May 30 - Some rain at both field sites

NIPIKA

2 hours of rain and nothing more

​Aurélie, Jeremy and Juris headed out from the RHS at ~9:20 MDT. On the way we observed rain along the Sinclair Pass, again close to the Kootenay Valley viewpoint. Part way down Settler’s Road rain started to occur. We arrived on site at 10:00 MDT with some heavier than typical rain intensity. Temperatures felt a lot cooler with more moisture in the air - a stark difference from yesterday on site. Observations began at 16:00 UTC and at 16:30 UTC, I observed the highest intensity of rain I have seen here so far. With discussion with Aurélie and Jeremy we settled on an intensity of 3. Oddly, the parsivel still called this light rain. Both Aurélie and I were a bit surprised, as we decided that the parsivel at Fortress would have recorded more than -Ra, given this intensity. After discussion with the rest of the team at Fortress we determined that the METAR code that the parsivel outputs might not be the best indicator of intensities and we will need to stick to the raw spectra data.

It was overcast for the full duration of my two hour stretch of observations, but the clouds would become darker and lower, or the opposite and would lift and brighten.  Overall, I noticed more midlevel nimbostratus clouds. At 1730 UTC I could see looking to the SW over the Stanford range that clouds were forming on the base of the mountain, within the next few 10 minute time steps these clouds quickly rose moving along the range towards towards the N. This made sense as the anemometer was showing winds coming from the S. 

Looking at 1828 UTC I observed the same phenomena with clouds moving alongside the Mitchell Mountain Range heading N. By the end of my observation shift, precipitation ended. During Aurélie’s stretch of observations (1810 to 2000 UTC) weather conditions remained very similar at the site. Negligible to light winds coming from South were observed, along with an overcast sky, darker toward south and little brighter at Mitchell range.
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- Juris

As observed earlier by Juris, some well defined low level clouds moving from south to north were noticed alongside Stanford mountain. On the opposite direction, low level clouds were also forming toward Mitchell range, optically thin at the beginning. They reached the same thickness and were white and opaque in colour.

- Aurélie

Despite the lack of rain, the team was able to work on a few things. The time-lapse camera was moved to a new location, now facing NW, with a good view of all the instruments including the trailer and solar panels, with the Stanford range in the background. Aurélie reorganized and cleaned the truck.

- Juris

​Recent Geonor weighing gauge data was inspected following yesterday's re-leveling. Leveling resulted in slight shifts in offset for frequency and the subsequent depth values between sensors, however the range of measurement across sensors remains unchanged. Further site visits will require an eventual re-calibration and estimation of the apparent accumulation caused by thermal fluctuation in the sensors. 

- Jeremy

Our last observation was taken at 2310 UTC and by that point the cloud cover had lifted, and it was noticeably warmer with the sun rays shining through the cloud.

​- Juris

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

FORTRESS 

A grey and rainy day

Charlie and I (Hilary) arrived on site at Fortress around 1550 UTC to start taking observations at 1600 UTC. It rained on the way along the highway with varying intensities (sometimes moderate-heavy), but by the time we reached the Fortress gates it was light and was light all the way up the road. Rain was variable throughout the day – generally light to moderate, but at times heavier. Rain stopped around 2210 UTC and we took our last observation at 2300 UTC.
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- Hilary
 
Field Participants: Hilary Smith & Charlie Hébert-Pinard 

Nipika

Fortress