Yucky Weather Today

Double Volcanos

I like volcanos, maybe because we have so many of them here in AK. They're just fascinating to watch.

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Okmok.php

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/472522.html

Geologist gets volcanic doubleheader


OKMOK, CLEVELAND: She and Coast Guard air crew saw both erupting at once.
By BETH BRAGGPublished: July 23rd, 2008 12:21 AM

Geologist Tina Neal and the crew of a U.S. Coast Guard C-130 got more than they bargained for Monday when they took to the air for a look at the erupting Okmok Volcano.

Mount Cleveland -- another Aleutian Island volcano about 100 miles west of Okmok -- had burst into action too.
"I've never been in the air looking at one eruption and seeing the plume from another," said Neal, an Alaska Volcano Observatory scientist who has spent 25 years working with the U.S. Geological Survey in volcano-rich Alaska and Hawaii.


"When we took off from Kodiak all we knew about was Okmok. It was while we were at Okmok and looking down and photographing it that the pilot noticed a dark cloud ahead of us to the west. We realized it couldn't be Okmok because the wind was blowing in the other direction.

"Within 20 minutes we got a call from base saying Cleveland had erupted. Inadvertently we were in the air over Okmok while Cleveland ash was traveling toward us. That's a first in my career."

What Neal and the Coast Guard crew saw was a volcanopalooza, the first double burst in Alaska in more than 30 years. The last time two Alaska volcanoes erupted at the same time was 1974, maybe earlier, according to Cheryl Cameron, a Fairbanks geologist who works for the state Department of Natural Resources.

"Trident Volcano had a big, long, intermittent eruption from 1953 to 1974, and during those 21 years we had dozens of other eruptions," Cameron said.

Even without the double whammy, Neal said, her experience Monday was unprecedented. She has often flown over a lava-producing eruption -- but never over an ash-producing one.

"It was the most violent eruption I've ever seen," she said. "Ash was just boiling out of the ground."

The Coast Guard flight was unable to check out Cleveland on Monday because of fuel limitations, Neal said.
Both volcanoes continued to erupt Tuesday and were color-coded orange, one level below red, the highest aviation alert level.

Satellite images indicate that lava is flowing at Cleveland, a busy 5,676-foot volcano that erupts with frequency on uninhabited Chuginadak Island.

No lava has been reported at Okmok, a 3,500-foot volcano on Umnak Island that last erupted in 1997. Ten people were on the island when Okmok first blew July 12 and were evacuated safely.

Neal said she could barely see Okmok's caldera floor because so much ash has filled it. A caldera is the broad crater-like basin formed when a volcanic peak collapses after an explosive eruption.

Okmok's continuous ash plume is pulsing in response to the varying intensity of the eruption, Neal said, rising from 15,000 feet to 20,000 or even 25,000 feet in a matter of minutes, then going back down to 15,000 feet.
"In the 20 minutes we were there, we saw it go up and down twice," she said.
Cleveland's plume consists of steam and some ash and is between 10,000 and 20,000 feet high, observatory reports said.

There have been no reports of significant ash fall in Dutch Harbor, about 60 miles from Umnak Island and about 150 miles from Chuginadak Island, since Okmok's initial eruption.

Gray Jay

We had a gray jay at the bird feeder last night. Brought a juvenile along, but I didn't get picture.

4th of July, Prudhoe Bay Style

It's much more normal to have snow showers on the 4th of July. But today was sunny and warm. 61 degrees at noon and we were all roasting.

June is Baby Moose Time

Yep, it's baby moose time and boy are they cute when they're little. Here is a mama and twins who've been hanging out in the yard a lot the past few days.

Don Retired Too

Actually, he's much happier about retiring, then he looks in this picture :-)

Kenai Lake

Isn't this a great picture? Joe sent it to me, he took it last week bear hunting up at Kenai Lake. Look at all that glacier water.

The Alaska National Guard Comes To Visit

It's been pretty quiet here at work today, but we got some unexpected visitors. The AK National Guard is out doing some practicing and stopped in for fuel. 5 Blackhawks and a Chinook. I don't have much of a zoom on my little Fuji Camera so I used one side of my binoculars to get this shot of the Chinook. It actually came out OK.

NOT what you want to see first thing in the AM...

Actually this is a borrowed photo. It was taken over at Barrow. Keep your doors locked and windows rolled up!

Baby Picture

Either Aunt Pood or Uncle Paul just e-mailed me a really old picture. They must be scanning in old photo's. That a big project. Anyway, this is dad & I a long time ago.

Retirement

Today is D-day, or maybe R-day. After 30+ years here on the Slope, Ray is retiring from his job at ERA Helicopters. He's looking forward to plenty of time for fishing, hunting, gardening and his horses. Congratulations Ray!
One of these days I'll get to do the same :-)

What a pretty plane...

On a really yucky day. It's about -5 and blowing 30 mph with a little new snow fall mixed in. Visibility is pretty poor. I don't know who these guys are stopping for gas, but the pilot didn't even have gloves on when he got off the plane. Must have come up from someplace else where it really is spring.

