openCortex: ARTICLE: Maize & Blue, Weather Forecasting and Australia (by Jeff Zoltowski)




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Maize & Blue, Weather Forecasting and Australia (by Jeff Zoltowski)
by Furqan Nazeeri
created 11/18/1993
submitted 1/18/2004 07:26:47 AM

This 20-page paper is a final report prepared by Jeff Zoltowski and relates the 1993 Maize & Blue team's experience racing in Australia with a focus on weather forecasting and it's affect on the team's overall performance. A very interest report. I encourage you to also read the Jeff's paper on the team's experience in Sunrayce 93 (also told from a weather-forecasting perspective)

Solar Cars, Weather Forecasting and Australia
Introduction
The World Solar Challenge is an international solar car race held in Australia that is open to all organizations, corporations, and individuals. The first World Solar Challenge (WSC) was won by Sunraycer, a solar car manufactured by General Motors. 1990 saw Biel, a team of professors from an engineering college in Switzerland, take the world championship. That year also marked the first appearance of the University of Michigan at the WSC, and their car Sunrunner surprised many by placing a strong third.
The WSC was held again in November of 1993. The same course has been used for all three races. The solar cars race the entire three thousand kilometer length of the Stuart Highway. Darwin, a port city of about 75,000 on the Indian Ocean and capital of the Northern Territory, is the starting line. The Stuart runs generally from north to south across the heart of the Australian Outback, passing through such cities as Katherine, Tennant Creek, and Alice Springs. The route then enters South Australia and passes through Woomera and Port Augusta before the finish line near downtown Adelaide, one of Australia's largest cities with a population of about one million.
The top three finishers of Sunrayce '93, a race across the United States
for university teams, were automatically admitted as entries for the WSC. The University of Michigan, due to its third place finish in 1990, was invited to participate in the WSC in 1993 regardless of how we fared in Sunrayce '93. We didn't want to get in the WSC on the previous team's coattails, though; we wanted to our the trip ourselves. And we did so by winning Sunrayce '93 and becoming National Champions. We were off to Australia!

Deciding and Getting to Go
I thought I had come to a final decision back in March 1993 that I would not go to Australia even if I was offered the opportunity. My reasons were largely financial~ going to Australia would preclude taking classes during the fall term, since I would be gone for over a month. I really could not afford to live in Ann Arbor another four months, as skipping a term would require me to do. I also wanted to graduate at the end of 1993, which would obviously not be possible if I skipped the fall term completely.
But I began to reconsider that decision as Sunrayce '93 approached in June. My family and friends, although respectful of my decision, urged me to reconsider. The chance for an expense-paid trip to Australia, not the mention the opportunity to participate in a world-class event such as the WSC, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The clincher, however, was that it would be possible for me to receive credit for my solar car experience. A few credits from that would allow me to have to take only three classes in the fall term to graduate, and that was a class load I thought I could handle, even if I missed as much as half the term while in Australia. By the end of June, I had made a complete about-face. I had done far too well, and had too much fun, during Sunrayce '93 that I felt I could not just throwaway the chance to do it all over again. The team, thanks to my forecasting performance in Sunrayce '93, wanted me to go, and I no longer fought the urge to do so.
The team faced in July what could have been a very difficult decision. Mark Kulie, Joseph Bartlo and I were responsible for weather and solar radiation forecasting during Sunrayce '93. The decision had already been made among the three of us that only two of us would perform meteorological duties in the WSC. The "Spy" position had created a third meteorological position in Sunrayce '93, and that position could not exist in Australia, since the idea of a stationary data collector was irrelevant when there was no way in the outback to collect any data at all. The odd man would have the opportunity to go to Australia, but would serve largely to help out on logistics problems. A potentially difficult decision was short-circuited, however. Mark's employment with the University of Michigan was demanding more and more of his time. The previous commitment Mark had made to his employer precluded just about any reduction in the load the job placed on Mark. Since he did not feel that he could put in sufficient time to prepare for the trip, Mark reluctantly but momentarily withdrew himself from the team. This was a regrettable decision to me, as I consider Mark to be a good friend and I was looking forward to the both of us going down under. But in the end his decision to quit was unavoidable, and seemed to resolve any questions regarding the exact composition of the weather team. Joseph and I would be the team's meteorologists.
Yet I almost did not go anyway. By the end of the summer, the team was in rather dire financial straits. It looked as if we could only afford to send a bare-bones crew of about ten to Australia, and such a crew would not include me. It was not until late in September that an eleventh-hour and totally unexpected sponsorship offer from Northwest Airlines came through. Maize & Blue, the University of Michigan Solar Car, would be flown to Australia at no cost, and the airfares of team members would be substantially reduced. This extremely generous offer made my departure for Australia imminent.

