For the second morning in a row I could tell that the weather was different without even looking at the radar. Both mornings I had the wind in my face as I rode west along the runway to the Operations Center, and about 300 days out of the year the wind should be out of the east. Yesterday I didn't think to look at the radar, so this morning that's the first thing I did. Wow! We were still in the heart of the ITCZ, and overnight convection had sprung up all over the region. Unlike yesterday, the rainstorms continued to grow after sunrise, and by the middle of the day the airplanes were up and making runs through a very impressive mesoscale convective system. This was the system for which we were hoping! The Convair returned early with a suspicious sound in the right engine, but all of the planes got some outstanding data. Once again, when the system died out, it happened very rapidly and completely.

It rained for about six hours straight on Kwaj, so I eventually had to get on my bike and ride from the Ops Center to the main KWAJEX office in Building 1009. When was the last time you rode a mile or two in the rain? I took the suggestion to switch from socks and sneakers to flip-flops, and my raincoat almost covered my shorts, so I made the ride without totally soaking my clothes. Fortunately, it is so warm and humid that getting wet isn't instantly uncomfortable. Well, until I went into the air conditioning. Building 1009 is a small one-story office building in which KWAJEX has been given a meeting room, three large offices, and about eight smaller ones. The office I share is about 20x25 feet and carpeted, although windowless. It's equipped with a few folding tables and chairs, a phone, about 12 computer network connections, and the refrigerator. That leaves lots of room to temporarily assemble equipment, unpack computers, and so on.

This evening at the airfield terminal I met the head of Salvation Army activities in the Marshall Islands. He was in transit from one of the other islands on Kwajalein Atoll back to the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Majuro (accent on the first syllable, and the "a" sounds like "ah"). He sees a lot of work that needs to be done with the Marshallese. I was supposed to meet a plane from one of the outer islands, but the flight was cancelled. It wasn't clear when (or if) the flight would be rescheduled.

George Huffman