Over the past week, I have failed to keep up with this blog simply because of the boring nature of the work. Since I promised to show the oh so exciting nature of balloon launches, here it goes.
The balloon is inflated with helium and is automatically shut off when the balloon acquires a certain buoyancy. We then tie the balloon. We then tie the tied balloon to the instrument package (called a radiosonde). We then let go of the balloon. We watch the balloon. We sit and wait for the next launch in another 1 hour and 45 minutes.
I know...exciting stuff.
Although the field work may be boring, the data is extremely interesting to a meteorologist. The radiosonde allows us to create a vertical profile of temperature, wind speed/direction, and moisture. Of course, these variables are extremely important in the world of atmospheric science. It was pretty neat to be able to see real time data being sent in as the balloon rose through cloud base and into the upper atmosphere. Data was being plotted on a skew-T, which looks something like this. I won't bother explaining it, but you can visit this site if you are really interested in what you are looking at.
Eventually the balloon will pop somewhere around 70,000 ft (this varies). Because of the low pressures aloft, the balloon will expand almost to the size of a two story house. After it pops, the radiosonde will fall back to the ground on a parachute and most likely be lost forever. The National Weather Service puts a mailing address on their instruments asking for them to be returned, but the return rate is extremely low.
So from Monday through Friday, this was pretty much all that was done. Over the weekend, however, we had a whole bunch of work to do with the meteorological towers that we put up during the first week. At first, we thought the towers were only going to be a two week set-up, but some of the sites were interested in keeping them up for another few months. So we had to make a few adjustments to the towers to be able to make them withstand the longer stay.
15 concrete blocks were added to each leg to help the tower hold up against hurricane force winds (current estimates are that the tower will stand up against 90 mph). A trench had to be dug (with a machine of course) in order to bury the electrical line. A lightning protection system was also set up with a copper rod extending 3 feet above the tower and coiled copper wire running down the tower and 100 feet horizontally away from the tower underground. Here are some pictures of the trench.
For the lightning grounding system, we poured Bentonite into the trench below and on top of the copper wire to provide a greater surface area for electricity to flow. Bentonite holds water really well (cat litter uses the same stuff apparently), so this also helps in directing the flow of electricity.
That pretty much sums up the last week in Gulfport/Biloxi. Now its time to get some rest and try to regain some energy. I leave you with the one and only...Jimmy Buffett.
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