Early Race Preparation
There was a great deal of research involved in preparing for Sunrayce '93. But seeing as that race took place in my home meant that I had a good understanding of how the weather normally behaved. I did not have to research climatology for the United States. In contrast, climatology was just about the only thing I researched during the months between the two races.
I never understood until the between-race period just how much of weather forecasting is dependent on all the variables associated with climatology. I needed to learn the weather patterns of an entirely different continent. Adjusting to the opposite carioles force and north-south temperature gradient was comparatively easy. The difficult part was researching such topics as: typical cyclone paths, monsoonal flow near Darwin, temperature and precipitation means and deviations, geography and topography, clear streak tendencies, prevailing winds, and, of course, mean daily solar radiation values. Even with the relative paucity of surface observation stations in the Australian Outback, there was still much more data available than I could possibly study and digest over a period of only a few months. As November approached, I reached the unavoidable conclusion that I simply could not possibly be as prepared for the WSC as I was for Sunrayce '93.
But that research was only part of my preparation. The weather team would need a entire new means of gathering weather data during the race. We had used cellular phones to bring in just about all the information we needed through a weather service provided by WSI Corporation. The cellular coverage over the central United States was, if not great, usually adequate. But cellular phone coverage would exist in Australia only near Darwin, Alice Springs, and Adelaide. The huge majority of the Stuart Highway is without coverage. Thus, bringing in data over a phone was not option. (Interestingly, in another few months, it would have been an option. Satellite phones are to be commercially introduced in Australia in January 1994.) We were left to fall back on one old standby, and one state-of-the-art system: short-wave radio, and direct satellite down link.
Short-wave radio has some obvious uses. A radio can tune in to a station in a number of cities across Australia, and have an operator there place a phone call. Thus, a short-wave radio operator can indirectly call up various weather observing stations to receive surface observations and, even more importantly, sOllilding data. Sounding data is crucial since the great majority of the weather in the Outback is convectively driven, so that the various stability indices are very valuable information. But short-wave radio can be used in another way. Attached to a personal computer via a "blackbox" known as a PAK-RATT, weather fax maps can be received over certain short-wave frequencies. Thus, we were able to receive sea level pressure and upper atmosphere charts and forecasts at specific times during the day. The one largest drawback, which is probably obvious, is that shortwave radio is extremely noisy, even in the best of conditions. The maps that are transmitted are therefore of very poor quality, and are often simply unreadable. We considered the fax maps a bonus when we could get them, but we never relied or counted on them at all. Another drawback was that the operation of a short-wave radio requires a licensed operator, and Joseph and I had neither a license nor the time to get one. An Australian, Bob Allen, was the team's short-wave operator in 1990, and he performed the same function for us in 1993.
The satellite down link system was entirely my responsibility to obtain and maintain. The Solar Car Team owns a polar-orbiting satellite antenna, and it was used as the primary source of data in the 1990 WSC. But the largest drawback of polar-orbiters is that images are not received on a regular schedule over the course of day. Indeed, the NOAA satellites, which were the most reliable satellites, came over in packs, first early in the morning and likewise early in the evening. In between is an information vacuum.
We thus went looking for a portable system with which we could download images from the Japanese GMS geosynchronous satellite. Our search took us to the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) in Ann Arbor. After some serious hardware difficulties, we successfully installed the system onto a laptop computer just days before it had to be shipped to Australia. The antenna was a loop-yagi type, which was about ten feet long fully assembled. It was essentially a long pole that was set up on a tripod and aimed at the GMS satellite. Various electronic components, such as a downconverter, were needed to process the signal into something that the computer could handle. Two hardware boards had to be installed into the computer. One was a scan card, which was able to detect the satellite signal and focus in on it. The other was a fax card, which actually deciphered the signal. The software in the ERIM system produced images that could be manipulated at will. The software was both powerful enough and flexible enough to handle both geosynchronous and polar-orbiting satellite images. It seemed at the time as if it was the perfect system for us. We would learn otherwise.

