13 June, 2000

The temperatures in Greenland have been warmer the last few days. Pretty blue skies and little cloud cover are great in most respects. Landing and take-off on snow runways are exceptions to that. The airstrips become 'sticky' when warmer, making takeoff especially difficult. To counteract this, it is planned that the C- 130 Hercules will pick us up tonight at 9:00pm when the temperatures have dropped

a bit. This is not definite however because of all those pretty blue skies left us today. We had low, heavy clouds with blowing snow earlier today, but it appears to be clearing now with thinner higher clouds. There will be another check at 6:30 pm to determine if acceptable landing conditions will likely be present. If not, then we will try again tomorrow. The pilots are trying to take advantage of the best weather window possible, but it changes so quickly here. We are not the ones in control here - the weather is.

On the positive side, air quality has improved and controlled tests on 'blank' snow chambers have been showing exactly what they should - nothing. Before they were showing some strange chemical spikes on the graph. The PIs are very happy about the latest turn of events.

My next journal should be made in Kangerlussuaq. Wonder if I can catch that Arctic fox on film this time.

Warm regards,

Besse Dawson

My little foxy lady turned out to be quite curious, too! > <>

The Herc has to use the JATO (JetAssistedTakeOff) rockets to escape the sticky snow on the runway. We use ALL of the runway getting up to return to Kangerlussuaq. Photo taken by Tim Shea. > <>