Featuring a cool atmospheric phenomenon, SEALS, general prep for working in the deep field, and this season's first visit to the Castle Rock test site.
You'll have to excuse me for being extremely late publishing this post; it has been so busy here the last few weeks. But here's a summary of what happened last week! I'll write and schedule some more posts with updates from this week to publish soon.
Week 2 (6-12 November)
Fata Morgana
This week started with a sighting of a Fata Morgana, a mirage on the horizon. A Fata Morgana is a type of superior mirage, meaning that the false image appears above the real object. They are caused by a steep temperature inversion, where a layer of warmer air sits above cooler, denser air. Light is refracted in arcs that bend more than the curvature of the Earth; in this case, creating an image where objects on the horizon, like Mt. Discovery, appear to float above the ice instead of sitting on it. Fata Morgana are common in polar regions over expanses of ice where the air temperature near the surface is colder than layers of atmosphere above it (I actually saw this mirage several times throughout the week).
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| Mt. Discovery on top of a Fata Morgana as seen through a pair of binoculars from my office. |
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| A clearer image of the mirage on the horizon. |
Seals
On Sunday (my day off; we only have 1-day weekends in McMurdo), I walked down to Hut Point and saw BABY SEALS!! It is that time of year... the Weddell seals are giving birth!
Seal fact: Weddell seal pups gain 5lbs per day for the first few weeks after birth, and their mothers can lose up to HALF of their body weight while nursing.
Mad fact: Weddell seals are probably my favorite animal, tied with the New Mexico Whiptail (because they are the best (whip whip)) and the South African Black Rain Frog (because they are cute).
Anyway, I watched mother seals nurse and cuddle baby seals and even saw one mom who was actively in labor; she had left a trail of blood from the breathing hole in the ice and would cry out every so often. I spent a couple of hours out there until I couldn't feel my face anymore. This may have been the most awesome (as in awe inspiring) event I have witnessed. Just incredible.
I got really crappy pictures because I was too busy watching and also extremely cold so I am not going to post any. I'll try to get some soon! Or ask a better photographer to use their pictures..
Deep Field Prep
The TIME team made sleep kits for the deep field this week. Our sleep kits are part of our survival gear and will travel next to us on all flights that we take to and from the field. My sleep kit contains a cot, thermarest pad, two ensolite pads, a double-layered sleeping bag, fleece sleeping bag liner, camp pillow, and assorted pee bottles + thermos + extra water bottles. With much effort, all but the cot managed to fit in one overstuffed duffle bag. We took turns sitting on each others' bags while two other people strained on the zippers. It was quite the event to get it all to fit, but turned into a great team bonding exercise :)
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| Halfway through packing our sleep kits in the Science Cargo building. |
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| My overstuffed baked potato bag. |
TIME also did an intro crevasse rescue training, learning how to tie into our harnesses and set up a 4-to-1 pulley system to pull someone out of a crevasse. There will likely be no crevasses in the area of Thwaites that we are working on, but the mountaineers are doing their due diligence to prepare us in the unlikely event that we run into one.
Castle Rock Test Site Pictures
If you'll remember... Avi and I did a lot of work at the PASSCAL Test Site near Castle Rock last year. Avi, Alan, and I took our first trip of the season out to the site to scope it out and see how much potential digging would need to happen.
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| Avi relaxing in the back of PistenBully 316 (note that we did not get my preferred PistenBully 314, but oh well..... expect more on that in a future post........ this is foreshadowing..........). |
This year, the carps (McMurdo-speak for "carpenters") brought a Fish Hut (small rectangular wooden building on skis) out to the site for us to use. We checked it out and noted that the site is not buried in much snow at all! Meaning less digging for us this year. Whoo!
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| PistenBully 316 with Castle Rock in the background to the right. |
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| The test site featuring the solar panels that we dug out of 8ft of snow accumulation last season. |
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| The T-299 Fish Hut. T-299 is the "event code" for PASSCAL; each Antarctic group/experiment has their own code. TIME's code is C-446. |
We also decommissioned one of the tests we left running over the winter; a system with a low-power datalogger (called a Pegasus) and a strong-motion sensor. This was a systems test for the sites that Avi and Alan are installing on Mt. Erebus this season, so we brought the data back to look at later this week.
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| Alan and Avi starting to dig out the electronics enclosure for the test we decommissioned. |
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| View of the Fish Hut and PistenBully 316 from afar. |
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| View of the site and PistenBully 316 from up close. |
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| Me being silly on the roof of the Fish Hut. I was also checking for places to mount GPS antennas up there. |
COVID/Housing Updates
Meanwhile, I moved for the third time during Week 2. Hotel California is being turned into an isolation dorm for people going out to South Pole or the Deep Field, so I was moved to Dorm 208. My roommate works the night shift in cargo, so she's at work from 6pm-6am. We will make it work! She's also decorated the room beautifully with LED lights and tapestries and posters and curtains everywhere. It feels very cozy. Hopefully this is my last room change before I head out to the field!
There's also been a 2 week delay on flights with people into McMurdo due to the COVID situation (10% of people, or 90/908, on station had COVID during Week 2). So we'll get cargo flights but no new people until Nov 21-ish.
Comments
Lol n/d