I read this a while ago and could hardly wait to use a datalogging thermometer to "see" the stall happening. It is interesting how there is no stall when cooking at higher temps or cooking smaller meats.
Also interesting is the types of heat in the smoker... convection, conduction and radiant heat.
I was interested in the radiant component in the bottom of my smoker so I emailed Dr Blonder for some help making measurements for radiant heat and he actually responded with some good suggestions on how to set up a differential probe arrangement to determine the radiant heat.
The method involved isolating the probes in glass jars to remove conduction and convection.... One jar is empty and the other has a blackened piece of metal in it (tried soot and black paint). The difference between the readings is the radiant gain. I could see that radiant heat directional and did some nice traces out on the porch on a sunny day. Also tried some measurements in a convection toaster oven. Don't think I did any measurements in my smoker, but learned that radiant heat coming from the walls would be better than just radiant heat from the drip pan.
Check out the orion cooker site. Good pictures on radiant cooking if you are into metal body cookers.
