I dig weather stations

My main task for today was to get a start on raising my weather station. I'd installed it 2 years ago, and with the high accumulation at Summit, it's getting buried. The electronics are all in a box under the snow, and the only things visible at the surface were the anemometer for measuring wind speed and direction, the thermistor for measuring air temperature, and the solar panel to keep the batteries charged.


The buried weather station. The flat green bit is the solar panel, which was about 1.5 meters off the surface when I installed the station. Can you guess why I would mount it facing down?

In the morning I downloaded all the data from the station, and checked to see that it was all in order. Then it was time for digging. I'd carefully made a diagram when I inastalled the station, so I knew exactly where to dig. A couple of hours later I'd found my box!


At the bottom of the pit with the datalogger electronics.

I brought everything up to the surface, and then was about to fill in the pit, when I realized at least one more scientist at Summit might want to make measurements in it; the pit's already dug! So tomorrow I'll help Lora with some conductivity measurements, then fill in the pit, re-bury the box just beneath the surface, and it'll be ready to go for another 2 years!