Ice report for July of 2007

It was a beautiful day for an Ice Run...

Here we are pulling up to the Shed as viewed from the Institute.

Here are the remaining blocks, about 110#.

As you can see, the temperature is cold enough, but there's not much ice left.

Not much at all......

Looks can be decieving, though.....

The largest chunk is pretty good sized, maybe 20 pounds

When we take 7 x 15(I like to be conservative) that equals 105 pounds. Plus the 110 in blocks and no more than 20 in the mass....gives us around 235 pounds of dry ice left.....just a BIT less than the 3-400 pounds we normally like to have at the end of the cycle. Global warming is taking it's toll on our cooling capacities.

Some people say they can see Grandpa's face in the ice.....

Sure has a big nose.

There were a few crystal colonies around....

Lots of large plates....a lot of chamber respiration.

.By the time we got all the ice shifted and documented, the upper chamber temperature had risen to -10F.

As we started to pile on the ice, and built up a little more cold, the temperature started to fall pretty quickly....

Here, it's already back down to about -50F and still falling, and we've only just gotten ice on the very bottom. This is why our system actually works so well. The cold settles to the bottom of the chamber, no matter how much (or little) ice there is. Note that the thermometer was pulled up to a higher position than normal for the photo.

The truth of the matter is, I have never seen the ice reserves so depleted. We need to infuse a shot of extra ice to get us through the last of summer....for the first time in years, the standard amount is *not* sufficient to maintain proper temperature differentials.

You can see how short we are on filling the chamber. I estimate we have between 1800 and 1900 pounds total....probably closer to 1800, due to loss of mass during transport.

Next time we need to add at least an extra 300 pounds, 500 would be better. I'll have to put the request into Finance....