Climate Physics

Personal Interests

Throughout my professional activities, I also participated in competitive sports and other activities. 

When I was a graduate student at the University of Nevada, I performed a wide range of athletic tests including track, gymnastics and swimming to qualify for membership in the Sigma Delta Psi national athletic honorary. Very few people have ever achieved this range and level of athletic performance. Astronaut Ed White was among the few who were members of Sigma Delta Psi. Super-athlete Norm Hoffman was another.

So great was my interest in our atmosphere that while a graduate student, I learned to fly sailplanes under instructor Ed Blaylock with the Reno soaring club. We flew off Nevada's dry lakes using an old Buick and a 2000 ft long steel cable to tow the sailplanes to 1200 feet above the dry lake. That way a tow cost us only $1.00.

At 1200 ft above ground it was easy to catch strong thermals and soar for hours. Once I caught a strong thermal that gave a 4000 ft/minute upward ride to 16,000 ft ASL, where I purposely exited the thermal because I did not have oxygen aboard. We also did ridge soaring using the updraft created when a wind blows against a hill.

That's me flying the blue sailplane. In the distance is the dry lake where we land when we feel like it. Once, when I was soaring at 10,000 ft, an eagle arrived and soared just above my left wing. To the eagle, I was just another bird. [By the way, if it were not for convection currents moving heat upward and thereby cooling the earth's surface, these sailplanes would be on the ground.]

One time, I was in a very strong updraft and got sucked up into a developing thunderstorm. It is like having a blanket dropped over your canopy. The sailplane had no gyro instrument to keep a pilot oriented. Knowing this is a dangerous situation because one will go into a death spiral, I stalled the sailplane and put it into a spin, then waited a seemingly very long time to safely drop through the bottom of the cloud.

To top it off, as I approached landing on the dry lake, a dust storm was headed my way fast. The dust engulfed my plane at about 100 feet above ground giving zero visibility. So I just kept everything steady and waited for the wheel to touch the dry lake ... my only zero-zero landing. Once on the ground, I had to stay in the sailplane with brake on and "fly it" to keep it from blowing away. About 15 minutes later, I saw the headlights of vehicles slowly coming my way. These were the other sailplane pilots who had observed my predicament and were hoping to find me in one piece.

When I became chief scientist for the DRI aircraft research facility, I took power flight lessons from Tom Wells, our chief pilot, and got my license for power aircraft. Later, I got my instrument license.

While at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, I took up small boat sailing in the nearby lakes. I accepted sailing as a challenge to prove my meteorological ability as well as athletic ability. My wife, Valerie, was my crew. We sailed in the very competitive Fireball International Class and sailed and won almost every championship race in North America for several years.

Above is Valerie on the wire in our US 7485 shortly after the beginning of a race in the US National Championship in Austin TX. If you are a racing sailor then you know we have an excellent start in this race. It was rumored that a local sailor always won the races in Austin because the hills played tricks with the wind that took years to learn. We won the championship. (I see so many indicators of the wind and wind shifts and understand wind flow around hills, I feel like I actually "see" the wind.)

We became Pacific Coast champions, National champions, North American champions, and in the premier event of all, the Canadian Olympic Regatta in Kingston (CORK), Ontario, we won Gold Medals. At CORK, we beat some Olympic competitors and Valerie became the first woman ever to win in such high-caliber sailing competition.  

Here we are preparing for a race in our championship boat. This was a beautiful boat: built in England, light at 220 lbs, stiff, perfectly balanced. We have installed the spinnaker in its tube. Valerie is hooking up the jib.

A prerequisite to winning in tough competition is not being afraid to go swimming. When you pop the chute in a 20 knot wind in a small boat like this you are sailing on the edge. If you are not willing to sail on the edge you will lose to those who do. If you are afraid to go swimming, you will sail too defensively and chances are you will go swimming. Valerie was good at this because she is an excellent swimmer and she was never afraid even in the wildest conditions.

This is after a race. I can tell it is after the race because the clouds give away the direction. We had a west wind aloft and a southwest wind on the lake. The view is to the south and the shadows show it is about 2 PM which is after one race. Besides our hair is wet.

When in Sacramento, I did more running than sailing. I won several local 5K races. I placed in the top 10 nationally in a duathlon event consisting of four weekends of a 5K run, 25K bike, and a 5K run.

In the 2002 Pan Pacific Masters Games in Sacramento, I ran the 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 5K and finished in the top three in all events. In the 2005 US Masters Nationals in Hawaii, I ran the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m and placed in the top three in all events.

In March 2007, I went to an all-comers track meet at the University of California, Berkeley. I ran the 400m against a bunch of high-school students ... because there was no one my age to run against. I finished last but the high school students "sucked" me along to an electronically-timed 67 seconds. This time is only a few seconds off the National record for the 70-74 age group.

However, even if I had tied the National record, I still would have finished last. And that is putting it politely. These guys had enough time to interview on TV, eat a sandwich and write a letter to their mother before I crossed the finish line. The moral of the story is if you are 71 years old, forget about beating your high school track team.

In May 2004, I tested my pilot skills in a Russian L-29 jet trainer. The instructor put me in the front seat and gave me the controls right after lift off. I told the instructor the jet responded just like a sailplane I flew years ago, so I felt right at home. After putting 5000 feet between us and the ground, I did many very tight turns (sailplane like, over 60 degrees bank), keeping altitude, rolling out on designated headings. I did multiple rolls and loops. On the way in, my instructor said, "I have never done this before on someone's first ride but I am going to let you land it." I did and that did not hurt my ego at all.

Today, Valerie and I enjoy taking hikes like this in Glacier Park.