Dry Lakes Racers Australia

The 28 day rain forecast shows only 1 day in the next 4 weeks might be a low chance of minor showers.
This forecast is a bit of a moving target (last week showed 4 days chance of showers) but the outlook is positive!

Landsat for 2015/02/19

Download larger image here: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/download/ ... 5050LGN00/

Below is the preview:

Craig Jericho walked on the Lake yesterday.

His comment "Very dry. very hard, crunchy under foot, and white as white can be...."

Thanks Scott.

Landsat for 2015/02/26

Download larger image here: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/download/ ... 5057LGN00/

Below is the preview:

Here's the latest, still looking good When the next ones come through I'll start posting the thermal imaging results and I'll also see what else I can find comparing 2014 data with this year's.

Landsat for 2015/03/07

Download larger image here: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/download/ ... 5066LGN00/

Below is the preview:

Looks like it might be a bit cloudy! Looking forward to the thermal imaging results. That will be interesting.

Hmmmm, not liking the prospect of the forecast WA cyclone.
Crossing the fingers

The long-range 28-day rain forecast shows the coast might get some the week before, but it is saying no rain except for a slight chance towards the end of the racing week. Here's hoping.........

Just got off the DLRA Camp phone from Michael Brixton, Tony Cooke and I think Smurf who went out today to do a lake inspection.
Quote from Cookey "Best I've seen it since I started coming out here."

The lake is dry and in their estimation will only require one pass of the drag to be ready.
To the south they went down past the start line and the salt was still good and travelled the full length of the track to the north for 15 km all good, even the creek between the 2 and 3 mile was very good.

The only bit of bad news was that the west side of the lake was damp and we may not be able to use the new track layout. This will be determined by the advance party with the surveyor on the Wednesday before Speed Week so we will just have to wait and see. The problem is more at the end of the new track 2 where entrants would be turning out, it's a bit damp just there.

The ramp onto the lake is very good, and has healed well but you can see some marks from last year, so they reckon we will be heading out just south of that.

The other good news is that the Road from Iron Knob to the Mt. Ive road has been recently graded and is in good condition and the Mt. Ive Road has been recently graded as well. Now the really good news, the road to the drivers camp has been graded and is better than it has ever been and the road from the camp to the lake has been graded as well!!

Will have more news and photos tomorrow when the boys get back.

Well here it is in all it's glory, photo taken just on Thursday


Ramp on the right, canteen on the left


From the ramp


This is all the salt that got picked up after an hour of driving around, very dry, very hard. Cookey said you couldn't even see the tyre tracks of where you'd been sometimes.


Freshly graded Mt.Ive Road


And this is the road to the camp as you have never seen it before!


Thank you to the David Grosse and the DEWNR rangers who made the time to come out for the inspection and to Michael Brixton, Tony Cooke and Smurf for representing the DLRA.
And an extra big thank you to Joy and Len Newton for the work that they have done on the roads.

For those that did not know Len had a pretty serious truck accident last week. He had a front tyre blow and crashed into a tree. It was 2 hours before somebody found him and another 4 hours before he was freed from the truck. He is currently in hospital in Adelaide. We wish Len a fast and full recovery.
Len was planning to be at Speed Week this year which would have been his first time for a few years, and I understand that they are preparing a room at Mt. Ive for when he is released from hospital.
We will keep you updated on his progress.

Thanks for the update , looking good for a great event ..cheers Mick

OK - here's a bit of processed data from the latest landsat 14/03/2015 compared to last year. What I have done is started the scale from two points 20000 and 25000 (this exaggerates differences in lake surface temp). These are values reported by the Landsat thermal imaging (BIG CAVEAT - I do not know how the daily temperature impacts the overall readings - so comparing 2014 and 2015 directly may not be as simple as comparing images)

"Temperature range 20K-32K"
2014 (note the lines are race tracks and the black dots are the pit area)


2015


"Temperature range 25K-32K"
2014


2015

Further to this...

The full GeoTIFF image is here: http://files.internetscooter.com/dlra/2 ... N00_B8.tif

I found a free GeoTIFF viewer here: http://www.microimages.com/products/tntatlas/index.htm

This will allow you to "Upload the Object" and then point at spots to get the Lat/Lon, so hopefully this will be useful tool for track layout.

edit: actually it is quite good - you can use the GeoToolbox to add a line and the little graph button will show you the values over that line. Here is 2014 again... I've put a line next to the long track...