Jan
1, 2000
10:30 Local time
21 F
Hello Everyone!
Please pardon my delay in getting word to you that I have arrived at McMurdo Station Antarctica! As a preventative measure, Internet service was turned off here during the New Year. With that note - Happy New Year!
Topics for todays note:
1. Travel from
the USA to New Zealand
2. Travel from New Zealand to Antarctica
3. What we are doing
4. New Years Y2K at McMurdo/South Pole
Travel from the US to New Zealand
---------------------------------
Now that I have a minute, I did want to let you all know about a unique event that I did get to see while flying down from the US. As we were landing in Los Angeles last week, we got to see from the air a classic forest fire due to the Santa Ana winds that they were/are having in Southern California. From the air, it was impressive to see a complete canyon a blaze! In the LA airport, you could smell the smoke from the fire.
Travel from New
Zealand to Antarctica
-------------------------------------
As I informed you, we had 2 tries to get down to the "ice" (as everyone calls Antarctica - I will talk more in future notes about the local "lingo"). Weather kept us from getting here the first time. When the aircraft gets to "PSR" or the point-of-safe-return, if weather or anything looks to be a concern with the flight, the procedure calls to have the flight return to Christchurch, New Zealand. Better to be safely flying down here or than to be sorry. There are no alternate locations to land if you can't land at McMurdo/Williams Field.
Before leaving Christchurch, we get issued our ECW or Extreme Cold Weather gear. Its about 35 pounds of all kinds of winter clothes that you really need to have down here.
What we are doing
-----------------
So, now that we are here, we will be starting our projects. At the University of Wisconsin/Space Science and Engineering Center we have a couple of Antarctic projects. The two we are working on are the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) Project and the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC). First, the AWS project is a complete end to end project for us - we build, install, repair, collect data and do research with data from about 56 stations around the continent. This year we have a few new stations to put out, and several to repair and a few to move. Second, the AMRC is a project were we collect, archive, distribute/provide weather data of all kinds for the Antarctic for anyone...especially grantees of the US Antartic Program. Our keynote item is our Antarctic Composite image. We mosaic, like a puzzle, all of the world's weather satellites, that we can get our hands on, over Antarctica and Southern Ocean. It is used for research as well as forecasting. The AMRC also is working on weather research, as we are hoping to learn more about fog around the station here since it can really get in the way of flight operations.
To learn more about our projects, check out the following web site for those of you who do have web access:
This is the main page for both projects. I encourage you to surf around both the AWS and AMRC sections. These web sites are not very fancy, but should give you an idea of the work we are doing. Under the AMRC side, we do have real-time displays of the weather down here. Of course, with the internet having been down between McMurdo and the US, I expect many of the displays to be old. We'll be fixing that as soon as we can.
New Years Y2K at
McMurdo/South Pole
-----------------------------------
I don't know if any
of you watched the TV at all, but I do know that there was a big event
televised live from South Pole. We had a big party here that was held
at the New Zealand base just down the street (yes, the
is actually a very, very nearby base - the US and New Zealand cooperate
on many Antarctic projects both here in Antarctica and back in Christchurch).
Our event was taped for TV. I don't if you saw it at all, but NBC carried
it. I don't suspect I'm in the footage, but I was there.
On New Years Day, McMurdo has a party called "Ice Stock" - not exactly based on Woodstock, but in fact an event that takes place in Wisconsin - Corn Stock. It has been a tradition here for 10 years. The event includes a live band, chili cook off, and Scott Hut Race (running race that is). Not easy for all of these folks to be away from home during the holidays, so they make due.
With that, this concludes my first message to you all.
Happy New Year!
Matthew