Lightening Strikes at Tern

There was a huge lightening strike last Wednesday, and the barracks was directly hit at least once, and maybe twice.  Besides scaring the begeezus out of me, which it did, it also knocked out our solar powered 110V electricity source...

The burnt out electronic compontent in our solar power inverters.

Well, the long and the short of it is that we all know quite a bit more about our solar power system than we did before the lightening strike.  :-)  We've replaced one of the inverters, and have our 110V system back online... Yeah!!!

Our other big news this week is finishing the first of the black-footed albatross sweeps.  We had more than 2,400 nesting black-footed albatross (meaning at least that many nests), as well as several hundred walkers. 

This week, weather permitting, we will start the first of the Laysan albatross sweeps.  We are also keeping our fingers crossed that the plane bringing new volunteers and returning Trish home will be able to take off soon - but the runway must be dry and safe before that happens, so we wait with bated (and perhaps baited) breath...