Los Angeles
On August 19th, a group of eleven team members, including myself, flew out to Los Angeles. The purpose of this trip was to assembly the new, higher efficiency solar cells that the team had purchased to greatly improve the power that the array generated. I had been unable to accompany team members in the original cell assembly trip in February due to classes. I greatly looked forward to the opportunity to do something on the team outside of weather. My research work had me almost living in the Engineering Library, and I was in many ways out of touch with much of the rest of the team. It was good to get to work with my tean1IDates once again.
We did the cell assembly at TRW's Space and Defense Sector in Redondo Beach, California. We stayed at the home of a 1990 Solar Car Team member in Pasadena. The cell assembly did not go smoothly, however. The first step was to solder two small tabs onto the face of each cell. These tabs serve as the electrical connection between cells. Unfortunately, the tabs that we had were not the proper size for the soldering area on the cells. The tabs were too large, and as a result, there were numerous miss-tabbed cells. We gave every cell a thorough quality check to make sure that the tabs were correctly attached, and those that were not were resoldered by hand. Nonetheless, with over 5500 cells, it was inevitable that not every poorly tabbed cell would be caught. And even an apparently well tabbed cell could degrade quickly with very little handling. Once the cells were covered with glass to protect the surface, the tabs became an incorrectable problem - a problem that would eventually hurt us badly.

On to Australia
The first thing to leave for Australia was the race trailer. It had to go by ship, so it left Ann Arbor in late August. The first team member left on October 1st to meet the trailer when it arrived in Melbourne, and ensure its quick passage through customs. Maize & Blue's "pit crew" left on October 4th, and met the trailer in Sydney. There, they picked the rental vehicles that we use for the next six weeks, and drove to Adelaide. The vehicles were outfitted there, so that the Lead vehicle would have room for the most often used tools, while Chase would be able to handle the computers that would simulate the car's performance. From Adelaide, the crew proceeded to drive the race route in reverse up to Darwin. They took notes and odometer readings on every town, clear spot, large hill, vegetation change, railroad crossing, and countless other landmarks that could either serve as markers or possibly even impact the race. They especially kept an eye open for areas that would be good places to stop at the end of racing day. Areas of clearing would help us charge up the batteries in the evening and morning charging periods.
The second group of team members left Ann Arbor on October 15th, and met up with the first crew in Darwin. I wanted to get as much of my classwork done as possible, so I did not fly out until October 20th, one day after two mid-terms. I stayed overnight in Sydney, and got to Darwin on Saturday, October 23rd. The race would start on November 7th, so I had two weeks to get myself acclimated and to give all of our equipment a final shakedown. Joseph and I would need every minute of those two weeks.
It did not help that our equipment was not in Darwin yet. To save on expenses, it was being sent via truck from Sydney (most of the weather equipment was sent over with the October 15th crew). And when it arrived in Darwin, we soon realized we had a problem. The ERIM hardware that had given us problems back home had completely failed on us when it came to capturing GMS images. The polar-orbiting part of the system continued to function as it should. It took the better part of a week to identify and correct the problem. A local sailor, who played with our type of equipment as a hobby, determined that our problem was a blown fuse on one of the hardware cards. We had this problem once in Ann Arbor, so we had brought spare fuses. The spare worked great for a while, until it blew the next day. By this point, we became so exasperated that we gave up on the fuse. The fuse was responsible for powering the down converter, a piece of equipment external to the computer. The problem was solved by hooking up the down converter directly to the Scout car battery.

The Scout Setup
The race organizers sent to each team a list of native Australians who had volunteered their time to help teams with various needs during the race. One of those people was Mike Harbison, an Adelaide native who was offering the use of his own Toyota 4X4 for a team willing to take him on. He was contacted by many teams, and eventually he chose to go with Michigan. His 4X4 became the Scout vehicle that would be the base of weather forecasting operations. Mike would be the driver of the vehicle during the race. The aforementioned Bob Allen would sit next to him up front, operating the short-wave radio. I would sit immediately behind those two, operating the satellite retrieval system and the CB radio, and Joseph would sit behind me, with a laptop computer he used to run solar radiation models. The computer and electronic equipment was arranged on and under a desk to our left, and our reference materials were stacked up behind Joseph.
The polar-orbiting satellite antenna was mounted on the roof of Scout. To facilitate the quick assembly and disassembly of the GMS antenna, we purchased a three-meter long PVC plumbing tube that was of sufficient diameter to hold the antenna. This was attached to the roof of Scout as well, giving it the appearance of a small rocket launcher. We were able to keep the antenna completely assembled within the tube. When we needed to stop to down link to the GMS, we only needed to place the antenna on its tripod and aim it at the proper place. There was a fair degree of tolerance in the aiming procedure, and so that never proved to be a difficult problem. The wires to connect the computer to the antenna were run out the back of Scout when we stopped.

