Wind & Tumble Weeds At LIGO

Today there was no chance of running our instrument for Gravitational Wave detection: we had wind.

With steady winds around 40-50 mph (and gusts 10-20mph higher), our buildings were being pushed around and in turn were wiggling our Test Masses (big mirrors) to a point where we could not lock-up our 2k interferometer. I took this opportunity to venture outside, and snap a couple of video clips of tumbleweeds invading our facility (and overtaking our bridge). Enough talk, here are the movies:

Here I get hit in the head with a tumble weed (at about t = 15sec).




It was hard to keep my eyes open for this shot!




This is a shot looking down the X-arm. The tumble weeds look like running animals on the desert floor.




A shot as I was being pushed down the hill.

The Hanford site eventually shut down some of the main roads going into the Hanford site due to high winds. Tomorrow the "tumbleweed baling" begins!