UltraViolet Observations

As the completion of the new Met Office crawls closer, the work site is beginning to encroach on the current site. This week must be trench week. I arrived on Tuesday to find a note warning me of holes near the instrument enclosure. I have to take readings at 0600, when it is still dark, so it's good to have the heads-up.

They have been laying new cables from the electronic instruments to the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) which sends data to the office. I've been a bit nervous that someone might cut through a cable and I'd lose my data (as recently happened in Derby), but they were careful.

Trenches and holes have appeared, then disappeared. My shoes are even more red now.

Yesterday I joked to the tech who is up from Melbourne that I'm going to come outside to do obs and find my screen (white box in pics which houses thermometers) has fallen into a hole. But sure enough, the next time I went out, they were digging around the screen!! I was JOKING!!!

I really should have gotten a picture of the screen when it was perched on a step ladder with a pipe under one of the legs to level it. They removed the stand (last pic) which had been installed with an over-kill of concrete. It took a lot of digging and the ute 3 gos at different angles to finally pull it out!

They also moved one of the rain gauges (I only calibrated it yesterday after which they told me it was moving).

3 hours ago they turned the AWS off! This means no electronic temp or wind data for my half hourly reports! I panicked when they first told me, but now I've remembered how to use the conversion tables and found the station barometer, it's not that bad. Plus I get to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine every 30 mins when I go out to read the mercury thermometers.