The Week Around Town

We are continuing to make progress with the project and removing all of the instruments and equipment from the field sites. We took a truck to the two local sites yesterday to remove the remaining instruments at Phoenix and to remove all of the instruments and wind shields at the Willie Field site. The only items that remain in the field are the towers and the power systems. It will take a large amount of digging to remove these items. I have estimated that it will take a 6 to 7 foot hole in the snow to remove three of the four instrument towers at the Willie Field site. I am putting out feelers to see if we can find people interested in helping with the digging.

The Willie Field APS site with the instruments and wind shields removed. The only remaining items are the instrument towers and power systems.

We are starting to work on packing the instruments and equipment into crates and shipping cases for the cargo to be transported back to Colorado. The retro cargo will be placed on the vessel in late January. From there it will be transported to California by the ship. It will get to California in mid to late April and then I will arrange for the cargo to be shipped to Boulder. 

There continue to be a collection of news and updates from around town that I'll share. Some of these items were previewed in my last post.

A lenticular cloud at the summit of Mount Erebus on Ross Island.

Power Outages:
While we were out on the Twin Otter flight to remove the Lorne site last Friday, the town was suffering through numerous power outages. I am not entirely sure what happened but it was clear that there was substantial issues with the power generating capacity. Even after we got back into town, about 8:30 PM, we were around to experience some power outages lasting a few minutes. The electrical power is provided to McMurdo Station through a power generator plant using diesel generators. Late Friday night some efforts were done that shutdown the power to McMurdo Station for about an hour. Along the way, some facilities and critical functions were placed on backup generators. Requests were made to everybody to remove non-essential electrical devices. This impacted our dinner that night. We got back from Lorne after dinner. That is typically not a big problem because they serve pizza 24-hours a day so we were expecting a pizza dinner. Except with the power problems the pizza oven was shutdown, leaving us with making cold sandwiches.

Water Restrictions:
One of the fallouts of the power outages was that they shutdown the water production system that creates the potable water from the sea water in the bay. The result of this is that the water storage reached a level where water restrictions were put into effect. These restrictions included: no laundry, one 2-minute shower per week, using paper plates and cups for meals, and no unnecessary mopping of floors. The water restrictions lasted for less than 48 hours, during which the stores of water returned to normal levels.

Removing the Willie Field APS equipment and loading the truck on the Phoenix Road.

Mass Casualty Incident Training:
If last week wasn't busy enough with the power outages and water restrictions, it was also the week of the mass casualty incident (MCI) training. The medical facilities in McMurdo are limited with a few doctors, PAs, and nurses. This means that if there would be an event that would require a mass response, the community has to contribute to the response effort. Each year there are people who volunteer to be on the MCI team and with that comes a training incident to take everybody through their roles. Last week's incident was a mock helicopter crash. In addition to the MCI team, there are volunteers who play roles, such as those injured, in the training exercise. The exercise typically lasts a couple hours and not much is noticeable except fewer people in their normal jobs and the radio traffic is set aside for the MCI training.

Sunday Science Lecture:
Much of the McMurdo Station community are not scientists but personnel that are here in support of the science through a collection of responsibilities and jobs across the station. There are two public lectures, Wednesday and Sunday evenings, that are provided to connect the support contract workers with the science that is being done. The Sunday Science Lecture is held in the galley, which is really the largest space for gathering people in McMurdo. This past Sunday, Scott, my colleague on the project, and I gave the Sunday Science Lecture on the Antarctic Precipitation System project. The goal of this lecture is to keep it very informative and also on a basic level for the non-scientists in the community. We had given a Sunday Science Lecture two years ago, at the onset of the project, and this year's lecture was for the close of the project. We were fortunate to have a full audience and I was happy with how the presentation went.

Scott Base:
McMurdo Station is the largest US station in Antarctica. About two miles away is Scott Base, the largest station for Antarctica New Zealand. However, the two facilities are much different in size. The current station population in McMurdo is 975 while it is 86 at Scott Base. Other than the Scott Base store, and American night at the bar, Scott Base is off limits to the USAP participants for no other reason than it could be quickly overwhelmed. The exception to this is if you have an invite. Earlier this evening I was able to have dinner at Scott Base while visiting at colleague from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. I brought two colleagues working with me at McMurdo, and he had two of his colleagues as well. To no surprise, the dining experience at Scott Base is much more family-style and similar to what is experienced at deep field camps. It was a good dinner and a fun visit. There is also a chance that we were able to line up about 10 graduate students to help us with digging out the towers at the Willie Field site early next week.

The dining hall at Scott Base for dinner.

Cape Hallett:
We are done flying for the precipitation project but there is a chance I might get in another flight with the University of Wisconsin automatic weather station (AWS) project. Four of my eight trips to Antarctica have been with the AWS project. This morning we were on the flight schedule for a trip to Cape Hallett. I visited Cape Hallett twice in 2015 and it is possibly my favorite place that I've been to in Antarctica. Most all of my best photos from Antarctica are from Cape Hallett. The quick description is that it is a penguin colony surrounded by amazing mountains. This morning's flight was cancelled due to bad weather at the destination. We are on the flight schedule again for the morning.