I missed thanksgiving this year because I had to be at the sounding site, so I didn't get to partake in the turkey feast, but I'm ok with that. I've never been that crazy about turkey anyway. I can say that I am so thankful for not feeling jet lagged anymore! I'm also feeling much more comfortable launching the balloons. At first I was constantly worried that I was forgetting a step. The number of balloons we can launch while we're here is limited by how much helium we have, so if we mess up and have to relaunch a few balloons it could mean that we'll have to stop our operations earlier that we planned.
Before leaving the states I picked up a GoPro camera from REI. These cameras are amazing! They're built to be attached to a part of your body or a piece of equipment like a surfboard so its very shock resistent and waterproof. It also has a cool time-lapse feature which I used the other day to make a time-lapse video of the sunset looking northeast from the sounding site.
Before leaving the states I picked up a GoPro camera from REI. These cameras are amazing! They're built to be attached to a part of your body or a piece of equipment like a surfboard so its very shock resistent and waterproof. It also has a cool time-lapse feature which I used the other day to make a time-lapse video of the sunset looking northeast from the sounding site.
Steph and I made our first snorkeling attempt in the lagoon near the sounding site, but unfortunately the visibility of the water was too low to get any good video.
Our attempts to rent a bike and go wind surfing were also deterred due to broken bikes and a lack of wind. I'm still thankful for the nice weather though, which has made it easy to catch up on some reading while I'm lounging by the Indian Ocean.
The MJO is looking quite active. The plot below is courtesy of a report put together by Paul Roundy at SUNY Albany. This plot is meant to show only the aspects of the flow that can be attributed to the MJO. The cool colors are areas of enhanced cloudiness (and precipitation) that are moving eastward towards the DYNAMO array. It already feels like the MJO wet phase is upon us here at Diego Garcia due to the abundant convection we've seen over the last two days.
However, there's no sure way to really know whether the rain I'm seeing here would not be here if we were in a different phase of the MJO. Maybe in the future we'll be able to address questions like that, but for now I'm thankful for those unanswered questions and the opportunity to come to places like this and be a part of trying to answer them.
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