Thursday, September 27, 2018

Weekly snapshot #31

This week a dozer with a snow bucket was doing its thing directly in front of my snapshot--kind of funny! Hopefully you can tell from the background that the weather is overcast and getting iffy. Things are pretty crazy here right now, as the "Mainbody" (summer) season is supposed to officially start on Monday, with 118 people arriving that day and an average of 75 more arriving every day after that for the rest of the week. Just the thought of it makes me dizzy. But a five-day forecast yesterday predicted a possible Condition 1 on Monday, so the chances seem high that all these flights will not go exactly according to plan.


In any case, I imagine that by next week's snapshot, at least a few planes will have made it here and even the "fake winter" shoulder season will be officially over. And until my own flight is delayed, next week's snapshot will be my last from here, at least for the foreseeable future. Having a hard time wrapping my brain around that, but the days are ticking by frighteningly quickly, and it's all happening whether I'm ready or not!







Thursday, September 20, 2018

Weekly snapshot #30

It's a GORGEOUS day at McMurdo. The sun is shining (so weird to feel sun on my face, and I can't stop squinting every time I go outside, but at the same time I can't force myself yet to put on a pair of sunglasses) and it's breezy, but the breeze actually feels WARM. Wow.


And activity is really ramping up, as the summer season bears down upon us. You get a bonus 'dozer heading back to work after the lunch-hour in this week's snapshot!




Monday, September 17, 2018

Spring skies at McMurdo

The promised gorgeous sunrises and sunsets (plus iridescent nacreous clouds) of the shoulder season here have not disappointed. And at this point the sun is rising and setting at what at home we would consider "normal" hours, so that we're not all trying to wake up in the darkness of winter or go to sleep under the constant blazing sun of summer. What a treat! As were the real-world sights of the skies in these pictures. Enjoy!








Thursday, September 13, 2018

Weekly snapshot #29

I think this might be the first weekly snapshot that actually shows some true blue skies since the sun has returned to us? It's still plenty-chilly out (yet probably good weather for the afternoon of shoveling off the receiving dock at the store stockroom) but spring is here...and it's less than a month till I'm not here anymore....




Monday, September 10, 2018

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....







Thursday, September 6, 2018

Weekly snapshot #28

All's pretty quiet on the southern front right now. It wasn't so at the beginning of the week, and I'll tell you all about that in my next post. But for now, we're just trying to stay warm in some chilly, overcast weather and I've got the space heater running in my office as I type this...



Monday, September 3, 2018

First sunrise! (belated post)

These photos are a bit late coming to you, but I saw the sun (!) for the first time in four months from Arrival Heights back on August 20. (As you saw in the weekly snapshots, there was lots of light in the sky before then, but the 19th was the date the sun first actually crested the horizon at this latitude, and only a few people who made a trip out to the airfield could see it; it wasn't visible from town.) Crazy to think it's been that long since there's been sun on our faces, as the time has gone by SO FAST. But there it was...



And here is me, welcoming the sun back to this part of the world. (Thanks to R. B-R. for this photo!)



Finally, here is a picture from around that same time, taken from the third floor of one of the dorm buildings, of Observation Hill (with the moon standing guard) overlooking McMurdo town. It's not one of the quaintest destinations on the planet, but McMurdo definitely has its moments.