My awesome job.

High today: 37 F
Low today: 17 F

A few photos from recent happenings.. been working a crapload lately to balance out the time I am about to take off but it is still easy to appreciate the little things...

I have been launching weather balloons for my research. I've gotten two out of three nights of launches out of my way and now do not need to stress out if I miss a clear night for a couple of weeks. Last spring was very tough trying to schedule anything because I would be basically "on call" for four months. The same is true now but it has all worked out very nicely. I am not concerned at all about scheduling trips on the weekends now because chances are we will get at least one more clear and calm night in November. This week's launches were fun because both nights I had some friends come down who wanted to see a wx balloon launch. Below is Adrienne launching one of my balloons.

Dani came down a couple of nights later with Bill and was having a blast.

The second night of launches the aurora decided to show its lovely face for me right outside the door. :-) I proceeded to call a bunch of people to let them know but was sad when the aurora quieted back down not even ten minutes later!!
...to something more like this...... but hey, let's face it.. once upon a time this green glow would have been a crazy deal to me!!
Where I launch my weather instruments at, the NPS is testing a bunch of stations that will be going out in the field. Someone was a little bit freaked out by them because they are all sitting there staring you in the face. Another professor in my department also set up his sodar which makes music! The music gets pretty obnoxious after a little while.... I was hearing it in my sleep one night which did not make me very happy.
Below is a radiosonde, the instrument which is launched with each weather balloon.. it measures temperature, pressure, and relative humidity, and then a bajillion other variables can be calculated through those measurements. Pretty fun toy, huh?!