Happy Birthday Jeremy!!!
Local Posting Day and Time- 1-7-08 7:16PM
Central Standard Posting Day and Time- 1-7-08 12:16AM
McMurdo Weather
Temperature- 30F Wind Direction- East Wind Speed- 9 MPH Wind Chill- 21F
WATIZIT Answers
Thanks to Becca, Ms. Nelsen’s student who reminded me that I haven’t told you what the skull was. Becca is right it is from a seal, specifically it is from a leopard seal.
Congratulations to my Dad and to Jimmy for noticing the Texas flag flying here at McMurdo. Rumor has it that one of the pilots is from Texas.
Today’s WATIZIT Picture
WATIZIT
Today we traveled in a Piston Bully (a slow snowmobile on steroids) out to a weather station located at Latitude 77.728 S and Longitude 167.703 E.
Mr. B. and Piston Bully
You can use the map or this website to try and figure out which station we traveled to. On the map the red dot is McMurdo, at the top of Ross Island.
Ross Island Map
Jonathan and Shelley were driving and riding shotgun, the rest of us piled into the back. We had a visitor traveling along on this trip. Andrea is an artist. One of the things she does is convert scientific data into synthesized music. She is here collecting data and recording sounds that she experiences while traveling with different scientists. She has recorded sounds of penguin chicks and of ice sheets grinding together and she is using the meteorological data from "our" weather stations.
Piston Bully BackSeat
We traveled deeper and deeper into a snow storm. By the time we arrived at the weather station you could not tell the ground from the sky, everything blended together.
AWS Site
While Jonathan made a few adjustments on the station, Shelley began digging a snow pit, while the rest of us watched her working and took pictures.
Cool
Jonathan working on AWS
Shelley digging snow pit
Most of the instruments at the station measure the weather, but one does not. That instrument, an ADG, measures the distance down to the top of the snow. Shelley is trying to develop a method to measure precipitation here in Antarctica. The ADG, satellite data, snow pits and other weather information may help her. You can’t just measure the depth of the snow to know how much fell, because the wind blows the snow from place to place.
Measuring snow
ADG (Acoustic Depth Gauge)
For us to understand Antarctica’s role in the water cycle (and therefore the future climate) it is necessary to know how much it actually snows.
Triple Beam Balance at work
After we got Shelley out of the pit.....
Helping SHelley escape
... and after all the work was completed we loaded back up in the Piston Bully and headed back to McMurdo. Fortunately we had a GPS because we could not see very much, it was just white in all directions.
Piston Bully
Oh, By the way. This is where we went, if you can read the sign.
Can you read the sign?