Still North of 60
Hey there Hive, it's yet again been a while since we got to chatting and I did a bit of a life update. I'm still your arctic adventurer, living up in the remote tundra of Nunavut. But recent events have allowed me to jump on an opportunity to change up my job. For roughly 3 months I will be in the Northwest Territories, training for a Weather Observer Coordinator role. It's like Arctic meteorology and Air Traffic rolled into one, but on baby mode!
The first leg of my travels were delayed on New Years Eve by a blizzard, with winds reaching 70 km/h and visibility below 100 meters. The capitol of Nunavut, Iqaluit also had poor weather that day, delaying the NYE fireworks display until Jan 2nd. I got lucky and got to see the fireworks display from the airport. It started about 10 minutes after we landed, and lasted until my cab arrived to take me to my hotel. Perfect timing!
So What Is A Weather Observer Coordinator?
The main part of my role as a future Observer Controller will be to receive and relay accurate weather reports from METAR data to our remote arctic pilots. As you can see in the picture above, METAR reports look like a bunch of random letters and numbers, but they are actually quite simple to read. When you look at your weather app you're seeing a graphical interpretation of a METAR or SPECI report. SPECI's are special reports used to notify pilots of rapidly changing weather conditions.
I am looking forward to my training in the Northwest Territories. It will be a daunting challenge to learn all about the different types of weather and how to accurately report them, but it is not a challenge I can't accomplish. And the payoff, oh my, If you're a social butterfly this next part is going to sound like torture. Due to our remote arctic location, this isn't like a normal Airport tower like you see in movies. It's just one guy, alone for up to 12 hours at a time taking hourly weather reports from a computer or hand if the station goes down, logging the data, and eventually once a plane shows up (we only get about a dozen planes a week) you radio the pilot all relevant information and turn the runway lights on. That at its most basic core is the entire job. Obviously there's a ton more that I'm going to learn about over the coming months and I plan on filling you all in on all the cool information I learn!
If you read my last post then you'll know I'm keen on AI and one thing I'm really looking forward to making use of is Google's NotebookLM for studying and learning! I want to see if I can use AI to enhance my learning experience. See if some of the old stuff people tried to teach me as a kid sticks better with a different method and mentor! I've been making use of the Audio Overview feature to review all the pre-course information the school provided me. As well as making cool infographics using the tools built into NotebookLM. Here's a little cheat sheet I made myself to help me easily identify different cloud types. Gone are the days of "That one looks like a bunny!" Now it's "Those whispy horsetails are Cirrus clouds, one of the highest forming clouds!"
My ethical promise;
I will disclose all use off AI
The words you read are all my own.
AI helped with research and SEO of this post.
Images marked with CWAI were Created With AI
