Dust Devil Fieldwork

July 11, 2019 This is Part 5 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4). We came back home a couple of weeks ago. I'd say our field campaign was a great success, considering how much data we collected. I've started sorting through it and it's going to take me a while to start making sense of it. I want to give a shout out to our undergraduate students from St. Lawrence University, Banner Cole and Owen Sprau, and to our graduate student from UCLA, Taylor Dorn. There's... read more ❯

June 16, 2019 This is Part 4 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3). The last post was a short one. That's partly because I'm short on time, partly because my poor aging laptop's battery doesn't work (so I can only make these posts when it's plugged into an inverter while my truck is on, which means something else that needs charging isn't getting charged), and partly because I'm tethering my phone for internet access and don't want to totally eat up my data plan. Anyway. Last time I showed the weather... read more ❯

June 12, 2019 This is Part 3 of a series on my dust devil fieldwork in 2019 (see Part 1 | Part 2). We're here, we're really here. I have a team and wonderful instruments and everybody is awesome and working hard. We're camping on a playa in central Nevada, and I can't believe we've been here for a week now. It took us some time to set up all our gear and get everything working, but I think we've got a set routine now. The team: Me, the PI, ultimately responsible for All The Things. Steve Metzger, who set up & manages the weather... read more ❯

May 10, 2019 (This is Part 2 of a series on my summer 2019 dust devil fieldwork. See previous post Part 1.) Today my colleague Steve Metzger and I drove out to a playa in Nevada to test some of our field equipment. The "real" field campaign will happen in June. But first, we want to work out some of the kinks in our planned study. There's a lot of new equipment to test out, calibrate, and make work, and we don't want to waste precious time in June on silly mistakes that we could learn from now (fortunately our proposal panel... read more ❯

April 22, 2019 Hey. So last fall I found out that some colleagues and I got our dust devil proposal funded (I'm the PI, which means I'm the one in charge.) My initial reaction included elation. Relief. Joy. 🤗🎉🎈🥂🎊 We'd submitted this proposal five times (FIVE!!) before we got it funded. And now we're really going to do it. We're going to get some amazing meteorology instruments, some awesome cameras, and go out to the US southwest to study some dust devils. As reality set in, my second reaction looked like this: 😨😰🙀 Because. Well. This is a big job. I want to do... read more ❯