Thurs., June 26: I think I can, I think I can...

I've almost completed my second full day here at Summit camp! Yippppeeee!

So last night when Dr. Lefer and I were calibrating the spectroradiometer...it was very cold (duh), and I was using an allen wrech to remove some of the screws holding the dome in place. Because I was about ten feet up on a ladder and leaning over to reach the dome...leaving my hands the following duties 1) hold on! 2) collect the screws 3) hold on to the allen wrench 4) be prepared to catch the dome if it falls (mucho dinero!), after I removed the first screw I was clearly thinking I was in Houston and immediately put it in my mouth! Yes, I am an idiot! Immediately, Dr. Lefer screamed out, "Get that screw out of your mouth!" Its temperature was around 5F, the same as outside and almost stuck to my mouth! That really really would've been embarrassing going to see Chris the medic with a screw frozen to my mouth! Whew...close one!

We celebrated the "first leg" of the Summit crew last night because they left camp this morning at 7am. Among those leaving was my advisor, Dr. Lefer, and Dr. Clements (both from U of Houston). It is really easy to forget what time it is here because it is bright 24 hours a day...most people ended up drinking beer and visiting until about 3:30am. One GREAT thing about this is at this time it is warmer than around 11pm - 3am. So by the time I turned into my tent, it was warm, and I slept a whole lot better!

Today I relocated the five fiber optic cables in the snow spectroradiometer because northerly winds have dominated the past couple of days, and the instrument was located to the north of the cables, therefore creating a "snow drift" behind it. I decided to insert them into the snow (important for measuring UV radiation at different depths so we can identify the amount of radiation needed to form certain gaseous compounds in the snow such as NOx) to the east of the instrument because the forecast calls for north to east winds for the next few days.

The rest of the day was spent downloading and backing up (always want to have at least two copies of the data!) the data from the above ground spectroradiometer, snow spectroradiometer, sky camera, and snow ozone instrument. I have also been working on some code to process and plot the tethersonde data. For the tethersonde, we are mostly interested in temperature, dew point, and potential temperature so that we can identify the stability of the boundary layer (normally averaging anywhere from 200m to 300m in Summit). If the boundary layer is stable (temperature inversion is present, i.e., temperature is increasing with height), gaseous compounds such as BrO, NOx, and ozone are not able to be vertically mixed (turbulent mixing is very small, which inhibits air parcels from rising).

Lunch: Enchiladas, salad, Spanish rice, some type of Spanish bean Heaven with meat in it, Spanish pork verde...tasted sooo good when it touches your lips!, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies at least 5.5 inches in diameter...hmmmm maybe I'll have another right now!

Dinner: Meatloaf (kind of weary about this one because I haven't had it since I was like 5, but it was delicious!), baked potatoes, onion and mushroom gravy for anything and everything, freshly baked wheat bread, zesty broccoli, tofu for the vegetarians, warm and moisty brownies with walnuts, apple and oatmeal pie cake thing that was surprisingly good

Today I saw a sun halo and sun pillar. Very cool! I will post more pics as soon as I get a chance.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Smell-oh-meter: a strong 3.5...not a whole point because I did change my long underwear and socks today...booooyah!