Condition 1

All winter I've been wanting to experience "Condition 1" weather at McMurdo. There's a weather-grading system here to give guidelines for safe activities. In Condition 3, it's business as usual, as visibility and winds are deemed fine for normal operations. Condition 2, things are getting dicey and people who usually work outside are typically sidelined for the day or given indoor tasking. Condition 1 is winds so high and visibility so poor that no one is allowed to even walk from building to building without permission, in case of getting hit by something knocked loose in the wind or not being able to see across roads and potentially getting disoriented--dangerous in such cold temps.


At Pole we didn't operate on a conditions system--we didn't get the coastal storms that McMurdo can get. So I was really hoping my McMurdo experience would involve one of those storms. I've been sad as the whole winter has passed without it happening.


But now that we're in the shoulder season with only about a month left of my time here, we finally had a Condition 1! It was actually a big pain for a lot of people as it coincided with a burst pipe that leaked 50,000 gallons of reverse-osmosis-ed water before it was caught and repaired, which led to the whole station being on water rations (no showers, no laundry, paper plates and cups in the galley) for a couple days until the water treatment plant could refill its reserves to a level deemed safe in case the fire department had an emergency need for water. When the weather got bad on the night in question, I closed the store early and took advantage of a travel window to race home across the street to my dorm with a couple other people (safety in numbers) and hunker down for the night. It got way worse out than it was in these pictures/video, but at least I can honestly say I experienced a Con 1 at McMurdo.


At first, last Monday, it was still Con 2 in town for us and for the Kiwis at Scott Base, but at Phoenix Airfield and pretty much everywhere else around Ross Island, it was Con 1.

Then on Tuesday the whole island went Con 1--the first time I've ever been here that I've seen this weather snapshot, with that whole row of red 1's. There are even some long-time, full-time people here now who are generally only here for summers who said this was the first Con 1 they'd ever experienced, especially during work hours when everyone had to be accounted for and some people were stranded for the night in buildings other than the ones where they lived.

It was pretty funny to see the indoors vestibules of most buildings covered in snow, as the wind was blowing it through any area that was not perfectly sealed.

Once the Con 1 officially started but before it got dark out and as bad as it was going to, I did get outside in the wind to take a few pics and a video....