Ballooning Collage

Wow. What a day. First I have to tell you, if you read the 'Current Weather' on Weather Underground this afternoon (for you, morning for me), it may have said that winds were 58 mph, with a 'Light Thunderstorm'. Well, I can say with certainty, there was no thunderstorm. Though that did make me laugh. But there were 58 mph winds, and I heard that the max we got throughout the morning was, I believe 108 mph. As some of you may know, that is hurricane force. Cooooool. I got to be a weather weenie for sure this morning. We had a storm move through from about 5:30 am until, well, it is still passing through (6 pm), but the worst of it was over by noon. I woke up to the building shaking, and took a peek outside and all I could see was...white. I'm not kidding. Just a window of white. It was incredible. I'm sure glad I wasn't on I-80 driving back to Laramie. At McMurdo they use a 'Condition' system for weather: Condition 3 is good weather, Condition 1 is horrible weather. During Condition 1, you are not allowed to leave the building you are in. So, poor me, I just had to go back to bed. But it was Condition 1 until about 11 am, when they changed it to Condition 2. It was so surreal. But, it is spring. Weather is crazy in spring. I wish I had had my camera. Next time.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pics of recent balloon launches, courtesy of Luca, our Italian colleague who has been running the LIDAR.
Here is Mahesh (holding the balloon), Jen and myself getting a balloon ready to launch an ozonesonde. Prior to this stage, we have to inflate the balloon with Helium.
Jen is checking that the balloon has enough lift to take the sonde and balloon up to 30 kilometers.
And on the other end, here I am inflating it. That gun is heavy. I look like a bank robber.
Here I am posing with Benny, the balloon. (I didn't really name it, it just came to me right now.)

Once we have everything set up, we can launch. It takes about 3 hours or so for the balloon to ascend and fall, the whole time we are getting live data from the instrument. It is pretty cool to sit and watch the ozone increase, and then sharply decrease when the instrument gets to the hole. We have seen some good 'zero' ozone levels up there.
Well, that's all for today. Hope your weather is better than mine! Go Cubs!

Cold. Windy. Arrival Heights.

Hello! Today we took a short trip up the hill to Arrival Heights. This is located just a short drive from McMurdo. It is a protected area due to the sensitive instruments being used up here. First, we got a tour of the Kiwi lab up here where we got to see a Dobson Spectrophotometer.

This beast of an instrument was invented in the 1920s by, you guessed it, Dobson. This one here at Arrival Heights has the serial number "17" on it. It is ye olde. And, it still works. We think this one has been in use since at least the 50s, but probably earlier than that. It is used for measuring total column ozone, or basically how much ozone is in the atmosphere directly above the instrument. In does this by, in a nutshell, sending two wavelengths of light up into the sky. One of these wavelengths is absorbed by the ozone, the other, not so much. By comparing the amount of absorption, the total amount of ozone can be interpolated. Wow. Cool.

Afterwards, we walked the 200 feet to the US building, all the while I was taking some pictures.
This shot is taken in the direction of McMurdo. The hill you see is Observation (Ob) Hill which we have a nice view of from the lab.

Here I am at Arrival Heights with the sea ice behind me. The horizon is the ocean.
Here is Jen leaving the Kiwi lab on the hill. It was really windy.
And this is a view of the Transantarctic Mountains.

Isn't this place amazing? Well, off to a lab party. Have a good few days!

Trip to Scott Base

Well, I know it has been a while, but that just goes to show how busy Jennifer has us down here! We work day in and day out, it is unbelievable! (Seriously, it really isn't like that at all. But we have been really busy with launches. Four successes!) But this afternoon, we did get a little respite, after a grueling 2 mile hike (again, I am kidding. The "walk" was easy.) to Scott Base. Scott Base is the New Zealand Base just about two miles (or less) from McMurdo. We were invited for dinner by a colleague of our group, and then stayed for "American Night" at their bar. Scott Base is much smaller than McMurdo; only about 23 people are there right now. So being invited for dinner is a real treat.
Here are some pics from our walk down the hill to the base.
Scott Base is really nice because, aside from the creamy green all the buildings are painted, they are all connected. Which means you don't have to keep putting on all your gear going from building to building.
And, the piece de resistance, a picture of me!
I promise, I have more pics of me, I'll try to get them as soon as I can. And in case you're worried about the temperature out there; it is after midnight right now and it is +5 degrees F. So it wasn't horribly cold. All in all: nice hike, nice dinner, nice drinks, and nice company!

Our lab and views of the neighborhood

Hello again. I thought you'd like to see what I see every day. This is our lab in the Crary Center. I just took a picture of this side for now because this is "my" side. In the back is where we prep our ozone instruments prior to launch and in the front, Hugh is sitting by the receiving station where we can keep track of all of our equipment as it travels through the atmosphere.
Here is the view from that window in the background.
And one last picture for now, this is the shot from the loading dock on the other side of the building. Mountains of Antarctica!
Today these mountains were absolutely stunning with Mount Discovery taking first prize for being the most amazing mountain I have ever seen (take that Mount Rainier). Hopefully I will be able to get some shots tomorrow.

Christchurch and Departure.

Well, after a quick plane ride followed by a very long plane ride followed by another quick plane ride, we arrived in Christchurch, NZ. The long haul plane was pretty wonderful; wonderful service, enough leg room and lots of movies. The only problem was about halfway through the trip, in the middle of the night (we were all asleep), we awoke to some really crazy turbulence and the pilot came over the intercom to tell us to buckle up and sit down! But, just as soon as it started, it was over. We speculated later as to what it could have been; I thought we were pretty close to the ITCZ, so it could have been just really strong thunderstorms (for you non-weather folk, the ITCZ is located just North and South of the equator, where you get good thunderstorms.) But I think we decided it was a gravity wave (dissipating thunderstorm).
But we arrived, and I explored, and here are a couple pictures (click on thumbnails to see the whole picture. My camera takes amazing pics.):

This is the arts centre, which was amazing. Lots of handmade gifts and trinkets. And it is really close to our hotel. I will definately be back there upon my return.
And for those who were wondering, the "animal de tour" for this trip is the amazing Hugh (though a couple others managed to stow away in my luggage). And here he is in a tree in the downtown Christchurch.
The second day in town, we travelled back to the airport to go to the Antarctic Centre, where we tried on all of our gear that was issued to us and got briefed on the next days journey. This is a shot of the Antarctic Centre.
So the next day we woke at 3 AM and went back to the Antarctic Centre to begin our trip. We got geared up (I'll send pics later of what we look like in our gear), and went through security. After what seemed like ages standing around in enormous parkas and snow pants, we got on shuttles which took us to our plane. A US military C-17. No windows (except for one), very uncomfortable seats (I have a greater respect for the troops who have to sit in these all of the time), and we were off.
About three hours into our five hour flight, Jen told me to look out of the little window on the emergency exit. This is what I saw:
We had arrived over the ice pack. How cool is that?!
So we landed, and deplaned. It was cold, but nothing I haven't felt in Laramie before. What an amazing place. The weather was clear (Condition 3) but I am sitting in my office now and it is windy and snowy, though it is a balmy 7 degrees F. We are going to try to launch a ozone balloon today, but we have to keep a weather eye.
That's it for me. I'll have more exciting pictures soon.