Kara and I are at the end of our Antarctic trip and I am writing this post on the C-17 flight north to New Zealand. In this blog post I will share what our day-to-day life looked like in McMurdo.
As I described in my last blog post despite not having our drones we managed to collect some data using drone weather sensors I had carried in my personal luggage rather than packed in our science cargo. We attached these sensors to a van and collected temperature data along the road between McMurdo and the Phoenix airfield. We wound up making 33 roundtrip drives that added up to more than 900 miles and measured temperatures ranging from -43 deg F to +20 deg F.
This graph shows temperatures we measured on 3 of our 33 drives between McMurdo Station and the Phoenix airfield. On most days the temperature was much warmer in McMurdo than on the ice shelf as shown by the temperature data from September 12th (red line) and September 15th (orange line). Towards the end of our Antarctic deployment the weather warmed a lot and we saw temperatures as warm as +20 deg F on October 1st (yellow line). That may not sound warm to most of you reading this but to Kara and I, after spending several weeks with the temperature never getting above 0 deg F, it felt pretty nice.One of the things I love about being in Antarctica during Winfly is seeing beautiful sunrises and sunsets every day, unlike during the Antarctic summer when the sun doesn’t set for months. This photograph is looking over McMurdo Station during one of the many sunsets I was lucky enough to experience. The blue building on the right side of the photograph is known as building 155 – most of the buildings in McMurdo are referred to by number.Building 155 is one of the primary buildings in McMurdo – you can see the building number to the right of the doors in this photograph. Everyone visits this building several times a day since this is where the galley, where we eat all our meals, is located. Building 155 also has dorm rooms and this is where Kara and I lived. The dorm rooms are setup to accommodate up to 4 people. I shared my room with one other person and Kara shared her room with two other people.This is my dorm room and it doesn’t look all that different from my college dorm room from 30 years ago. I have a bed, dresser and nightstand and there is also a mini-fridge and TV in the room. My roommate and I hung blankets from the ceiling, at the foot of our beds, to provide a bit of privacy in our shared room.The staff that run the galley asked people on station to send them pictures of their cats to decorate the galley. My good kitty Francesca is in the bottom two photos. I can’t wait to get home to her snuggles and playing.The other building where we spent most of our time was the Crary lab. This is where the scientists have office and lab space. Without any instruments Kara and I didn’t need any lab space but we did use our office every day. There are a few interesting things to note in this photograph. Crary, like most of the buildings in McMurdo, is built on stilts to prevent the heat from the building melting the permanently frozen ground below and causing the ground and building to settle unevenly. Also, like most buildings every exterior entrance to Crary has an entry vestibule with heavy duty, freezer like doors on the outside (the two silver doors in this photograph) and then regular doors inside. This prevents bitterly cold air from getting into the building. One of my favorite spaces in McMurdo is the library in the Crary lab. One entire wall of the library is lined with windows that look across McMurdo Sound to the Transantarctic Mountains 50 miles away. On this evening I was treated to a spectacular sunset as I read a book in a comfortable chair in the library.There are a lot of creative people in McMurdo and as a result you see lots of random bits of art around the station. This is one of my favorite pieces – it is a troll under the bridge that leads from building 155, my dorm, to the Crary lab.But my favorite piece of art was this small painting on a windowsill in the galley. To me it looked like a bald eagle wearing a turtleneck sweater and it made me smile every time I saw it.There are a lot of big trucks and heavy equipment in McMurdo. Sometimes a vehicle is needed at the runway but shouldn’t be driven on the snow road between McMurdo and the airfield either because it will get stuck in the snow or it will chew up the snow surface on the road. When this happens a large flat piece of metal is attached to a tractor and the vehicle is towed to its final destination. This arrangement for towing vehicles is called a magic carpet – a name that I think is perfect. Here the red tractor is towing a front end loader on the magic carpet. One of the things I love to do when I am in Antarctica is “visit” with K-12 students and talk with them about what is like living and working in Antarctica. I know when I was a student I would have been beside myself with excitement to get the chance to talk with someone that was in Antarctica. On this trip I did two of these outreach sessions on Zoom – one with a 2nd grade class at Coal Creek Elementary in my hometown of Louisville, CO and the other with a 9th grade science class at New World High School in Bronx, NY (pictured here). I had so much fun talking with these students – they asked lots of great questions.
Kara and I spent a lot of time driving between McMurdo and the Phoenix airfield making temperature measurements. During these drives we got to see a wide range of beautiful sights and experience lots of different weather. Here are just some of the things we saw on our 900 miles of driving on the snow road.
Some days had calm weather with a few clouds dotting an otherwise clear blue sky. In this photograph we are driving on the dirt road between McMurdo Station and New Zealand’s Scott Base looking out towards Mt. Terror, one of the peaks on Ross Island, and the Ross Ice Shelf.In this photograph, taken in almost the same spot as the previous photograph, a thin layer of ice fog sits over Scott Base (the green buildings in the center of this photograph) and over the Ross Ice Shelf beyond.On other days the weather for our drive was stormy. On this day low clouds combined with strong wind and blowing snow to partially obscure Hut Point Peninsula. McMurdo Station is located just behind the triangular hill.On our last full day in McMurdo on our last temperature measurement drive to the Phoenix airfield we experienced 30 mph winds and blowing snow. Here Kara is standing with her back to the wind as she “enjoys” one last taste of Antarctic weather.This video, taken on the same day as the previous photograph, gives a sense of what it is like being outside in 30 mph winds with blowing snow racing past. Fortunately for us it wasn’t too cold, with a temperature of +20 deg F. On previous Winfly trips I’ve been outside in similarly strong winds but with temperatures near -40 deg F and that isn’t an experience I want to repeat anytime soon, although as a weather enthusiast I was excited to experience those conditions once.In this photograph, taken from our office in Crary, the rising sun paints the Royal Society Range pink while Weddell seals (the black dots in the middle ground of this photograph) sleep on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound.Penguins don’t usually arrive in McMurdo until the sea ice melts out of McMurdo Sound in the summer but we were lucky enough to see this group of emperor penguins one day. Kara took this photograph through a spotting scope in the Crary library.I’ll end this post with one last sunset photograph. Here a few isolated clouds over the Transantarctic Mountains are lit by the setting sun while a lower layer of clouds remain in shadow.
Thanks for reading. I’ll wrap up this series of blog posts once I am home in a few days.