Simulating the Race
To test the ability of all the vehicles of the caravan to work together, we ran several race simulations during the last weekend in October. We ran on the Tablelands Highway, the nearest flat, north-south running highway to Darwin. We were not allowed to test on the Stuart Highway, since government officials were afraid we would unnecessarily impede traffic on the busy (for Australia) highway. This necessitated a ten-hour drive to reach the roadhouse of Cape Crawford, where we set up camp to use as a base. The heat was as always oppressive, and here was my first exposure to the scourge of the Outback; its innumerable amount of flies.
The first day of testing produced one of the few pleasant surprises we had. We had assumed, after talking to the "experts" at ERIM, that it would be impossible to bring in polar orbiting images while in motion. The antenna, mounted on the roof, was always electronically connected to the computer inside Scout, but we did not think that the system would function properly while moving. Imagine our surprise, then, when we brought in a crystal clear NOAA image while on our way to Cape Crawford at over 120 kilometers per hour. We had previously looked at polar-orbital imagery as supplementary to the GMS imagery; we were now beginning to rethink that notion.
We continued to discover problems with the GMS side of the down link system. The updated transmission schedule for the GMS was a rather rude awakening. The GMS only transmitted images that covered Australia once every three hours. We had rather foolishly assumed that transmission would occur at least once an hour, much like the United States GOES satellites. The second problem was more insidious. ERIM had assured us that their system would have no difficulties in bringing in GMS images. After all, all the geosynchronous satellites broadcast over ,the same frequency, so the same hardware should work for each, theoretically.
However, the GMS has a somewhat larger bandwidth for transmission than GOES. The system could not handle the ends of this larger bandwidth, and
the result was loss of resolution in very cloudy areas. The system could not resolve pixels that were either very bright or very dark, so that an area of clouds would appear as an area of solid white, instead of having various shades of gray appear in the cloud mass. Because of this, we lost much of our ability to distinguish fine cloud structure in the GMS images. The combination of all of the above made the polar-orbital images our number one source of information during the race.
The satellite system was extensively tested during the race simulations; the other area that we concentrated on was the selection of charging sites. This was to be done at the end of each racing day, and it would be crucial in helping to maximize the amount of energy we would receive during the evening and morning charging periods. 'There are a great many variables that go into the selection of a charging site, including: visibility, albedo of surrounding surfaces, degree of difficulty in getting Maize & Blue to the site (which may be some distance from the highway), and suitability of the area as a campsite. It was also necessary to work out the protocol involved in directing the different vehicles of the caravan to their proper places as they arrive at the charging area. This protocol was the most difficult part of the process to handle; it was eventually decided that we would only direct into the charging area Maize & Blue, and the Lead and Chase vehicles. All other vehicles would simply drive past the area, and return only when the rather hectic process of setting up the array to charge was completed. After practice, we were able to direct the various vehicles to where we wanted them without even needing to use the hand-held radios to communicate.

Scrutineering and Qualifying
We were back to Darwin by November 1st. Just about all of the important tasks needed to be ready to race were completed. Now all that was left to do were a lot of little tasks that had to be taken care of, such as organizing all of the team's equipment, and preparing all of it for the trip across the Outback. This was enough to keep us busy until the official pre-race activities began; namely, scrutineering and qualifying.
The race officials set aside two days to scrutineer the over fifty entries in the WSC. We scrutineered on the morning of the second day, which was Friday, November 5th. Other than a very minor problem with the battery box - it required some adjustments in order for the officials to properly seal it - we passed through with flying colors, as expected.
The procedure for qualifying would be very simple; the solar cars would be required to accelerate down a long straightway at a local race track. Their speed at a specified point would be the qualifying speed. Also tied into the procedure was an interesting stability test. Coming down the track in the opposite direction would be a "road train"; a truck pulling three trailers that is a common sight on the Stuart Highway. As one can easily imagine, the passage of a road train creates a tremendous amount of turbulence. If the solar car could stay under control, it was stable enough to race.
We had the opportunity earlier that week to practice on the track on which the qualifier would take place. The fastest speed we attained was in the neighborhood of 98 kph. All cars qualified on Saturday, November 6th. The two favorites, defending champion Biel and the Honda Motor Company, were easily the class of field. Each had a speed of near 130 kph, with Biel being slightly faster. Our run early in the afternoon exceeded all expectations, as driver Andris Samsons pushed the car to a speed of over
104 kph, almost as fast as Maize & Blue had ever gone before. The speed was good enough for the fifth spot, just behind Toyota and just ahead of Nissan. The qualifying effort put the entire team on an emotional high. Unfortunately, this would prove to be the high point of the race for us.

