Weekly snapshot #19

Well, it's been a nutty week here at McMurdo. The plane that was supposed to arrive on June 27 to do a swap-out of about 25 personnel and bring in a bunch of cargo (and which I mentioned in last week's snapshot had been delayed by a few days) had a mechanical problem that could not be fixed before the special crew (with night vision qualifications for landing in Antarctica in the winter) timed out and had to be sent home. Due to complicated C-17 aircraft availability and qualified crew schedules, the news came down the line on Tuesday that the next flight attempt would not be until July 20 at the earliest. A bit of an uproar ensued, as that means nearly an extra month on Ice (and depending on how the weather is in late July, maybe a full month or even longer, who knows) for people who were supposed to be home in late June. I could go on and on about all the details and various scenarios for various people, but that's really all anyone's been talking about all week, and the topic is getting a little old. Plus we're all kind of jealous about the 25 incoming people who are getting a paid vacation in New Zealand while they wait out this delay. Craziness! This is when you really feel like you're in Antarctica, when stuff like this happens.


In the meantime, the weather was blowy and cold over the 4th of July. We had a little parade here, which hopefully soon I can share a video of with you. For now, though, I want to show you what happens to my store stockroom delivery dock door, which is supposed to look like this...

...after two days of the wind blowing snow every which way around the base. Which is this:

You can actually see where some silly soul walked up the drift from right to left and then slid down the steep part on the left side of the frame. Not a bad sledding hill!


So that was a good chunk of my morning today, digging out enough of that we could get the door open to do a delivery this afternoon. I only got about half of it done before lunch, and then one of the guys who does the deliveries kindly tackled the rest of it for me while I was running the store at lunchtime. Phew!


Anyway, here is your weekly snapshot, officially. The wind has died down and it's a peaceful day at McMurdo, but for the rumbling of the heavy equipment whose operators are very busy cleaning up all the drifts around town: