By Lora Koenig It’s Thursday, December 1, and I am, yet again, sitting in our office, waiting. As the saying goes, “hurry up and wait”: This rings true in Antarctica. Last week, we were waiting for our radars to arrive on a plane from Christchurch. Usually there are about three flights a week from Christchurch to […]
Happy Sunday Around McMurdo
By Clement Miege Hello everybody! This is Clement, for my first blog post! Sunday, November 27 was our day off, so we went exploring the surroundings of McMurdo Station. At around noon, Michelle and Lora decided to go cross-country skiing on sea ice while Jessica and Randy went to Scott Base for some shopping at […]
Field logistics
By Michelle Koutnik It has been a busy first week in Antarctica! We planned to stay 10 days at McMurdo station so that we could complete all of our required safety training and prepare all of our food, shelter, and equipment for the traverse. There are many people in McMurdo who support our field research […]
Still Waiting
By Lora Koenig It is Sunday night, November 27, and I am sitting in our McMurdo office with Michelle. We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Here on the Ice we celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday, November 26, instead of on November 24 (the day it was celebrated in the United States). The reason for this is […]
Happy Camper School
By Ludovic Brucker Jessica, Randy, and I were scheduled to attend a 2-day Field Safety Training Program (a.k.a. Happy Camper survival school — the nickname makes it sound much more fun than its official title!) on Tuesday and Wednesday, 23-24 November. The training includes spending a night outdoors. I heard about the program months ago […]
We are in Antarctica!
By Ludovic Brucker Our military C-17 flight landed on 2.3-meter thick sea ice in McMurdo Sound. McMurdo has three airfields that are used at different times during the austral summer. The sea-ice runway is located a few miles from McMurdo, and it usually operates from October to December, until the sea ice begins to break. […]
More on the flight to Antarctica
By Randy Skinner Our shuttles to the airport were waiting for us at 4:30AM on Monday, 21 November, as we were scheduled to report at the Clothing Distribution Center at 5:00AM. As we arrived we were instructed to change into our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) clothes. So we found ourselves hanging out in Christchurch at […]
The Trip South
By Lora Koenig and Jessica Williams Hi, this is Lora. Sorry for not blogging for the past week or so but wow, we have been busy! On 17 November, I left my home in Silver Spring, MD, and spent 32 hours in transit before arriving in Christchurch, New Zealand. I flew from Regan National Airport […]
The rising costs of natural hazards
Some of the world’s largest companies suffered multimillion-dollar losses from flooding or drought in the past year, according to a November 16 report from The Guardian. Citing a study from the Carbon Disclosure Project, The Guardian stated that although too much or too little water can affect the profits of large companies, many of those companies […]
73X Faster Than a Speeding Bullet!
On the night of Nov. 17, 2011, NASA cameras captured two super-fast views of Leonid meteors. The first video below shows a Leonid from a NASA camera operated in Tullahoma, Tenn. Moving 73 times faster than a bullet fired from an M-16 rifle, the three-quarter inch meteor first started to burn up 71 miles above …