2009-07-31 47 -120
| Fri 31 Jul 2009 in 47,-120: 47.2335006, -120.0077609 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
An empty field, north of an abandoned road, near the town of Trinidad.
Participants
- Thomcat was there at 1:00pm.
Expedition
Satellite photo shows this to be just north of a road, but the map doesn't. Hmmm. I detour from my eastward journey to SpoCon, hoping to find non-private property.
The road started down into the gorge. During the Bretz floods, this whole valley was underwater - a sobering thought. I reached the satellite spot easily, and I found that the old road has been fenced off in favor of the new "Y" road. Okay, suit yourself. It's a good parking spot with a beautiful view of the Columbia river, and not far from the hash.
A thermometer aside. A year ago, Robyn suggested I get a thermometer. Within a day or so, my boss offered up a $10 gift certificate to REI (our local expedition outfitter), and I claimed it. Shortly after entering the store, I found an acceptable thermometer. One additional external sensor, which I could mount "outside." I instead ended up leaving that sensor in my car, but it was kind of interesting to sit in my office and observe that my car was at 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, or 20 in the winter.
So Washington and Oregon have been going through a heat wave, and the middle of both states is a desert. I brought it outside the car to see how hot it would get.
I found the spot easily enough. Lots of scrub brush, and lots of heat. Both thermometers are rising from the lack of AC at this point. I took a few minutes to build a marker out of some sort of dessicated dung. Within that time, the reading was up 13 degrees out here and only 1 degree inside the car.
How hot could it get at mid-day, in the hottest month of the year? It was worth sticking around a bit to find out. I shot a quick panoramic video that I'll link to here sometime soon. The temperature kept going up... and the LCD started to go black. My GPS also has an LCD, so I wasn't going to stick around until the thermometer was completely black, but I did wait until the temperature was pretty much obscured. Notice that in my car it's only up to 84 Fahrenheit - thank goodness for insulation!
At this point, I headed back to the car, with one successful geohash. The thermometer started to recover immediately, and the GPS was just fine. On the road again, I punched the button to show the maximum temperature reached - 124.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 51.17 degrees Celsius. A new record!
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Thomcat earned the Hot geohash achievement
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