Here's a chart of what the wind was doing at the observatory

[thewayne]

I captured this image from the meteorological tower at the observatory, you can see how high and when the wind spiked and also how it dropped off. It's a gorgeous day today, I took a lot of photos of trees partly frosted with snow. Everything's melting even though the temperature is in the 20s as it's quite a clear sky. Fortunately between attacking the ice and the melt, walking around is a lot less treacherous!

Keep in mind that the observatory is 15-20 miles S/SW of Cloudcroft, so we don't know exactly what the conditions were at our house. The storm is called a "Bomb Cyclone" and I think its eye was over Kansas or Nebraska, so we were on the fringe. It derailed a train in New Mexico, fortunately with no injuries, and spawned two tornadoes in the NE corner of the state.

The dogs aren't happy at being cooped up in the car, but it's in the sun, so they'll be warm. Russet is grabbing a nap and plans on taking them for a pre-sunset run, up and down the observatory driveway, which is about a mile. So that should burn off some energy and poop them out a bit. Then we're going back to the house for a few more food items, then down to Alamo to pay somebody to feed us.

Right now I'm doing laundry, something that I was going to do yesterday before we lost power and abandoned our house to its fate. The observatory has two dorm buildings, one with two kitchens and a washer/drier, so I'm taking advantage of the latter equipage. The admin building where the control rooms for the telescopes are also has a kitchen and laundry, but that one is reserved for special items, I don't know what.

And I learned that laundry detergent when left for many hours in a freezing car turns into a gel! Isn't science amazing!

We spoke with Mark, the observatory's site manager, about power restoration. He's tightly tied into emergency services and utilities for the area. He said they expect power to be restored Friday, so we'll be spending another night here, which is doable. The dogs aren't allowed in the admin building because one of the Sloan scientists is severely allergic to dogs, so naturally he's on-shift right now. There's a trailer that's normally used to house dogs on-site, but it's not connected to the site generator, so the dogs were on the cold side last night. That's not too bad for the poodles as they come with their own fur coat, but Rupert suffered some. Russet put his jacket on him, but he managed to partly squirm out of it. Tonight we're putting them in the fabrication shop, which IS connected to the generator, so they'll be warmer tonight.

So lots of fun. I was exhausted last night and didn't get much sleep, but got enough to be functional. So we'll be muddling through. The house is intact without damage and no further threat is in the near future, that's the important part.