Field Notes

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East End: 2015-01-05 11:00:00 (DOY 5)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
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Summary: Tower fell over in the wind of 12/30. Totally disassembled the tower and brought in sensors and data loggers.

East End
2015-01-05

I arrived at the site about 11am after getting a phone message over the weekend that one of our towers had fallen over. At first I thought it was the Rice tower, but it was East End. The tower was lying on its side having fallen to the south when I got there. The power was still on and data was still being recorded.

The data logger box was half submerged but the wiring ports were above water and the box sealed tight enough not to leak. The Eddy stuff was on the north corner and so stayed out of the water. The camera was totally submerged and destroyed. The tipping bucket got banged and was partly underwater but seemed okay. The radiometer were mostly out of the water except the pyranometers of the NR01. These were about half submerged but did seem to leak. The 7700 had been removed about two weeks earlier, so no 7700 was in peril.

I completely disassembled the tower. The scaffolding was stacked on the boardwalk and all the sensors and data loggers were removed.

The screw footings where anchored to the ground and remained in place. But the frames were not attached to the footings. The frames lifted off the north footings and just bent over the stakes on the south footings.

The solar system was fine and was left in place. It had a fence post tying the frames down and 200lbs of batteries weighing it down.

The tower had fallen over on the morning of 12/30 in 30mph wind.

4 photos found

20150105EE_TowerBlownOver2.jpg ( 2015-01-05 11:12:18 ) Full size: 1920x1440
Tower fell over in the wind of 2014-12-30

20150105EE_BoxDidNotLeak.jpg ( 2015-01-05 11:26:40 ) Full size: 1920x1440
The data logger box was half submerged but the wiring ports were above water and the box sealed tight enough not to leak

20150105EE_RadiometersOk.jpg ( 2015-01-05 12:13:33 ) Full size: 1920x1440
The radiometer were mostly out of the water except the pyranometers of the NR01. These were about half submerged but did seem to leak.