Wind Storm

We had a wind storm over the weekend that deposited a lot of snow drifts and carved up those snow drifts in to sastrugi. It was a moderate wind storm reached 24 mph/21 knots, the record wind speed for the south pole is 55 mph. (Record lowest temperature is -117 F/-82.8C, coldest months are June and July) The wind brings snow, cloudy skies and warmer weather. Now the storm has dissipated but we still have about 11 knots of wind but the sun is low and perfect for interesting snow pictures!



 Cosray and the escape hatch from the fuel storage arch.

 A super delicate piece of sastrugi moving in the wind. Snow here has such a weird consistency.

 These are foot steps that compressed parts of a big drift that was here yesterday but got blown away.

 I learned how to take air samples today out in the clean air sector (not part of my job but still cool to learn about). The rod sticking out is what the intake tube is mounted on.

 You have to step away so your breath doesn't contaminate the sample and hold your breath when you turn it on and off.

 So much untouched snow. It's amazing.

 A snow arch! The formations are so different and interesting and beautiful, I could take pictures of them all day, but my fingers get cold too fast now.

Pretty much have to warm them up after every picture. I can't use the camera with my big gloves on so I have to take my hand out of the big glove, stash the big glove in my jacket so it'll stay warm, take the camera out, turn it on, lens cap off, take a few pictures, lens cap on, turn it off, put the camera back inside jacket, put the big glove back on, and then warm up my fingers. It's a bit easier if I use a smaller camera, but if I want to take nice pictures it's a process. The gloves in the picture above are my glove liners that go inside the big glove.

 

 Sastrugi are awesome.

Another couple arches! And just incase anyone is getting bored with my excitement over cool snow formations, here are some giant bags of powdered milk.

I think the first week of winter went well, only ~37 more weeks to go (but I'm not counting, I love it here).