The Sun Appeared

I finally saw the sun in the afternoon two days ago. It was low on the horizon, as if it was early morning, just a few degrees up and it was only 4PM in the afternoon. Big, fiery, orange ball. I saw my shadow on the road. It is an amazing thing to not see the sun, and the only light from the sun is equivalent to dawn and twilight for the entire day.

We also got to watch the Concordiasi people from France launch the first of the17 to 23 of their research balloons for taking reading on the ozone hole, layer and what might be bombarding us from space through it.

Here is the location of their web sites describing the research they are doing:
http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/concordiasi/

Concordiasi people filling up a high altitude research balloon for Ozone testing.

 

The primary field activity of CONCORDIASI will be a constellation of up to twenty long duration stratospheric balloons deployed from the McMurdo station by the French space agency (CNES)

Almost ready to launch balloon.

Such balloon systems have been extensively utilized for research, such as the constellation of 25 CNES stratospheric balloons deployed from McMurdo in 2005 for the VORCORE project. While the VORCORE ballooning observations were limited to relatively low-resolution meteorological measurements, the measurement capability will be upgraded extensively to meet the multidisciplinary goals of IPY with the payloads to include:

 i) flight level observations of ozone, meteorological parameters at 1 min intervals, and microphysical observations of stratospheric clouds.

 ii) GPS occultation providing vertical profiles of refractivity related to temperature, humidity and pressure.

iii) a micro pulse lidar to map clouds in the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere.

 iv) Driftsonde gondolas each capable of carrying up to 60 GPS dropsondes to be launched on demand producing a high-resolution vertical profile of temperature, humidity, winds and pressure from the flight level to the surface.

 

 The driftsonde has been successfully flown on CNES stratospheric balloons during the 2006 hurricane season for flights with durations over Africa and the tropical Atlantic.

The modeling component of CONCORDIASI is extensive and includes a version of the Meteo France global model ARPEGE, two high-resolution regional models (the NCAR−Ohio State Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) and the Meteo France high resolution mesoscale model MesoNH, and the NCAR Nested Regional Climate Model, which is currently under development. Through the THORPEX, we will also have access to the ensembles of the global models from the major operational centers.

And there ya have it!........

 It had stormed for the last two days before this. Condition II is is listed here as:

 Severe Weather Condition II: which is defined by one or more of the following conditions: wind speeds of 48 to 55 knots sustained for one minute, wind chills of -75 to -100 F sustained for one minute, or visibility of less than 1/4 mile sustained for one minute. 

 

We had wind speeds over 48 and less than 200' visibility with blowing snow.

Rock-On!