh the track were so I didn't know if it was still around waiting for me to pass by. Of course, I didn't let that stop me ... nor did it really even crossed my mind until now :P

The snow was deep in some areas so I didn't venture off the trail as often as I would have otherwise ... assuming I was even on the trail in the first place. It took me 2 hours to do the one hour walk around the mountain. Anyways, I'll let the pictures below do the talking for me ;)

One of many views from along the trail ... or lack thereof.

An Inuksuk with the sun peaking through the clouds in the background

Me sitting on a rock in the middle of the sub-arctic ... without a trail in sight.

[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.

[Iqaluit - Day 3] Lazy Sunday

I won't have much to say here since we all decided to take a day off before the week started but today, I saw the sun for the first time since I got here (considering that it's is 60% of the time cloudy in the arctic region). It was a pretty nice sight.


Of course, it lasted all for about an hour before the clouds came again. The only thing work realted I did was to assist William in repairing and/or cleaning the radar. Before I got to Iqaluit, the computer that interprets the angle of elevation does not agree with what the radar sees. Because of this, the radar is currently just staring vertically up measuring reflectivities directly above the radar instead of the surrounding area. However, we saw that the panels we needed to remove on the inside of the radar capsule was difficult to reach without completely dismantling the entire radar .. .which none of us were qualified to do. So, our day ended before we even started. Willaim then went to the gym and I took a little walk around town. The winds were light so I figure today was a good day to walk around without freezing ... even though I only walked around 2/3 the town before my hands finally decided it was time to go inside (holding a camera in the cold does eventually persuade you to find warmth, even with light winds).

I'll get around to writing about Iqaluit later during the week after I get more pictures uploaded.