{"id":732,"date":"2026-08-12T12:04:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/?p=732"},"modified":"2026-08-12T12:04:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:04:58","slug":"end-of-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/2026\/08\/12\/end-of-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"End of Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ve almost made it, in less than a week the winter season at McMurdo will officially end and the winfly (winter fly-in) season will begin. This transition corresponds with the first sunrise. On August 18th, the sun will come above the horizon for the first time in nearly 4 months (since April 24th). We won&#8217;t be able to see it, since it will be blocked by the mountains, however it will rise more each day and we should be able to see it from the lidar lab within 2-3 days of the first official sunrise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This first sunrise marks the transition between winter season and winfly season. Flights will begin again, and the station will begin to ramp up towards the elevated population and activity of summer season. Over three flights in mid-late August, the station population will increase from just over 200 people to nearly 500. The station will spend the next ~1.5 months preparing for the summer season. We&#8217;ll also welcome two other grantee groups to join us in Crary lab, one working on a project diving under the sea ice and researching the ocean, and the other our very own John Cassano of CU Boulder, who will be using drone equipment to research the atmospheric boundary layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the official winter season may be coming to an end, there will still be a decreasing amount of nighttime hours to collect higher quality data through the end of September. The most important months for taking data have come to end, but these next few months are still vital for the project. The next pair of technicians, Xing Chen and Carrie Chi, are preparing to come to Antarctica for their deployments. They will hopefully be ready to deploy by late September\/early October (the start of the main summer season). After training with Jess (the current lead technician), they will further train under Dr. Chu and help Dr. Chu refurbish the lidar systems before taking on their own winter season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"4032\" height=\"3024\" data-id=\"733\" src=\"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-733\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"5712\" height=\"4284\" data-id=\"734\" src=\"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-734\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Above: Two photos of the glow on the horizon as the sun very slowly returns<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve almost made it, in less than a week the winter season at McMurdo will officially end and the winfly (winter fly-in) season will begin. This transition corresponds with the first sunrise. On August 18th, the sun will come above the horizon for the first time in nearly 4 months (since April 24th). We won&#8217;t&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/2026\/08\/12\/end-of-winter\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-29 11:45:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/lidarexploration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}