White out at Station 2

I am out at Station 2 today. We didn't do much this morning, and we were supposed to practice driving the Nodwell, which drives like a tank with levers.
After lunch, there was a skua just sitting outside on the ice by the galley. He was just sitting here, letting the wind (which was getting much stronger) go right over him. I got some good shots, and it's easier to see him against the white ice, rather than the brown dirt up in town.


You can see the blue ice in the forefront of the picture. They cut grooves in it and drag snow over it so you have some sort of traction. The ice is blue, though I'm not really sure why. Right now, the ice is about 7 ft thick. We have to make sure there are no small rocks out here, because the sun heats up the rock and then that heat melts the ice. The fire department used to do something called 'crack spackling' which was when the firefighters would spray water onto the ice to seal up cracks. Then fleet ops would come out to smooth out the area, groove it, and drag snow into it. We don't do that anymore; fleet ops does all the spackeling now.

So the weather report was that we were supposed to get higher winds and light snow this afternoon getting slightly worse into tonight. The wind started really picking up just after lunch, but it didn't start blowing snow till around 2pm. Then it really started getting bad. At one point, I was sitting in the bubble and literally, one minute I could see the Herc sitting on the apron, about 500 yds away, the next minute I couldn't see it at all. A few minutes later I went out to the bathroom, and on the way out, I could hear the Herc that had just landed, but couldn't see it at all.

Currently, we are under Condition 1 out here, and the Tower crew is trapped until the weather improves enough to leave. I have some good video, but you can't see it. My Lt checked the wind speeds, and at one point about an hour ago, the wind was registering 104 mph on Arrival Heights, and 71 mph in town. It's blowing hard enough that it's very hard to walk, and when I tried to talk while taking a video of the blowing snow, you can't even hear my voice. It's unreal. So yeah...leftovers for dinner tonight here at the galley. I also had to leave my camera on so it could dry out and thaw from being outside in the blowing snow.

In other news, they canceled the C-17 due in here this afternoon, due to bad weather. It's a good thing...by the time they landed we were in whiteout conditions. We're wondering what they're going to do with the 2 other LC-130's who left for the Pole this morning. They boomeranged due to bad weather at the Pole, and now they can't land here. Kinda sucks, so we're not sure what will happen in that situation.

I also got a phone call today from the captain, telling me that I was being bumped from snow school on Friday. No big deal, I figure I'll get a slot later on in the season. So I emailed the woman in charge of hut guides, who needed one for Friday, and told her I would be able to do it. Then the captain calls back and says I'm back on for Friday, so I had to email her back and tell her I couldn't make it after all. Bloody schedules.

So now we're sitting in the station, watching National Treasure, and listening to the wind howling outside. It's actually quite impressive.