Thanksgiving on top of the world

 Thanksgiving was great, we all pitched in and made a few dishes. I made apple pie, pumpkin pie and roasted beets. I also sorted the greens, which is a big under taking because they are now about 5 weeks old and the outer layers of the lettuce heads are slimy and rotten. But there is still good lettuce under all the gross layers. We had run out of fresh broccoli, fresh spinach, fresh chard, fresh asparagus and a few other things I can't think off off the top of my head.

 We had a nice spread of food! So many left overs!!

Pie is the best! We got Saturday "off" and are having a rare two day weekend. I still pretty much had a full day of work to do on Sunday though and did a couple hours on Saturday as well. Really 'off' just means I got to sleep in a little bit and we had no meetings. It's okay though I don't mind walking out to TAWO, it's good exercise. And doing ozone sonde prep is a lot of waiting in between small tasks.

The crew. Photo by Marie

HF Radio and North

On Thursday, (Thanksgiving for the rest of the world), we hit -70 F! I tried to get the North Star to line up with the tower on top of the Greenhouse.

 When we get wind out of the north the generator exhaust is blowing towards the clean air sector. When this happens we can't take air samples, or drive any equipment unless we are very low on water or there is an emergency.

My Dad was flying over the Atlantic today and was going to be about ~1300 miles south of us. I gave him the the HF radio frequency that we use and we tried to use the HF radio to contact him as he flew by. We actually heard him calling us!! We tried to reply but it turns out our HF radio system was not high enough power to reply.  Still very exciting to use the radio for something and have it actually sort of work!!

I cook every Thursday. This week I made lasagna, it was tasty!

Good Evening

 We had a very nice clear evening last night and I finally got some nice aurora pictures!!!

Another balloon shot that turned out nice!!

Snow Crystal Laser Scattering

We had a lot of blowing ice crystals in the air yesterday night. It was very dark and the cloud altimeter laser on top of the MSF (Mobile Science Facility) was glowing very strongly. The science tech who takes care of the science in that building found that the ice crystals were scattering the laser's light all over the ground. I was able to sort of capture the phenomenon. The light was dancing and jumping and flashing and streaking across the snow. It was beautiful and super interesting.

Big house and Green house lights.

Another Busy Week

 Not many pictures for this week. I was pretty busy fixing science. Definitely settled in now and hopefully things will slow down a bit now that a lot of the larger beginning of season tasks are completed.

I have an irrational fear of polar bears when I'm walking between buildings, especially when it's dark out. A few years ago a fox wandered into camp. And birds show up in summer time a few times a month. A polar bear was seen a couple hundred miles from here last year, so I guess it isn't entirely implausible. 

ICESat and the Supermoon

On Monday we drove out away from camp about 5 miles and did an ICESat traverse, which is basically driving a GPS antenna along a special pattern of flag lines. This is to double check NASA's ICESatellite values. ICESat is part of NASA's Earth Observing System and is gathering information about ice sheet mass balance around the globe, it passes directly over the traverse we measure every month.

We also measure the height of the flags. Takes about 3 hours to complete. It was a beautiful day for it. About -50 F and barely any wind.

It was clear enough out to see the full moon rise!

It was awesome!!

Busy Sunday

 The wind finally calmed down in time to see the sun! We did a bunch of work on Sunday (technically our day off) to catch up on all the things we couldn't do because of the wind.

 We started doing the snow accumulation survey around station. Basically walking back and forth on a predetermined grid pattern to see how much snow the camp has accumulated since the last time the grid was walked. It is about 15 km long, it will take two days to walk the entire thing.

After two days of condition 1, nothing beats a front row seat for sunrise and sunset over a lunch of homemade dumplings. The sun is up for less than 45 minutes now. Tomorrow will be the last time it goes above the horizon until next year.

 TAWO often reminds me of some sort of dinosaur.

I walked over to the SMG (Science Mobile Garage maybe??) it's a new building, not in use yet but that is where the camp bike was stored. I pulled it out of storage to ride around for the afternoon. I think I'm going to keep it out of storage and use it to get out to TAWO on good weather days. 

Wind Storm

This is just after noon, we are heading to the Big House for lunch. Can't see the big house from the greenhouse!!

It's been blowing about 40 knots consistently all day. The big house is rocking in the wind (I was starting to feel like I was on a boat). The the wind is very loud from the inside of the greenhouse. You can hear the snow battering against the walls and the wind whipping through the cracks and around the corners. 

 The drifts are getting bigger. I wonder if this is the storm that drift over the whole building.

It's creeping up. I see a lot of shoveling in my future!

Food and Fun

On Saturday we all cooked dinner together and we made some really awesome sushi. I made vegetable tempura to make tempura rolls. It was a lot of fun!!

A friendly flamingo now guards the entrance to the Greenhouse.

The sun doesn't make it very high above the horizon and with a storm forecasted for the rest of the week, I probably won't be seeing it again until January.

The other tech brought up a big kite that he attached a small camera to before flying it above the station. This is one of the pictures he was able to capture with his kite. 

Another balloon launch picture, I really like how this one turned out!! This is a fairly rare direction for balloons to go, normally they are carried away from the station towards the north, not towards the south like in this picture. Trying to capture the little green light on the radiosonde is shaping up to be a pretty fun project!

Day and Night

 The big house just before lunch time. Having a few hours of daylight each day has been nice to get outside work done, but that luxury is fading fast. We have only 4 hours of official day light left and are losing about 20 minutes a day (we will lose more the closer we get to the last sunset).

 We have one week until the last sunrise and sunset!! Hopefully we get a few more clear days to see the sun a few more times like this before it leaves us.

 This is TAWO, the Temporary Atmospheric & Weather Observatory (I think that's what that stands for, it was only supposed to be temporary but it's now been in use for a number of years, at least five I think)

 This is the Big House front door, with the Summit Station sign.

This is the entrance to the freezer trench, where all the frozen goods are to get us through the winter.

 Inside the freezer trench.

 There was a huge aurora show covering most of the sky a couple nights ago. There was so much going on in the sky it was difficult to figure out which direction to look!

 The snow drift around the greenhouse is almost level with the roof now.

 Super cool spiral!!!

 Climbing the TAWO meteorological tower. Really tough work.

 This is on the walk out to TAWO. It's about 700 meters away from the main station area. A good 15-20 minute walk with all my ECW on.