Weekly snapshot #34

Lots going on down here this week. First of all, today is the solstice! We're really officially half-way through the winter (and had a nice mid-winter dinner celebration on Saturday, followed by the traditional showing of The Shining, which I had never seen and now never need to see again!). From now on, the sun is just getting closer and closer to rising, which actually makes me sad. Time is passing really quickly and this experience is going to be over far too soon, I can already tell. In honor of the exact solstice, a few of us went out to the geographic pole at 10:34am today to mark the moment, do some snow angels, take some pictures, etc. Good stuff.

In other news, you may have heard or seen in/on the news that there will be an imminent attempt at a medical evacuation of two people from South Pole. It is not me; I'm happy and healthy down here! But we do have a couple of folks who need to get out of here for medical reasons badly enough for the program to have decided to undertake the rare, dangerous mission of landing a Twin Otter plane at 90 degrees south in the darkness of mid-winter and flying back out with two of our winter crew in tow. Everything is completely weather-dependent, but it looks like things will happen soon, and that's good because the whole station and everyone in it has been taken over by this event, which is a really, really exhausting, big deal. Hopefully by my next post, all will be said and done and everyone involved will be safe!

In the meantime, it's a shame the weather at Rothera base (last stop before Pole for the medevac plane) has been iffy, as the weather here today is BEAUTIFUL--full moon, low winds, nice temps.

Today's weekly snapshot is definitely indicative of the times. The bright white light in the foreground would usually be verboten, as all outdoor lights are supposed be red lights in the winter so they don't mess up the aurora research projects. But all bets are off as we prepare for the arrival of the medevac flight, and that light is the dozer prepping the runway. Also, you can completely tell from the grey glow of this shot and that you can see the IceCube building off in the distance that the moon is full and shining brightly. It's really funny to see on YouTube the new reports about the evacuation that's being attempted in such a remote, hostile place, while we're all going outside today and saying to each other, "Gosh, it's so nice out!"