Just looking at the live view tonight, with an almost full moon, I can barely see a glimmer that might be the lidars in the bottom, left of the image. I'm assuming that the (visible) moonlight shifts the camera sensitivity so that it is less sensitive to the (infrared) lidar reflection off the surface.
This weekend the Mesa Lab machine room will be shut down for maintenance, and this affects many of EOL's servers and other UCAR networking and services. This may cause the following SOS services to be interrupted or inaccessible: real-time network data stream, real-time plots and images, NCharts, nagios, and the wiki. I think VPN should still be accessible, so it should still be possible to connect directly to the DSM network (eg, DSMs, lidar Pis, camera) during the shutdown.
Even though the network stream will be interrupted, all the data should continue to be saved locally on the USB sticks. The USB sticks all have at least 20GB of available space and have not had any problems so far through the project. The DSMs themselves have been up for 40 days at this point.
Everything is supposed to back up on Sunday evening by 6:00 pm, so soon after that the rsync backups should catch up on downloading everything from the DSMs that was recorded over the weekend. The real-time data stream and plots and images should resume then also.
For those wondering what the snow condition was like during our site visit, below are photos taken by Rosalyn Stilling (NCAR Digital Engagement Specialist/Science Communications). Please provide credit if these are used in presentations.
We noticed a very thin and delicate veneer of ice coating the surface. You can see the glint of it in the photos. We had full-sun conditions and by the afternoon the snow had turned a bit slushy when walking about. Overall, the snow was crunchy (crystalized) with dirty patches. Us walking about probably added to the dirty snow.
Site C - adding the 1m sonic/irga.
Site UW - Bring the 2.5 m sonic/irga to 2 m.
Below are my photos of the 1 m sonic/irga at site C. We dug a well to keep the sensors unburied. Unfortunately, our movements left large holes in the snow.
With site visit tasks done (or so we thought) we decided to leave this morning, since the weather tomorrow looks worse for traveling. Left Crystal at about 9:30, out to trailhead in an hour. We enjoyed the cloud cover after our very sunny day yesterday.
Now all safely home to Boulder.
The six of us (Isabel and Jacquie from EOL, Reva and Kim from HESS, Ali and Rosalyn from UCAR comms) arrived in Crested Butte yesterday evening and stayed in Mt. Crested Butte.
This morning we left the trailhead at 9:30 and got to Crystal Cabin by 11:30. We skied and snowshoed in with Ben, the RMBL caretaker, so got a chance to hear about what else is going on at RMBL. There are some fairly recent wet snow slides on the face of Gothic Peak, so we were glad to be traversing under the avalanche-prone slopes while still in the cool of the morning.
After lunch we visited the site, arriving about 1:30. We got some good probe and shovel practice excavating the barrel!
We climbed at D to clean the K&Z radiometers, done at about 2:15. I could feel air from the ventilator fan on all four radiometers.
We then moved on to looking at which sonics we could lower now that the snowpack is decreasing. At UE and D it looks like there's still too much snow to move the 2m sonics back down to 1m.
At C, we did move the former 1m sonic back into its spot (from where it had been stored on UW). Steve's recommendation was to move it back, even though we then had to dig a bit to clear snow away from where the sonic head would be. It is now sitting with the bottom arm of the sonic just about touching the snowpack:
Once we added back a bulgin cable from dsm to 1m EC100, we are getting data from the 1m sonic again. While at C, we also checked on the tubing inlets for the snowpack barometers. Three of them are still buried in snow, so we left them alone, and we taped over the end of the tubing on the fourth.
Back at UW we moved the remaining sonic boom and clamp back down to 2m, exactly 1.02m below the 3m sonic as measured off the avalanche probe (if there's a measuring tape in the barrel, we couldn't find it). We made that switch between approximately 3:30 and 3:36. We cleaned the NR01 at UW at 3:40.
Last activity on site was switching out Ethan's lidar USB sticks at D (about 3:52) and UE (about 4:02). Back to the cabin a little after 5 to enjoy Ali's meal of fancy ramen.
It's been a great day getting to share some of what we've been up to at SOS this winter. Thanks for coming, comms and HESS folks!
After talking with Chris and Steve earlier today. From memory, please add anything I forgot!
- Lidar USB stick swaps: only at D and UE. I have 4 USB sticks to bring in from Ethan.
- Radiometer cleaning: K&Z at D will require climbing, NR01 at UW will require being careful of tsnows and IR sensor field of view.
- Moving sonics back down if the snowpack permits:
- At UW: move boom with sonics from 2.5m down to 2m. This will require moving the boom clamp back down the tower, look at Chris's blog post for how he measured the proper height to mount it at.
- At C: C.1m is currently in the boom at UW, just not plugged into anything. Maybe this could be moved back, the clamp should already be there.
- Maybe move sonics down at UE and D too, based on what it looks like when we get there.
- Check if tubing to snowpack barometers is capped, if not cap with spare bulgin caps.
- Dig out the barrel if necessary
From the latest snow, 1m.d and 1m.ue (both actually 2m now) are both partially buried. 1m.uw (actually 2.5m) appears to be really close as well.
