Another storm, another day inside!Location: The once again stormy WAIS Divide
The storm mentioned yesterday has in fact arrived, and is predicted to continue to strengthen. Today visibilities were around 200m and occasionally lower at times, caused by 20-25 knot winds. The winds are expected to increase this evening and into the day and evening hours tomorrow back to the 40 knots winds from the weekend storm. This should bring visibilities back down to 25m or less. Needless to say, with where we are in our science, which hasn’t been much, we can’t do anything outside. We got the holes drilled yesterday and have the explosives loaded and ready to go. The problem is the wind. When we detonate the explosives, the waves travel down through the ice and then bounce back. The sensors we have buried in the snow are so sensitive that if a person is walking, or in our case, if there is wind with a lot of blowing snow, you get a large amount of background noise that really interferes with the data collection. So, in short, we didn’t detonate any explosives today.
Our other task that needs completed is taking the drill apart piece by piece to fit in the Twin Otter plane to be shipped to the Thwaites Glacier for the study to continue. As you saw from the picture and parts of the description yesterday, the snow and the drill don’t really get along. We can’t take the drill apart and risk getting snow into all the small places or inside the engine. The drill has been covered with a tarp all day in the hopes of preventing the previous experience of a snow packed drill.
Today was spent hanging out around camp, reading books, playing cards and watching movies. I finished my second book of the trip today. It looks to be the same thing for tomorrow. There is kind of a running joke that I’ve just been down here for the manual labor. We haven’t done a lot of the front-end work but have not taken any actual data due to the weather. Flights for tomorrow have already been canceled and I’m scheduled to be on the Thursday flight back to McMurdo. As you might have guessed, all of this is weather permitting! Since we didn’t get out much today, I thought I would share a few photos of some of the snow drifts around here, and trust me, with the wind, there are plenty! Enjoy!
Looking into Nothing! 
Looking to the NW of camp and seeing the ocean of ice.*
CAT on a Snow Drift 
The CAT sitting atop a snow drift towering over a skidoo.*
Snow Drifts 
Snow drifts after the storm.*
More Snow Drifts 
More snow drifts. After the storm you can imagine there were tons!*
Shadows in the Midnight Sun 
My shadow with the ocean of ice in the background.*
P.S. We have done some holiday decorating to help get into the spirit down here away from most civilization. We’ve had plenty of time with the weather the way it has been.
Holidays! 
Some of the holiday decorations displayed around the galley to make things feel a tad like home.*