When I think of bad weather in Antarctica, I think of blowing snow, low visibility, high winds, and cold temperatures. Today I saw all of them. We knew what we were in for because last night's weather forecast said "something wicked this way comes". At first it made me laugh, but then it occurred to me that I had to go outside in that weather. The buildings at McMurdo Station are not connected, so to get from the science labs to the dorms to any other building you have to go outside. As we moved around today and started packing for the dry valleys we walked from building to building and I was laughing because I couldn't even walk in a straight line in 65 mph gusts of wind.
I took this shot of the sound before the storm hit yesterday.
I took this shot of the sound during the storm. Out on the sea ice the wind was blowing over 75 mph and blowing the fine snow everywhere so that you could no longer see the mountain range.
The flag by the helicopter pad was waving like crazy in the wind.
We are about to embark on quite the adventure. The seven of us will be living in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica for the next 6 - 8 weeks. In order for us to be safe and get our work done, we are going to need the right supplies. For the next five days we will be working on finding all of our supplies, organizing them, and then packing them up to be delivered to us by helicopter. We are going to need to pack up all our camping gear, food, science equipment, personal gear/clothing, and communication equipment. Today we started the long process of packing by visiting the BFC (Byrd Field Center) to assemble and check all of our camping gear.
Tim is organizing the cage holding all of our gear until it is boxed up and taken by helicopter to the Dry Valleys.
Scott is checking off the gear we have as the rest of us are calling off items.
After checking our tents, we placed our tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pads, and sleeping bag liner in big duffel bags.
I set up my tent before going out in the field to make sure that all the zippers worked, there were no missing poles, and no holes.
My tent passed inspection and is ready for the Dry Valleys.