Do you know what is this?

This is the prototype wind sensor. Usually, wind speed or direction sensors have some propeller or wing, etc. But these physical movements are weak at very strong windy location such as here at Denali (Mt. McKinley). Always broken!

Our main goal is to measure ground (permafrost) temperature but we add wind measurements. very unique one! This prototype sensor has 4 strain gages when the pole vent little bit to detect wind speed and direction. Accuracy is less than normal wind sensors but stronger (because no physically moved)!

Attoko elementary school in Hokkaido Island, Japan is in the local newspaper about the frost tube!  4th grade students keep measurements for frost depth. So far it reaches to 25cm depth. It will be great introduction article and hope many other schools around here are going to interesting in the frost depth! Currently, we have four schools for our network in Japan! We are going to establish more in March.

I did quick Kozebue day trip. Alaska airline operates nicely convenient  schedule for arriving Kotze at 7:40am and leaving 2:55pm or 7:30pm!

Once a daylight coming up around 9am, I rent snowmachine and visit soil moisture site.

Then our network site. Snow was deep 80cm! loggers were under snow surface.

New fancy hotel is now in the town! I forgot to take picture of the hotel, but it looks Las Vegas hotel!!

The warmer air makes beautiful snow crystals in Fairbanks. Hope not too much snow… I am heading for Kotzebue tonight!

At the icing around artesian spring area is dynamic and exciting! it is almost always different ice formation. Here is small (only 30cm  high and 1.5m dia.) volcano looking ice dome. Fresh groundwater keeps overflow from the summit and feather ice occupied around top!

Nice sunny weekend! Temperature is one digit below 0 degree C, feeling spring!  I visit some datalogger site around Fairbanks. Aufeis is develop a lots. It seems aufeis year! Aufeis (icing, Naled) is layered ice that forms. Ice, frozen in the stream bed, blocks normal groundwater discharge, and causes the local water table to rise, resulting in water discharge on top of the frozen layer or sometimes lifting up. This water then freezes, causing the water table to rise further and repeat the cycle. The result is a stratified ice deposit, often several meters thick. When I walk on the aufeis, there are many fragile ice feathers!

We start working International University courses on Permafrost catalogue up date. Currently old version is in:

http://ipa.arcticportal.org/resources/courses-iucp.html

We did have quick two days Valdez trip. I had a great but short time with Valdez high school teachers and students.

most of the road condition was snow or ice on the road…

Keystone Canyon was always beautiful!

We did check temperature at the bottom of 2m snow. Ground was thawed and snow-ground interface temperature was 0 degree C.

We had a record of the snow year around the Prince William Sounds area. It was already many surface avalanche occurring along the highway to Valdez! Here is some thermal image and actual image of the avalanche. After the avalanche, thermography shows warmer snow exposed on the surface!

Dream plans for next 5 years! -part 3: horizontal dreams-

Last two blogs I wrote different dreams. These are almost close or already have good imaginations. Image is very important to start with. I believe right images are  the ticket for the success story. Life is too long, if nothing to do. However, it’s too short, if something want to have done! This is very much true. My Russian dreams are very sweet dreams. For Russia or Northeast Passage, there is so many unknown including permissions. This makes me so exciting to develop image. Since first time I crossed Siberia by train during Soviet era. Political situations are dramatically changed. I have a great friends today. I will try to develop our network as many as we can access. So we will start working many place this year such as Obi Delta, Southern Sakha republic, maybe Chukotka soon. But some day, hopefully I can drive from Fairbanks, skipping Bering strait then all the way to Europe by my snowmachine!!!

Little Diomede (USA) and Big Diomede (Russia) at Bering Straight