Watts Up With That?

The week was productive, 21 USHCN stations visited, 20 surveyed, one dropped due to access problems (Southport, NC which turned out to be at an Army Depot). My trip odometer said 1828 miles when I turned in the car in Nashville tonight.

Here is the map of my travels this week:

Click for an interactive map

The highlight of the week was of course my 2 day visit to NCDC and the survey of the new CRN station west of Asheville. Another fun moment in the trip came when I visited the Lewisburg, TN Agricultural Experiment Station. It was quite a pretty setting for a station:

While I was doing the survey, and looking for the MMTS which wasn’t near the Stevenson Screen but was indicated by the NCDC equipment log, a farm cat came by to say hello. He was quite the talker. He gave me the grand tour and followed me while I was looking around.

I asked him: “hey Kitty, have ya seen Hansen’s Bulldog around” ? He answered simply “meow” and then took off to the cattle barn. I kid you not.

Interesting thing about this trip, I identified two stations that have undergone undocumented station moves in the last year, which look like good test cases for detecting undocumented changes points via the new USHCN2 methodology. More on that later.

Footnote: While this is a lot of miles, it’s nothing compared to the mileage that Don Kostuch, Eric Gamberg, Russ Steele, and others have put in over the life of this project. I wish to thank them too.

With apologies to Robert Duvall in Apocalypse now-

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Sewage, son. Nothing in the world smells like that.
[kneels]
Kilgore: I love the smell of sewage in the morning.  The smell, you know that rotten eggs smell… Smells like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…

USHCN at Tullahoma, TN Wastewater Treatment Plant – Visible light

USHCN at Tullahoma, TN Wastewater Treatment Plant – Infra red

You know it seems like every morning this week that I prepare to start my day’s worth of surveys, I find that I’m going to visit another USHCN climate station of record at a sewage treatment plant. And so is the case today, my last day of surveys. I’m gonna take a loooong shower when I get home.

I know you all want to hear more about NCDC and USHCN2, and I’ll get into those details next week, but for now, another sewage treatment plant beckons.