The Array
The high efficiency solar cells that I had helped assemble in Los Angeles had been put on the array just before it was flown to Australia. As a result, the first chance we had to test the new array came in Darwin. The results of those tests were alarming. It appeared that the array was only producing 75% of the power that it should have been. The single largest effort put forth by the team in the weeks before the race was in an attempt to determine the cause of this problem and, if possible, correct. The wiring of the array was gone over with a fine-tooth comb, but the investigation turned up nothing unusual. Nor were the electronics within Maize & Blue herself at fault. When every other theory as to what the problem was shot down, we were left to draw the unhappy conclusion that it was the tabs connecting the cells that were failing. This knowledge was devastating for two reasons: first, the problem was not correctable without severely damaging the cells, and second, the problem would likely get worse as the race continued, since the condition of the tabs would continue to degrade in the heat of the Outback.
This presented Joseph and I with a problem. In Sunrayce '93, we were only required to forecast the solar radiation incident on the array, and head strategist Eric Slimko modeled the power the array produced from that radiation. However, for WSC, it was now the meteorologists responsibility to predict array power. Now, it not only appeared that the array power would be much lower than expected, but that the characteristics of the array would vary with time. This would make our job extremely difficult, as modeling the array was fast becoming as much of a challenge as predicting the weather.

A Typical Race Day
Each race day consisted of nine hours of legal racing time, from 8:00 am to 5 :00 pm. Only two types of stops were required during race time: each solar car had to stop for ten minutes at each of seven media stops along the race, and each solar car driver was limited to five hours of driving per day. As long as these regulations were fulfilled, each car could as far and as fast as it could (while obeying all local traffic laws, of course). The 5:00 pm stop time was not etched in stone. A ten minute window existed after 5:00 pm, to allow each team some leeway in finding a good charging site. For each minute you drove past 5 :00 pm, you started that many minutes after 9:00 am the following morning.
Joseph and I worked in shifts during non-racing time. I was responsible for morning shift, getting up at 3:30 am to bring in a GMS Australian image at about 3:50 am. The polar-orbiting satellites would start going overhead at about 4:30 am, keeping me busy gathering data most of the time. By 6:00 am, Joseph and I were busy on the forecast, and we usually had an array power forecast by 7: 15 am. We would leave the
charging site by 7:45 am to refuel Scout and to get ahead of the caravan. We varied our distance ahead of the caravan depending on how fast weather conditions were changing. Rapidly changing conditions 'Y0uld find us staying close to the caravan so that we could keep an eye an the situation. If things were more stable, we would venture far out to get a look at what was ahead. The limiting factor here was radio range. The short-wave communication we had planned between Scout and Chase failed on day one, so we were left with the CB radios. These had a maximum range of about twenty kilometers. The standard procedure to let Scout extend further was to put the Stealth vehicle, which also had a CB radio, between Scout and Chase. This would allow Stealth to serve as a relay, and extended our range in some circumstances to about fifty kilometers. If necessary, we would not hesitate to extend further out to see something we felt was important. It was important for us to fall back into radio range as soon as possible, however.
Another point worth bringing up is that neither Joseph nor I had any assigned roles regarding weather forecasting. Unlike Sunrayce '93, where I primary duty was as a long-range forecaster, we each took responsibility for all the forecast that we produced. This was easy to do since all the data the weather team had was all in one place; the same place that all the members of the weather team were - the Scout vehicle.