As far as I can tell, this is a Bombadier Challenger 300. It has the tilted wing tips, so has a fairly long flight range.

Spring Snow

It's a good thing I didn't get my summer tires put on yesterday. Big snow flakes all of last night, it was only 8 this morning and has snowed off & on all day.

Is this the final floorplan?

Hmm, maybe. We're very close to finishing up the floorplan. This one is a bit different from the December floorplan. I really liked the utility corridor behind the kitchen, but then budget reality set in. So we had to make a few modifications. This one is very nice too. Let me know what you think.

Window Height?

So, here is a big question. Looking at the new sketch of the house, from the front. Do you think the window for the master bedroom (far right) should be the same height as the window in the living room, or the same as the windows in the 2 guest rooms (to the left)? Which looks more balanced? We're actually looking at the current plan as 2 buildings joined together by the entryway/corridor. Look at the 2 different roof heights and see how they're joined by a section of flat roof. Hmm, I'm not sure what I want to do. Let me know what you think.

New Floor Plan Ideas

Well, now that we're done dreaming, fiscal reality is setting in. We need to figure out how to design the house I want, and stay within the budget. It's not easy, so now it's compromise time.

Here are some drawings of the new plans. The style & shape of the house is very similar to the last plan, but the windows are much smaller. We're working on a way to afford taller windows, at least in the living room.

And then here is the new floor plan. It's workable though I want to make the master bathroom larger.And the old floor plan. I really, really like the utility corridor behind the kitchen in this one, and how open the entry is to the kitchen and living room. But, I can't increase the budget either.

And here is a drawing showing how the main entry should look.

Any suggestions?

Prudhoe Bay Morning 013008

Thursday was a gorgeous day, -30 or so and clear. The sun came up for a few hours. I'm glad I work indoors, but I find days like this just breathtakingly beautiful.

Our ice road is still under construction, and the wind last week pushed some rubble ice up against the island. So we asked our helicopter pilots to make a flyby of the island and take a few pictures we could send to the engineers in town. Stephan Hill took all of these, in fact there are another 20 or so I loaded into my Flickr photo album (you're welcome to go look at all of them, just follow the link on the right side of this page), but I wanted to post a sampling of them here.

Prudhoe Morning - this photo is taken on land, on the way out to Northstar. I'm guessing this is 'sunrise' and was probably taken between 11 am and noon.
Here is a picture of the Discovery Well monument. It marks the spot where the exploration well was drilled that proved there was lots of oil up here.

Here is a picture of our ice road under construction. The island is behind the helicopter and the shot is looking back toward shore. You can see STP in the background, it's located on shore, and a couple of pumper trucks strung out along the road.

Here is a close up of one of the pumpers. They have a big auger on the back so they can drill through the ice and pump seawater up to flood the area we want to eventually use as a road.

Here is another picture of the ice road, this time with the hovercraft headed back to shore with some passengers. Once the ice road is thick enough we'll switch to bus travel back & forth to shore, but for now we're sticking with the hovercraft.

Here is a picture of the island, it's 7 miles off shore. You can see all the ice rubble pushed up around one side, and then in the back ground you can see the pumpers on the ice road, and STP & the shore line.

More Prudhoe Bay Pictures

As you can see, I'm in the mood to post a few pictures.

We had blizzard on Wed, with was blowing 48 mph with gusts to 65 mph for about 18 hours. The sea ice out around the island is still new enough that the wind can move it around. So a rubble pile built up against the west side. It's quite spectacular really, and a bit scary for the folks who live out there. If it had kept building it would have crashed over the sheet pile wall built to keep it out.

And then here are some sunrise pictures. The sun has just come up over the horizon the past few days. So these are really sunset pictures too :-)

This one on the 22nd was taken from my office window at the airport.

This one from the 24th was taken on the island.

Retirement - I wish I was the one going :-)

I haven't posted much lately, but a few things have come up the past few days, so here we go again.

Mike, Skip and Manny

One of the guys I work with, Skip retired today. He and I both work on shore, but on Tuesday we went out to the Island for lunch, so everyone could say goodbye to Skip. Here are a few pictures. We rode out to the island in the new tucker, but came back on the hovercraft. And the last picture is

going through our bear gate. It goes around the island to keep the polar bears away from the workers.

LIMA - Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica

Yes, we are officially in the "International Polar Year". Here is a new web site that is fun to look at. You can zoom in and out, looking at all sorts of cool images. There are also some intereting research links. Check out the Antarctic Mysteries at this location: http://lima.nasa.gov/

http://lima.usgs.gov/

"In support of the International Polar Year (IPY 2007-2008), LIMA brings the coldest continent on Earth alive in greater detail than ever before through this virtually cloudless, seamless, and high resolution satellite view of Antarctica. "
"The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), created LIMA from more than 1,000 Landsat ETM+ scenes."
"As the first major scientific outcome of the IPY, LIMA truly fulfills the IPY goals. LIMA is an international effort, supports current scientific polar research, encourages new projects, and helps the general public visualize Antarctica and changes happening to this southernmost environment. Researchers and the general public can download LIMA and all of the component Landsat scenes at no charge."