Mike Obland: A Winter Break

Fairbanks, Alaska, April 13, 2008 -- It looks like we're taking a little break from Barrow for a few days. We flew down to Fairbanks today so that we can participate in Media Day tomorrow, which is a chance for local reporters to come tour our airplanes, talk to the people involved in ARCTAS, and learn about what we do. Because all the other ARCTAS planes are based in Fairbanks, we came down to join them.

The morning started out like usual. We were set to fly out around 11:30 a.m., depending on the morning fog, which gave a few of us time to attend a local church service. The walk back to the hangar from the church takes only about 10 minutes or so, but the wind was so brutal that I’m not sure I could have stayed outside much longer. The actual temperature was down around minus 20 degrees F to start with, and adding to that a steady wind over 10 miles per hour makes for an unpleasant morning. Any exposed skin just starts to hurt after a few minutes. This does not seem to bother the locals, though, some of whom were outside playing basketball in this weather. To them, I suppose this seems like a heat wave compared with the rest of the winter!

Back at the hangar, the plane was out on the tarmac waiting to be fueled. The fog was not a factor, because we had enough visibility to take off. The plan was for Rick, Mike, Ray and me to do a CALIPSO underflight in coordination with the NASA P-3 on our way to Fairbanks. We lifted off around noon, ascended to our cruise altitude of 28,000 feet, did a quick run over the DOE NSA site, and then headed southwest toward the CALIPSO track. There was quite a bit of coordination with the ground on this flight, as the P-3 scientists wanted periodic updates on the cloud situation that we were measuring below us. The weather was not cooperating and most of the CALIPSO track was covered with clouds, which makes for poor CALIPSO comparisons. If there are clouds above our airplane, we have no way of detecting them, even though CALIPSO will see them because it is taking measurements from space. Our measurements in that case will be very different from CALIPSO's, even though we are measuring the same region at the same time. It helped to have both Ray and I on this flight, so that I could handle the instrument while he handled the communications with the ground and the other aircraft.

After a long flight, we finally made it into Fairbanks and were thankful for the change of scenery. It was good to see mountains, trees and even people again! It has been a couple of weeks since we have seen stoplights or fast-food restaurants or driven on roads that were clear of snow. We pulled up to the hangar where the NASA DC-8 and NOAA P-3 were parked, and where the NASA P-3 had pulled up after landing a few minutes before us. We were greeted by a crowd of other scientists from the ARCTAS campaign, including our Langley teammates, John and Rich. It was good to see these guys after a couple of weeks on the road, and we got reconnected over dinner at a very tasty local restaurant, joined by other friends from Langley who have different instruments in the ARCTAS campaign. Not only did we have good food and good company, but the temperature was about 50 degrees warmer than what we were used to in Barrow. It almost seemed like a vacation away from winter, other than the several inches of snow that was predicted for tomorrow. I guess we won’t get away from winter while we are here, but at least we can enjoy the new environment for a few days.

Photo: Mike Obland