July 23 – WARM Weather and a Day Off

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 74 Location: Barrow, AK

This morning I got up early to take Jenny to the Airport. She was heading down to Atqasuk to do the field work there with Kim, who has been there all week. Jenny will stay until next Friday for her rotation, while Kim will come back to Barrow tomorrow. Since Kirstin is in St. Louis for her brother’s wedding, I had the day do to as I pleased. So I had a nice relaxing day of NOT getting muddy or sweaty on the tundra (I felt I deserved it a little bit after yesterday’s non-stop affair).

When I came back from dropping Jenny at the airport, I wondered what had possessed me to wear a jacket!? Right after breakfast, I checked online and the temperature was already 56 F! It was only 8 am! There had been no fog the night before, so the sun had just been warming things continuously. There was not much wind either, so that meant the mosquitoes would be coming out. I could have gone to BEO to collect the data, but decided that it could wait until Kim got back tomorrow. Smile

At about 9, I set out for adventures on the town. First, I went to CMDL to download the data from the tower there (since I could do that without getting the least bit muddy). Then I headed to the Inupiat Heritage Center, located in Browerville (a neighborhood of Barrow), next to the Stuaqpaq.

Inupiat Heritage Center

After paying my entrance fee, I wandered around for awhile looking at the displays of migratory birds, whaling artifacts, pictures of Inupiat elders, archeological artifacts, native craftwork and the large overhanging bowhead whale model.

Bowhead whale model

Since there was no flash photography permitted, I was not able to take very many pictures, but did get this picture of a caribou skeleton near the front door.

Caribou skeleton

After that I went to the Top of the World Hotel to look for souvenirs and gifts for folks back home. When I went to pay, I was shocked to not find my driver’s license or my credit card in my pocket! I quickly paid for what I had with ATM and cash and started back across town to the Heritage Center, hoping that it had either fallen out of my pocket there or I had left them on my table in my room back at the NARL. The credit card could be cancelled, but how was I going to do to get home if I had lost my ID?!

Luckily for me, when I got to front desk of the Heritage Center and the receptionist saw me, she immediately asked “Are you Misty?” Someone very honest had found my ID and credit card in the parking lot and had turned them in to the front desk. She had even called KBRW and placed a message for me to call the Heritage Center. What a sweet lady! Boy was I relieved!

I headed back to the NARL for lunch. After lunch, Dora, Marcus and I went caribou searching again. Even though we went clear to the end of the road, we only saw one lone caribou along the side of the road. It would pause long enough for us to think we could drive closer and then bound a bit farther down the road. This is the best picture that I could get.

Lone Caribou

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon working out at the recreation center and taking a shower. It was getting so WARM. By 5 pm, it was 67 F! And still very low wind. I had the window of my room open and wore a short sleeved shirt and my flip flops with no socks to dinner!

After dinner I took a nap ( Wink

) and when I woke up, I began to feel chilled. That is how fast the weather can change here in Barrow, now it is completely foggy outside and the temperature has already dropped to 44 F. I got these temperature, barometric pressure and wind speed history graphs from Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com). Can you see the time that it got foggy? [When the temperature line and the dew point line get close or meet, the fog forms.]

Daily Temperature, Pressure and Wind Speed graphs for Barrow for July 23, 2004

I hear from the folks back home that it was 95 F in Seattle, 102 F in Portland and 90 F in Bellingham today and that it is supposed to stay that warm through the weekend. Not quite that warm here, but warm enough for people to start complaining all the same!