The 1993 World Solar Challenge

Day One
Sunday, November 7th, dawned bright and sunny in Darwin. Satellite imagery indicated a very small area of clouds some forty kilometers or so down the route, but otherwise there was nothing organized evident. Thus I tried to focus on the larger picture. I urged our strategists to go as fast as we could manage that day. They further we could get ourselves from the monsoonal flow regime near the coast, the less likely we would be to come upon convective cloudiness both that day and the next. Unfortunately, thanks to the array, there was a severe limit on what we could do.
The weather went exactly as expected, as some early clouds near Darwin quickly gave way to clear skies for most of the day. But the day was far from uneventful. Early in afternoon, we happened upon a wall of smoky haze extending across the Stuart Highway. Obviously the by-product of some distant brush fire, this haze was of unknown depth. But while Maize & Blue was inside of it, array power was cut dramatically. The haze was only about twenty kilometers thick, but a miscommunication between ourselves and Chase, along with a flat tire suffered by Maize & Blue while in the cloud, made the effects of the cloud much more severe than they should have been.
The charging site that evening was on a large truck parking area next to the Stuart Highway, just across from a road junction leading to the town of Daly Waters. We had passed the first media stop, Katherine, early in the day, and we ended the day in seventh place. The charging in the evening took place under clear skies.

Day Two
We had some bad luck for the morning charging period. A band of clouds, no more than ten kilometers wide, stretched from east to west and obscured the sun for much of the morning. The forecast, though, called for a mostly clear day, with little, if any, convective activity. The atmosphere in the region was just too dry. However, it appeared as if there was more moisture further to the south that would start to affect us on day three.
Day two was not as eventful as day one, but it too had its moments. We passed through the media stop at Dunmarra in the morning. As we approached the city of Tennant Creek, we entered an area of numerous
small brush fires. The heat of the fires just added to the brutal heat of the Outback, and we saw a great many willy-willies over the desert. Some of the whirlwinds were quite intense, and Maize & Blue exerted a great deal of caution in the area. We made it to the media stop in Tennant Creek late in the afternoon, and stopped for the day some ninety kilometers out of the city, just short of the town of Wauchope. The charging area was a large, open rest stop alongside the highway, adjacent to a large windmill. We stood at this point in ninth place.

Day Three
This time we got a good morning charging period. But day three would be the first day of significant cloudiness. We entering a region where the atmosphere had more moisture, and the rough topography around the Alice Springs area would also augment cumulus formation. It also appeared that the next couple of days would also have significant convection.
The forecast held up for most of the day. We saw increased cumulus clouds as we got near Alice Springs, the next media stop. We ended the day some ninety kilometers past Alice Springs, near a roadside establishment known as Jim's Camel Safari. Here, however, the morning forecast began to go wrong. We expected the cumulus clouds to dissipate in the late afternoon and evening, but they instead continued to grow, and in some
cases produced virga. The evening charge was much worse than what we had expected. The charging site itself was in a relatively flat area of shrubs and grasses, near cattle grazing land. We had fallen two more spots to eleventh place this day.

Day Four
Day four dawned very, very clear. We did not let that fool us, however, as we knew the atmosphere possessed enough moisture for significant convection that day, especially as we headed further south. We called for the evening charging period to be as bad as the previous day's had been.
Once again, the forecast held up well early. Mostly clear skies in the morning gave way to cumulus in the afternoon. We passed into South Australia late that morning, and got to a media stop at Cadney Homestead late in the afternoon. We passed one of our competitors that afternoon, California State University at Los Angeles, to move back into the top ten. It would be the only pass Maize & Blue would make the entire race.
Coming out of Cadney Homestead, though, it became increasingly apparent what we were up against. A cumulonimbus was developing just to our north, and the cirrus anvil was being pushed southward almost as fast as Maize & Blue could travel. We tried to race as far out ahead of it as we could, but it proved to be a hopeless situation. As soon as we stopped for the day, the anvil overtook, and we got almost no useful charge the entire evening. The charging site was located in a flat, rocky area, about thirty kilometers short of the opal mining town of Coober Pedy. The anvil was followed a few hours later by the thunderstorm itself. The violent winds of the storm tore our campsite apart, knocking down every tent. The rainfall, though intense, was mercifully short.

