May 29 - Hot days in the valley

NIPIKA

A hot day on site

With a switch in personnel at Nipika yesterday (Jeremy and Aurélie now on site), we all opted to take advantage of the hot weather to do a full site orientation; going over protocols, checking up on the instruments and doing a full data download. 

Prior to leaving Radium Hot Springs, Silver Star radar was showing convective cells to the south of the radar, though we were unable to see any Cb clouds from the valley. Skies were blue with scattered cumulus clouds. We (Jeremy, Aurélie and Juris) arrived at Nipika for 2147 UTC.

The instrumentation at Nipika was in fine form upon initial inspection. Juris provided Aurélie and Jeremy with an overview of site operations before the team got to work conducting data downloads and inspecting sensors. Data from the MRR and disdrometer, and timelapse images were collected. Weather station data downloads were conducted and all sensor outputs inspected. It was determined that the snow-photography booth was unlikely to see further use and therefore was dismantled. 

Time was taken to inspect the Geonor all-precip weighing gauge to determine causes for variance across transducers, and subtle spikes in output. The collection bucket was levelled via sensor height adjustments to ensure each transducer shared equal weights from the bucket. All wiring was inspected for loose connections, none were found. The group identified the location of each sensor with respect to sun exposure, which was deemed not to be the cause of spikes given that sensor 1 (the spikiest) was the most northern unit. Review of existing research on thermal sensitivity of Geonor transducers will further determine an approach for managing the diurnal noise in depth measurements. Lastly, sensor calibration tests will likely be conducted to ensure the frequency-depth calculations are being offset properly.

The team finished up there, and dipped their toes in the Kootenay river before hitting the road. While travelling to Radium, some convective precipitation was observed at Kootenay valley view point (highest point of drive) and spotted some darling ursine beasts along the way.

-Jeremy

Field PEEPS: Jeremy Morris, Aurélie Desroches-Lapointe, & Juris Almonte

FORTRESS
 
A beautiful and sunny day

Charlie and I (Hilary) spent the beautiful day today downloading data and catching up on some administrative tasks. We headed to Fortress Junction around 1600 UTC where we made sure the car was in tip top shape and sat in the sun while waiting for 8 days of data to download. After around 45 minutes, the downloads were completed and we left for our site at the top of Fortress. We arrived and began downloading another 8 days of data. It was a beautiful day at Fortress and the sun was very bright and very warm. It was interesting to see how much snow has melted since the last time we were there – our site looks almost snow free! We ensured that there was ample space left on the brick and double checked the file format of the LiDAR data. We also tried to troubleshoot Cam 26 and make sure that all the cords were properly connected, however it still wasn’t working - we couldn’t figure out an obvious solution to this problem and decided to leave it in case we messed up Cam 27. After the downloads were completed with our instrumentation, we went towards the powerline instrumentation where we downloaded the MRR data and made sure that everything was plugged into the shed.

Once all of our tasks were completed, upon Mel's suggestion, we walked up to the ridge overlooking Fortress. It was still very snowy but it was lovely view of our surroundings. We saw some beautiful views of the mountains that surround us that we can't see from our trailer because of the buildings and trees. We even saw our little trailer and research site! It made us realize that we take for granted the stunning area in which we are so privileged to be working. 

We left Fortress to head back to BGI around 2030 UTC. At BGI we backed up and uploaded the data to google drive.
 
It’s a big relief to have all the data up to date and that all instrumentation is working after a few days not in the field!
 
-Hilary
 
Field Participants: Hilary Smith & Charlie Hébert-Pinard 

Nipika

Fortress