Hanging At The Hangar

That's right, folks. We're back in Boulder. Again. We can't help it, really... ROTATE 2012 is on a budget, and, quite frankly, it would probably just be costing too much money to be out and about in the field when we have this to look forward to:

Yeah. It's rough. But, just because we're not actively chasing at the moment does not mean we're actively down or that there aren't things that still need to be done. "What," you may ask, "do these storm chasers do when there aren't any storms to chase?!" Well, it must be your lucky day, because I figure I might as well tell you:

First off, see all of these things?

Well, sometimes they don't work.When we drive these vehicles out in the field, they can easily get 600 or so miles put on them in a day, and they may have over 100,000 miles on them already. Of course they'll have the occasional mechanical problems. On top of that, they're all wired with instrumentation, which is itself susceptible to wear, tear, and general malfunction. The DOWs themselves can be especially prone to problems; they are wonderfully fabulous pieces of equipment, and data collected by them are invaluable to the advancement of the understanding of certain atmospheric phenomena, but they are machines with moving parts and advanced hardware and software. Programs crash, computers lose communication, and motors wear out. It takes a lot of skill and effort to keep a mobile Doppler radar in good working order.

Next, we have these:

Like the vehicles, tornado pods are also susceptible to problems. Generally speaking, the pods won't deal with the same wear and tear that the vehicles and their mesonets will deal with, but they can experience hardware or instrument problems, and the software used to communicate with them can have issues. Almost every time a pod needs an instrument replaced or has to have its data logger (the thing that actually records all of the data) examined / worked on, the pod needs to be "cracked open" and otherwise disemboweled. It's gruesome, I tell you.

These days are also used to do such things as improve vehicle radio communication and internet access, practice some of the every day tasks that would be assigned on active chases, and to generally gain a better understanding of the vehicles and equipment that will be used. Cookies also may or may not be consumed. But this depends entirely on the availability of good cookies.

Editor's note: The photographic images in this entry are entirely anachronistic. Though they do represent some of the every day tasks at CSWR, they are from the time period before I got tired of carrying my little point and shoot digital camera around the hangar. Yeah... that was like four whole days ago...