The forecast today was pretty upbeat. Totally boring, sunny weather was expected for today (and it occurred), but a mid-latitude system is expected to move south, with the potential for excitement at the time of a TRMM overpass tomorrow. Those of us sitting in the forecast briefings are getting a crash course in West Pacific meteorology, which differs both from what we see in mid-latitudes (as expected) and in the tropical Atlantic (not expected). Over Africa, the temperature difference between the Sahara Desert and the rainforest to the south sets up "easterly waves" that move off Africa and across the Atlantic. A few of these strengthen into hurricanes, although most do not. So, the first job in tropical Atlantic forecasting is judging the strength and position of the easterly waves. The western Pacfic lacks such obvious organization, and we're really squeezing the data for answers. The Meteorologist In Charge here is a big fan of these mid-latitude intrusions, when they occur. Of course, in many other cases the atmosphere around here goes convective with much less explanation at hand. On such occasions I have been impressed at how a huge area 600 or 1000 miles on a side can simultaneously explode into convective activity. There's some kind of organized forcing, but we don't have it figured out, yet.

I was glad for the placid weather because I had eight new sounding personnel coming in today. I spent an hour with the pair who are going to Roi-Namur, on the northeast corner of the atoll, since this was likely to be my only personal contact with them in the whole experiment. Virtually all the personnel are turning over in the next week, and I'm just hoping we've got the training and deployment schedule right. One side effect was my first mild sunburn. I've been inside so much that I'd stopped putting on sunblock, but I was out for about an hour this afternoon. Also, I must have biked about six and a half miles today!

A C-5A cargo plane came in yesterday, and another arrived today. It's so amazing to watch these monsters come in and leave at all, much less take the small fraction of the runway that they did. The usual Air Mobility Command and Continental-Micronesia flights came in, so among the three we continue to hope for KWAJEX cargo. I'm worried about getting additional weather balloon units before the LCU starts resupplying the outer islands in a few days.

Speaking of airplanes, the Convair is out until Tuesday at the earliest, waiting for spare parts for the right engine. When big projects like this get planned it's really hard to find the right compromise between taking duplicates of everything and taking no spares. With a couple of exceptions we've gotten by o.k. up until now.

George Huffman