I thought it was bad enough yesterday, when I got in the car to drive to work, looked over and saw this:
But I went to work and went on about the business of getting travel arrangements made for the crew and ordering field supplies and whatnot. It snowed off and on all day, and was so windy that the crew waiting to install a radar on the roof of the BARC had to call off the lift with the crane due to high winds.
Last night the winds were still in the 20+mph range, gusting higher. The surface of the lagoon next to my house, which started to have patches of open water in the warm weather of a couple of weeks ago, were showing some chop, and it was rather grim-looking all around.
Apparently it kept snowing during the night, because in the morning the TundraGarden looked like this:
I spent the morning in a training Webinar for the Alaska Heritage Resource Survey (AHRS) remote web access system, and the first part of the afternoon taking some officials from the US Department of the Interior on a tour of Nuvuk (many thanks to Scott Oyagak for driving us in his truck, because the wind was pretty nasty) and the Nuvuk lab. Apparently one of their staffers had been on a site tour I gave in the last couple seasons and really liked it, so they wanted a tour too. They got to see a lot of ice and gravel, the Birnirk National Historic Landmark (NHL), Nuvuk, Plover Point, and get their pictures taken at the Top of the World, but no bears.
I then got to spend the rest of the day dealing with the aftermath of someone having sideswiped the UICS Ranger while it was parked beside the BARC. It was on the passenger side, facing away from the building entrance, and we hadn’t driven it for a couple of days, but there was no dust on the new dent, so it was recent. Looks like someone was backing out of their parking space and hit it. They didn’t bother to leave a note, or call (the truck has decals). Pretty lame. No way they could have done that much damage and not noticed. Fortunately, it seems like they just made a huge dent in the side of the bed, but the door opens fine & it doesn’t seem to have affecting the driving, as far as Tammy could tell on the way to and from the body shop trying to get an estimate.
Almost all of the travel is arranged, and tomorrow I can update the logistics calendar. Just hope it warms up a bit for the fieldwork…
Out of Ice and Time 