Seems
several bloggers are writing or commenting on cold weather. Guess I will jump
in.
After
leaving the Army in 1966, I was determined to earn a pilot license. I tried to
get in the Army aviation program but a couple of evaluation rides showed I was
unlikely to become adept at hovering a helicopter. There were even fewer slots
for fixed wing training.
While
visiting my parents, I was alerted to a company conducting an experiment to see
if seeding clouds would increase snowfall.
A
component was a string of recording devices strung along thirty miles of the Continental
Divide at 10,000 to 11,000 feet. They wanted local people who knew how to
operate in harsh conditions as the equipment needed to be operational while it
was snowing. One of the people hired along with me had been a year ahead of me
in high school. In high school we loathed each other. A few years later our
feeling hadn’t changed. That said, we both knew how to work and survive in
blizzard conditions.
These
storms could be intense. We used a snow cat to go from site to site. Often the
visibility was so bad one of us would go ahead on cross country skis to find
the way. The other would drive the machine following the skier. The temperature would always be below zero
and the wind was gusting so hard the skier would nearly be blown over. We never
calculated the wind chill. Fear!
The
wonderful part of the job was I only was required to work when it was storming.
That left clear days for flying. My father had always wanted to fly and we went
in together on a 1939 Piper J-4, known in the family as the Puddy Four. We both
got our Private rating in her. I went on to get a Commercial and Instrument
rating. He later bought a Cessna 182.
This
seeding experiment was a large effort. To the West on a high ridge was a
decommissioned Nike Ajax radar setup for tracking the chaff filled weather balloons.
Further East on a high peak was the seeders. Sodium iodine was mixed with
acetone and fed into small fan devices with propane burners. During a storm,
the burners would run for thirty minutes, shut down for thirty minutes, etc. The
data from the recorders along the divide was analyzed to see if there was a
pattern.
This
project ran for four years. I don’t think anything was proved but the people
doing it were meticulous in their efforts. As an aside, several marriages with
local girls were a byproduct. Those long cold winter nights, don’t you know?
The
time spent with the asshole from high school didn’t change our feeling towards
each other. There was a mutual, if grudging, respect for each other’s skill
set. Our literal survival depended on it. That job was far and away the most
dangerous one I’ve done. As I understand, he worked there all four seasons.
Tough man to be sure, but an asshole’s asshole. A good friend from high school
who still lives in the area and is friendly with him assures me his feelings toward
me are about the same. Oh well.
