Brief but Good!

No less than 75 days after a large storm hit Maui, we heard from the instruments on Haleakala today!

The storm knocked out both power and fiber to the summit and it’s been a long and bumpy road getting power and connectivity back. The turmoil caused all sorts of secondary damage: breakers, generators, routers–all had to be replaced as problems were discovered sequentially. Sometimes temporary repairs had to be undone and redone. Sometimes replaced components had to be replaced again. We’re very grateful to the tenacity of the IfA team, as well as the workers at MECO and Hawaiian Telecom.

As you can perhaps read from the graphs, tonight the humidity was 100%, a strong indication you won’t be seeing any stars. But, as a system test, we observed anyways for a short period and–happily–everything performed as expected. Unfortunately, utility power was lost again, near 10pm local time.

We were only online for a handful of hours, but it’s so nice to know that, after a 2.5 month sabbatical and torrential ice storm, everything is still in great shape! Fingers crossed for more stable power from here on out, and getting back to the science!