Trav's Travels

Monday, October 2, 2017

Ob Hill

9/24

Another couple of flights arrived in this week, carrying our first 7 grantees. It's still been quite cold. Mostly in the -20 to -30F ambient and down to -50F when the wind blows.

I hiked up ob hill a couple of times this week to watch the sunset, which was rather beautiful. It's still so cold that my eyelashes get covered in icicles when I'm out for an extended time and everything gets a layer of frost from your breath. Going up obhill I work up quite a sweat b/c it's steep. So I take off my big mittens and am just in my glove liners. As the sweat evaporates out of the liners it freezes on the outside so that the liners turn from brown to frosty white.

It's still dark when I leave my office at night after working on my paper, but the night is definitely getting shorter. Crazy to think that in a few days, even before Elisha gets here, there will be no more night!

There were some fairly large budget cuts this year due to the president's cuts to the NSF. A lot of people lost their jobs, there will be less flights (so less fresh food and shortened seasons for scientists), and the utility and carpenter crews will be much smaller meaning that there will be little to no maintenance, only fixing the problems when they happen, which can eventually just lead to bigger issues. For example crary lab got down to 38F the other day (which would be bad if there were experiments going on) b/c the heater loop broke since they hadn't been able to do maintenance on it. Same with some of the vehicles. But the biggest talked about things is that they are cutting the hot food for midrats. Midrats is the lunch meal that happens when you are on night shift at midnight. When you are on midrats, the food situation is a bit wonky b/c your dinner is everyone's breakfast and vice versa, so those meals tend to not be as good unless you want to eat dinner for breakfast or breakfast for dinner. But the midrats meal was always really good and something the midrats could rally around. Well now they are cutting the hot food (well except for hot dogs and crappy pizza which are available 24 hrs). So they've been having meetings about it and trying to figure out how to deal with it, including having the big wigs eat a midrats diet for 2 weeks. But of course the big wigs who do the budget rarely come down here. They're also going to make some buttons which are pretty funny

"I stand with midrats" "All lunches matter" and "make midrats great again"

So I guess we'll have to see how it all pans out. It won't really affect Elisha and I much since we don't do night shift in crary and we only used midrats as a midnight snack after a weekend party or something.

10/2/17

Had another very chill Sunday b/c Todd still hasn't returned my manuscript back to me yet. Today I got the keys to Elisha and my room in dorm 211, so I started moving stuff in and will spend my first night there. We're up on the 2nd floor. The building has some heating issues b/c our room is quite hot but other rooms are chilly. The boys bathroom, which is downstairs, is quite cold. So cold, in fact, that when I got into the shower today I almost slipped b/c there was ice on the shower floor!

It's definitely been very cold lately. We had a pretty big windstorm go through today. It's a really quick walk from the gym to the galley, but it's been so cold that by the time I get to the galley, my sweat has frozen into little icicles in my hair!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Auroras and Nacreous Clouds!

9/18

Around 11pm, while I was working on my paper, I looked at the aurora forecast, and it was predicted as high activity. So I bundled up to go for a hike to look for auroras. We were spoiled in summit station b/c there was no light pollution (we had just 2 outside lights, that we could turn off if we wanted). I could even see auroras outside my window from inside my room. But to see them really well, all I had to do was step outside of the heated living module and there they were. Here, there is lots of light pollution b/c the whole station needs to be lit to keep people from getting lost, especially in storms. So you have to bundle up, walk 30 minutes and hope your walk in the cold isn't fruitless. Tonight it was definitely not! I walked out to hut point and saw a nice aurora show. After an hour of being back, I headed back to the lab to warm up. I then headed up to the Scott Base pass where I got to witness a super amazing aurora show for over an hour. I wished I could have stayed longer, but it was approaching 2am, and I needed to get to bed, not to mention staying out too long in -50F can cause frostbite on the few areas of exposed skin (bridge of the nose and around the eyes. I was super bundled up, so was very warm, but those areas are just hard to cover up

9/19

Today after work we saw nacreous clouds. These are special clouds that really shimmer. They are rare to see b/c they need to be at a certain altitude the sun has to be low on the horizon and it has to be colder than a certain temp. The best time to see them is winfly, but I had never seen them before, so it was great to finally see them!

I went to a travelogue today by a gal who used to work as a weather observer in the high canadian arctic. It was a cool talk and the wolf pictures were really cute.

On Sunday we spring forward in time (it's spring down in the southern hemisphere). Something funny is that Carolyn was wondering what has happened to all her hours she's lost due to springing forward but never falling back. She's been going to the Antarctic for 8 years now. Everytime she deploys she has to spring forward with the southern hemisphere spring and then when we redeploy, we soon have to spring forward with the northern hemsiphere spring. She hasn't fallen back in over 8 years since she hasn't had a fall in either hemisphere for that long

Winfly and Auroras

9/17
Another week in the books down here at McMurdo winfly. Again, the continued beautiful skies! We did have one big storm roll through that was quite fun.
Work continues as usual on getting the lab ready, and then on my thesis after work. We have 1 hr for lunch, so I've started going to this dance thing for 40 minutes, every now and then, that Cassa Radawesum Grant's little sister (Kerri) hosts during lunch. It's using nintendo wii and you follow these dance moves and get scores and stuff. It's pretty fun.

It's been pretty consistently cold the last week. High temps in the -10F range, lows in the -30F range with low windchills in the -40 to -60F range.

Last night was saturday night. They had a big "winter is leaving" (in honor of GOT's popular, Winter is Coming slogan), but I worked on my thesis until late and then took a hike out to hut point to look for auroras. And I did manage to see some, which was cool! I got really bundled up since it was in the -60F range. I walked out to hut point, which takes about 40 minutes and then stood out there for an hour watching the amazing stars and the auroras and then headed home. I actually stayed pretty warm b/c I was fully dressed out (including wearing my gear issue bunny boots) and brought some handwarmers for toes, fingers, and chest pockets. But it was the kind of cold where you had have everything covered up. The cold makes your eyes water and often when I'd blink my eyes would freeze shut for a brief moment until they warmed up. But it created some thick icicles on my eyelashes.