They are people who walk with the wind and rain
They are the "guardians of you" 24 hours a day.
They're just — the WeatherMen
At the foot of the famous "Tianshan No. 1 Glacier", there is the Daxigou Meteorological Station, which was built in 1958 and has an altitude of 3539 meters. This national first-class hardship station is the highest meteorological station in Xinjiang and the closest to the glacier in the world, and people are accustomed to calling it "Glacier No. 1 Meteorological Station".
For more than 50 years, generations of Urumqi meteorologists have been stationed at the arduous site of this bitter cold mountainous area. Doing meteorological monitoring and transcribed data, the staff stationed here not only have to complete their daily work, but also have to fight against the cold, lack of oxygen and loneliness.
Maimaiti Abulahat was a former staff member stationed at the Great West Valley Weather Station. While working here, he could only see his family during his rotation. On the day his daughter was born, the weather station needed to deal with something immediately, and he had to put down his newborn daughter and wife who had just given birth in his arms and return to the weather station. Whenever this happens, Maimaiti Ablaiti is always filled with guilt.
When it was windy and rainy, the people ran home, and the weather people ran outside. Since 2015, the Daxigou Meteorological Station has been changed to an unmanned station. But every month, workers still have to go to the site to maintain the equipment. Coinciding with the heavy snow in the next two days, the reporter followed Maimati Abulati to the "Glacier No. 1 Weather Station" to experience their daily work for a day.
From Urumqi City to the "No. 1 Glacier Weather Station", you need to drive 60 kilometers to the animal husbandry weather station in Baiyanggou to replace the pickup truck, prepare some dry food and water, and the usual one is actually the naan.
Drive more than 70 kilometers to the "Glacier Weather Station No. 1". Due to the poor road conditions, more than 70 kilometers of travel, pickup trucks need to drive for more than two hours, most of the road is washboard road, the road is narrow, one side is close to the mountain, the other side is tens of meters deep cliffs. Maimaiti Abulahat said that the road conditions are much better than before, with cement walls on both sides of the road, and cars will flip down from the edge of the cliff in the narrow bends of the road.
There is only one place to park temporarily on this winding and rugged road, where Mamati Ablaiti and his colleagues take a break at a time and eat some prepared lunch.
As the altitude rises, the road can be seen everywhere in the ice skates, pickup trucks passing, must stick to the side of the mountain wall, a little inattention, the vehicle may slip, or even roll over to the curb.
At 2:30 p.m., Maimati Abulahat arrived at the final destination of the trip, the No. 1 Glacier Daxigou Meteorological Station, although the temperature outside was not low, but the wind in the high-altitude mountainous area was harsh. It's hard to imagine that 6 years ago, there were still staff here for a long time.
Maimaiti Abulahat said that he stayed here for at least a month when working here. In the summer, there is water to drink, but in the winter, the ice and snow are brought back and boiled. Now there is a network, there is electricity, there is solar energy, the conditions are much better, what to do every day is to observe the data, read the meter, and then transmit the data. If the network is unstable, it will have to go down the mountain to manually pass. Accurate observation and recording of every meteorological data is the basis for accurate weather forecasting and climate research.
Nowadays, the mountains have long been accompanied by more and more advanced meteorological testing instruments. Data is transmitted 24 hours a day from this uninhabited valley back to the Urumqi Meteorological Bureau. These data outline the daily weather, cold and warm, and the ecological changes. The flow of work has been updated, but the meaning of the work has not changed.
Sunshine, frozen soil, rainfall, wind, ground temperature, evaporation, cloud visibility... The life of a meteorological observer is a life of dealing with data, and it is also a life of serving thousands of ordinary families.