It looks like the Tsnow at 0.5m on the UW tower has gone awry.
I don't expect this one to come back. These are tiny thermistors that can easily break, and I am impressed that they have all lasted this long.
I also think the 0.4 UW has been reading incorrectly since about March 11, where is started slowly creeping up into the positive temperatures. Then starting March 13th the 0.5 UW also crept into positive territory, until March 16 where it starting reporting unreasonable results.
We went to the site bright and early this morning for Danny and Eli's last snow pit dig. We were breaking trail through about 8 to 12" of new snow. The conditions were much colder and windier than yesterday. The UW 2.5 meter sonic was still clear of snow, but the Downwind 2 meter sonic was starting to get covered. The next few days are forecast to be sunny, so the new snow should consolidate. While on site, the four Lidar USB drives were exchanged. I checked with Ethan to verify that all Lidar Pis were reporting to the new USB drives. I also removed the snow from the UW NR01, and attempted to clean it.
The site in early morning sun with wavy snow.
The NOAA radiation table is almost covered with snow.
This afternoon we received a welcome surprise. A snowcat groomed the entire road from the trailhead to RMBL.
This will help with the trip out on Friday morning. I don't know how long the road will stay this nice, since next week the area is forecast with another significant dump.
Sunset on Mt Crested Butte from the cabin:
Went to Kettle Ponds in the afternoon of 3/15/23 with Danny and Eli. We also had Ben (RMBL) and Alex Hager (KUNC reporter) join us.
The temperature was very close to 0 C, and it was snowing heavily at times.
All sensors where looking good, the Center SHT 1m still has the inlet in the snow. The movement of the WU sonics has helped keep them out of the snow. The D 2m sonic is just touching the bottom of the snow pack, and may be partially buried by the end of the storm. Below is a picture of the site as we arrive - lots f snow.
The D tower with the C tower in the background. Sonic is touching the snow pack.
Ben set to digging out the power panel to help keep the site humming along. While Danny and Eli dug their second to last snow pit.
Alex Hager is a reporter from KUNC (Ft Collins NPR station), and he reports almost exclusively on all matters concerning the Colorado River. He was notified about SOS by Julie Vano of Aspen Global Change Institute (one of the co-PIs), and he wants to do a story on SOS - so stay tuned.
Alex recording for his story as Danny and Eli are doing their snow pit work.
I retrieved the TRHs from the store room and will return those to Boulder.
Anyone making future SOS site visits that require a TRH swap will need to grab one from me before they leave Boulder!
On 3/16 I plan on swapping out the Lidar USB drives and make a final check of the site.
Skied in to Gothic and met with Danny and Eli today. The Avi danger was down to a 2 (moderate) and my Garmin Inreach was along for the ride. The road to Gothic had decent tracks, but had not been groomed since the recent dump that Crested Butte had received. It took a little over 1.5 hours from leaving the trailhead till reaching Gothic and Crystal Cabin.
In the afternoon All three of us (Danny, Eli, and myself) skied out to Kettle Ponds Site. The two lowest two sonics on WU were buried as seen in the full picture of the site
.
I cleaned the UW radiometer and wetness sensor. No climbing so the downwind radiometers will not be cleaned this trip
I decided to dig out the UW now 2m sonic (this was originally 1 meter, but moved up as the snow pack increased). Due to location of the EC100 box, and cables, there were few options. After some digging and cable repositioning, I was able to gain enough slack so that the 2 meter boom clamp could be moved to 2.5 meters.
Below shows the original location of the 2m boom - relative to the 3m boom (~1.02 meters below the 3m boom. measurements are from top of boom to top of boom)
Below shows the new location of now 2.5m boom - relative to the 3m boom (~0.52 meters below the 3m boom. Measurements are from top of boom to top of boom)
After adjustment, both of the lowest sonics are back out of the snowpack. On future trips, as the snow pack melts, this sonic boom and associated sonics can be put back to their original location.
While I was playing with Sonics, Danny and Eli were playing in the snow. They dug a snow pit and measured snow water content at various depths. The snow pits are now slightly over 1.6 meters deep.
As far as I know, these are the tasks for Chris and David's visit starting tomorrow:
- Swap USB sticks for Ethan's lidar
- Clean radiometers (climb for "d" sensor) with small alcohol wipes. Wipe off NR01 Wetness sensor when doing it.
- Decide on whether to dig out csat.2m.uw
- Decide on whether to dig out TRH.1m.c
- Bring back spare TRHs
- Retrieve 2(?) motes from Danny and Eli when they are done with them.
The snowpack is beautiful at the moment! Totally smooth, filling in all the holes.
As Danny sent yesterday, the 1m.uw sonic (on the right, actually mounted at 2m) is now completely buried. The sonic to the left is the disconnected sonic from 1m.c.
The TRH 1m.c also appears now to have its inlet in the snowpack.
As of 11:30 pm last night, the entire SOS network is unreachable. I'm looking into it, and I'll probably be contacting XstreamInternet for assistance.
As of early this morning, 03-06-2023 01:13:27, DSM uw is not responding to any network connections and not sending any data. The reason is unknown. It looks like it was working fine up until that time.