Received: from SOUTH-STATION-ANNEX.MIT.EDU by po9.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA28975; Tue, 4 Mar 97 15:58:04 EST Received: from striker.whoi.edu by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA26099; Tue, 4 Mar 97 15:58:00 EST Received: (from knorr@localhost) by striker.whoi.edu (8.6.12/ksf/shore/1.0) id PAA14149 for seadiary@mit.edu; Tue, 4 Mar 1997 15:58:04 -0500 Received: by knorr.whoi.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA11070; Tue, 4 Mar 97 20:32:44 GMT Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 20:32:43 +0000 (GMT) From: Jason Goodman To: seadiary@MIT.EDU Subject: March 4 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 56 44' N, 52 28' W Temp: -13 C, Winds: anemometer broke! Seas: really rough It's been really nasty weather for the last several days. Winds 30-40 knots, occasionally higher, bitter cold, with constant big waves across our beam (which means we roll a lot.) As mentioned above, the anemometer which I usually use to tell y'all what the winds are like is broken, presumably by the wind. We've got about four more anemometers, but their readouts are in inconvenient places. We stopped by the site of a meteorological mooring today: its owners stopped receiving satellite transmissions from it last month, and asked us to check on it. The buoy took a while to find, because it's now several meters shorter. All the intruments have been snapped off, and the tower they're mounted to has been squashed flat, probably by waves. It's probably a total loss, but there's a chance the data store (which is deep inside the buoy) has survived. Its owners will have to wait till spring to find out, though, because it's way too rough for us to recover it. A NASA meteorological airplane flying over the Lab Sea for the next few days, testing remote sensing equipment to be mounted on a satellite someday. Our ship's weather observations are providing "ground truth" for the plane's equipment, so it's flying directly over us regularly. I've gotten used to being alone out here: it's really weird to hear a plane flying overhead. Speaking of planes, there was a bit of excitement yesterday: we got a mayday from a twin-engine Cessna about 70 miles away from us. They'd lost both engines and were going down. Our captain started to head toward that area; fortunately the Cessna restarted one engine and was escorted back toward Canada by another plane. What kind of fool flies a Cessna in this weather, in this part of the world? Other than that, things are pretty dull out here. I'm starting to miss fresh veggies.