Update 5: Gobbling and Glimpsing South

[Paul Summers]

Hello all again from 77.85 south!

It's been another eventful week at McMurdo Station, full of flight delays (sad) and Thanksgiving celebrations (happy)! As a group we finished our final training this week, a field safety meeting. In this meeting we all sat down with the head of Search and Rescue and reviewed our detailed field plan, which outlines everything from how we will arrange our tents (1 very long line) to what special first aid kit components we will have with our chainsaw team and explosives teams. It's a bit daunting to try to cover this all in just 1 hour, but it is reassuring to know that our plans are being reviewed by the experienced safety team here. With all the moving parts of our plan, it's always nice to get another set of eyes on all the details! 

As I mentioned in an earlier update, it is seal pupping season here, and that means its Fat Seal Pup Week, a very exciting time indeed. I personally have my (metaphorical) money on Whopper Jr who is up against Big Hunk today I think. Votes are cast by a tally sheet on the main hallway by the Galley here, the honor system is still alive and well here and no calls for a vote audit have been heard. These seals can grow up to 2kg a day, and can be 200 pounds by the time they are just a few weeks old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weddell_seal)! The pictures can make it hard to get a scale, but these are BIG pups. 

The beginning of this week was very fair weather, with temps in the 20s, calm winds and full sun, which has made our field work testing radar a treat, as this early testing inevitably means lots of taking off gloves and messing with little adapters. We snowmobile about 30-60 minutes out to our testing site from McMurdo, which also is much nicer in warm conditions as the snowmobiles do have hand warmers, but that only cuts so much of the Antarctic chill when it's really cold. This is also ideal conditions for viewing the Fata Morgana, a favorite optical effect of mine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage))

You can see the mirage here, sorry it is so pixelated, I left my nice camera in the room this day. At the horizon line about center/center-right of the frame you can see two floating islands that I can assure you are not normally floating. This effect comes from warmer air aloft from the heat of the day sitting on cold air cooled by the sea ice bending light to invert the image. This is very noticeable in McMurdo as the sea ice is all white and the dark islands make very visible targets on the horizon. I usually spend our snowmobile commutes looking around trying to find the coolest mirage I can and then pointing it out to everyone else when we stop. I think they all share my enthusiasm, though they are careful not to reveal this to me as they roll their eyes and say "yes we saw it again Paul... very cool". Also pictured here is Danny and I testing our radar system on the ice shelf. You can see the little black radar receiver box, yellow transmitter box, and the big white antenna boxes. The system is much more at home on the snow than on the field back at stanford I showed in update 1. The antennas (antennae?) are white which makes them not heat up in the snow, as we don't want them to melt the snow around them, but easy to lose, so we mark them with flags if we leave them unsupervised. They also are surprisingly light and can blow away in the wind if not staked down with a flag. Again, thankfully not a problem this week for us.

With all the sun, I've been able to keep time with a favorite timepiece here, a 24 hour sundial! It is located between the galley and the Crary science building, so it is useful to see just how late I am for the morning meeting. The thick shadow isn't the most precise, but I believe it is running a hair fast, maybe 5 minutes? Maybe a good bump will shift it back, but I'm worried I'd damage it. The clock works quite well here as the sun is up 24 hours a day, but a fun twist is that despite being a clock, it in fact goes counter-clockwise. This comes from us being in the southern hemisphere. I keep forgetting to check if our toilets flush the opposite way here, but I think that is more of a myth.  

Another fun surprise for me this week was out at Willy Field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_Field). This is the snow skiway here in McMurdo and where all ski equipped planes take off and land. We are working out there with some colleagues who have a work tent at this site, and we have been training with a radar system of theirs we are borrowing to bring to our field site. Anyway, while out there I saw a cargo line of yellow skandics, and thought one looked familiar so I ran over to check and indeed I found my snowmobile from 2 years ago, Mo Joe! Mo Joe had been a troublesome but endearing little snowmobile, so it was sent all the way back to McMurdo for repair last year. I'm not sure where it is headed this year, likely WAIS divide and maybe our field camp, but it is possible it will end up at another camp as well. I was very happy to see that Mo Joe still kicking and freshly tuned up, there were a few times 2 years ago I was worried he'd vroomed his final vroom. 

Thursday was Thanksgiving for most of you I believe, but we celebrate on Saturday here, and it was a wonderful Thanksgiving as I hope yours was too! a very mild storm came through town depositing a fresh dusting of snow which made town extra pretty. This also softened the light of day, which made everything feel just a touch calmer and cozier, a perfect setting for the holiday meal. 

McMurdo serves a very big, very well done, and very impressive Thanksgiving meal. They feed everyone in 3x 1.5 hour sittings (plus one extra for the night shift), and they not only serve a full spread, but also decorate! 

 

There was a full spread of everything you could want, even gluten free and vegan dessert options! We reserved the library for dinner with the other large science team here, so we all got our food to go, I used 3 large tupperwares to keep all my food warm, organized, and photogenic on the commute back. We also spent some time decorating our own space which was very fun. The hand turkeys were a popular choice, and Emma's USAP/BAS turkeys were my favorite. The red turkey is wearing the USAP issued 'Big Red' jacket, and the BAS (British Antarctic Survey) turkey is wearing their equivalent jacket, though I'm not sure if it has a fun name. Both are very recognizable to people here, so the joke landed well here, though I'm sure it just looks odd everywhere else. 

As for logistic updates, sadly it's the same news as last week. The WAIS Divide Camp put in team has still been cancelled everyday this week, for either mechanical or weather issues. We are continuing to adapt our schedule, pack our cargo, and are staying optimistic and flexible. And of course we are crossing our fingers that they will fly tomorrow! In the meantime, Danny and I have 1-2 more days of radar testing, but then we will be all ready to go and the waiting will begin. Thankfully I have some minor things to attend to as well, like applying for jobs, scheduling my PhD defense, and figuring out what I want to do with my post-PhD life, so I'm sure I won't be too bored this week. 

Missing you all, and I hope you're all recovering well from the Thanksgiving food coma!

Sending my best,

Paul

p.s. Some people seem to be missing my email alerts which is sad. It is possible the well crafted name of this group marks it as spam, so I'd recommend checking your spam folder or marking this as a known contact. If you run into any troubles though, you can email me directly and I make sure things are configured correctly on my side and help troubleshoot in general.