WAIS Storm

We are in the midst of a fairly strong storm at WAIS. The storm started late Saturday night and continued through all day Sunday. The current forecast has the significant part of the storm continuing into the afternoon hours on Monday and with impacts from the storm potentially extending through Wednesday. The winds have been consistently around 30+ mph throughout the day with considerable blowing snow and I would estimate the visibility at a few hundred feet. We were notified of the impending storm early in the day on Saturday and much of the day was spent going around to make sure everything was tied down and able to survive the storm. Since the storm has occurred on a Sunday, the one off day of the week, it has been a very quiet day throughout WAIS camp. The Rec tent and Galley tent have been common spots for everybody to spend the day waiting out the storm. Tomorrow will be a little more difficult if the storm continues for the camp staff to return to action. Once the storm weakens, their job will switch to surveying the drifting and checking to see if everything survived the storm. Already, there are drifts 3+ feet high all around the camp between the tents. The skiway will also need to be groomed before any new LC-130 flights can arrive from McMurdo. All of this is fairly standard operating procedure as storms will happen during the field season. Overall, this storm is fairly mild compared to the 3 1/2 day storm that the camp staff endured a couple weeks ago.

Looking towards the Science tent and the Twin Otter during the weekend storm with strong winds, blowing snow, and limited visibility.

The best way to understand the facilities at WAIS is to think of it as a “camp”. There are no permanent buildings here other than the arch, which was a dome shaped building for the ice core drilling operations. There are two primary mods, which are almost permanent buildings, as one houses the kitchen and the other is a wash mod with sinks, showers, and washer/dryer. The wash-mod is connected to an insulated tent that serves as the “Rec” tent, a place for people to hang out and relax. The kitchen-mod is connected to another insulated tent that is the Galley, or the dining area and a place for people to work in a heated environment with tables. There is an additional mod that is used by the mechanics. There are five additional insulated tents with stoves that include two for science, one for comms/camp staff, medical, and one for the Twin Otter flight crew. That is it for insulated tents that have any resemblance of “buildings”. There is also “tent city”, which is where the camp personnel set up their individual camping tents for sleeping quarters. The most common tent here is called the “Arctic Oven” and I have been told that it can be quite nice. Since we are here for such a short period of time, as well as that there are no other science groups in our science tent, we are spending the nights in one of the two heated science tents. Beyond the row of tents/mods, there is a row of outhouses followed by four rows of cargo. Near the skiway there are two fuel bladders which hold all of the fuel for the planes, stoves, generators, etc. That is about all there is for the camp facilities at WAIS. 

An aerial view of the WAIS camp. The row of tents comprising the core of the camp in a line along the left. At the bottom of the picture is "tent city" were most people live. The four lines to the right of the tents is the line of outhouses and four cargo lines.

The row of tents at WAIS. From left to right: the Rec tent with the Wash Mod in the back, the Galley tent with the Kitchen Mod in the back, the Polenet tent (where I worked and slept), and the Science tent. There are three additional tents that are not shown in this picture.

The cargo lines at WAIS.

"Tent city" at WAIS where most of the people at WAIS camp sleep.

There is a good chance that we are finished with our field work out of WAIS. If the storm continues for another day or two we will not be able to fly. There is also another science group that has priority to fly in the Twin Otter ahead of us, if they have good weather at their site. The end result is that we may be on the next LC-130 flight back to McMurdo after the storm ends.