Day Five
It was too much to ask to have all of the remnants of the previous night's storms melted away by sunrise. A few lingering clouds kept charging from being great, but we got a great deal of direct sunshine, so it was not too bad. This was by far the most difficult forecast we had to ,make during the race. We believed that the morning would burn off quickly, only to see vigorous convection begin again in the afternoon. However, it looked like the trailing cold front from a cyclone south of Adelaide would help sweep the area clear of moisture overnight.
The clouds lasted longer than we anticipated, but they burned off after
we had been on the road about two hours. We reached a media stop in Glendambo early in the afternoon. Cumulus clouds were again rearing their ugly heads, but they were not our only problem, as several members of the team in other vehicles began to complain of nausea and headaches. The Outback Flu went through the team like a scythe the next two hours, with Lead and Chase being hit especially hard. Two team members, including Furqan Nazeeri, our project manager, were hospitalized in Woomera. Almost as soon as we stopped for the day, the shuttles to the hospital in Port Augusta began. In all, half the team was hospitalized that night at some time or other. Most of the rest of the team members would come down with the virus sometime over the next few days. By some miracle, I only got a very mild case some four days later.
The weather near the charging site was interesting once again. It seemed almost like a carbon copy of yesterday, with a thunderstorm bearing down on us from behind, but it lead to the weather team's finest moment of the race. We had been going in very nearly a straight line for about two hours, and the appearance of the storm behind us had not changed a bit, so it quite obviously following us. We knew, though, that near the spot where we would be at 5 :00 pm, the Stuart Highway bent from east to south. Thus, we urged the team to travel as far into the ten minute window as possible, so that the storm would hopefully pass by harmlessly to the north. And that is exactly what happened. Not only did the storm miss us completely, but the charging actually turned out to be fairly good that evening, and the backdrop of the storm provided for one beautiful sunset. The team members that were left sure needed the lift.
The charging site was really just a narrow driveway that led back to a sandy area around a water pipeline. Late in the day, a Japanese team had passed us, dropping us back to eleventh place. We were about twenty-five kilometers short of Port Augusta, and a little over three hundred from the finish line in Adelaide. We were planning on making that with ease.

Day Six
And the passing of a cold front overnight pretty much guaranteed that we would do just that. The morning was clear, and the rest of day would be pretty close to that. We had gotten most of the sick team members healthy again, and the mood of the team had brightened considerably. At the very least, we would be able to sleep in an actual bed that night!
The race day went according to plan. We went through the final media stop at Port Pirie that morning, and crossed the finish line at about 1 :45 pm. We were a lot worse for wear, but we had made it. Over half the teams that entered did not. Our final placement was eleventh.

In Retrospect
The race was all in all a very disappointing experience. We had gone to Australia thinking we had an outside chance of becoming World Champions, and instead we finished well back in the second division. All this because somewhere along the line a detail, small but important, got overlooked: not all tabs fit all cells.
Personally, I think I grew most through this project, not due to the race itself, but due to the preparations necessary to be ready to race. The trip to Los Angeles gave me the chance to work with non-meteorologists on something that had nothing to do with the weather. I think it is important for a person to not become too focused on doing just one thing, because such person will become afraid of doing something different if and when it is required of him. The responsibility involved with the satellite system taught me that it does not always pay to talk to the experts; sometimes you just have to go out and learn and do for yourself.
Meteorologically speaking, I had one concept drilled into my head in the months before the race. It is easier to know general weather patterns in a region, and from that determining the dynamics that apply, than it is to know the dynamic principles, and from them trying to deduce the general weather patterns of an area. The first is the way I learned how weather works in the United States. I have lived here my entire life, and I had been observing weather and weather patterns long before I came to Michigan to learn why things work as they do. In Australia, the situation was reversed, and the lesson is simple: their is simply no substitute for experience when it comes to forecasting weather. Whether it is experience with a region of the world, or just a particular climate type, I learned more by doing than by researching.
Overall, I can not complain too much about my performance during the WSC. I did not do as well as I had done in Sunrayce '93, but that was to be expected, for the reason given in the previous paragraph. It was certainly interesting having to depend on only satellite images and my own eyes as the only sources of data, instead of those old reliable fax charts.
My experiences with the University of Michigan Solar Car Team led to great personal growth for me. I am grateful to all who helped make my participation in this effort possible, from my teammates who trusted in my judgments to my professors who went out of their way to help me make up the work I missed while I was gone. I certainly do not think that the trust and help was in vain. I learned a lot about real-world weather forecasting, but I learned even more about dealing with real-world problems in a team oriented atmosphere. A team of very diverse students - and sometimes people forget that all the team members are, first and foremost, students worked together over a three year period to achieve a series of common goals. Sometimes we succeeded - we are National Champions, and no one can take that away from this team, ever - and sometimes we failed - as in an eleventh place finish in the WSC. But each and every one of us learned about life, regardless of the outcome.

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