Slightly cooler today with a high of 91F and windy at times, especially during the morning. Winds were mostly northerly, although switched to westerly at times as some storms went along the hills to the west. Variable clouds increasing in the afternoon. During the evening there were some storms with heavy rain and lightning in the town and some of those may have passed over or near the site.
Josh and Isabel launched the first sounding this morning. There were westerly winds around 12 m/s (26 mph) and based on that experience we will likely recommend the students don't launch in winds stronger than 10 m/s (especially if they are northerly as winds might blow the sounding into the power lines on the south side of the site). Given the winds, Josh inflated the balloon inside a seatainer rather than the sounding shelter we had planned to use. Aside from the wind, the sounding went smoothly. The data collection and processing appeared to go well, with two BUFR files generated (for upward and downward legs), although we aren't yet sure if the data were submitted to the WMO GTS.
David and I worked on the MISS profiler. David took the cover off under the antenna and traced the switching cables. He checked connections and verified that the switching signals appear to be making it to the relays in the antenna. Gary and Isabel worked on installing the NIMA analysis package which will help diagnose the issue. On the Modular Profiler, the oversampling mode we set up yesterday appears to be working well. Today we set up a 100 meter RASS mode which seems to be working well.
We leveled and tied down the NCAR windcube and Metek Halo lidars, and added a safety chain to the lidar platform on top of MISS. Josh added a ground rod to the ISS1 tower (just in time for the lightning this evening). Isabel got the data transfer back to Boulder working although there is further work to do before web plots will be available.
Inflating and launching the radiosonde sounding
One on the lidar platform on MISS (left) and diagnosing the MISS wind profiler (right)