Here comes the sun …
Hi, everyone!
Just like every day, after getting up the first thing I look at on my office computer is the weather forecast. Today is Tuesday, 21 July 2020 (just to make it clear, since it usually takes a few days for the blog to go online), and tomorrow the sun is supposed to rise briefly for the first time. Seriously …? The weather forecast doesn’t look that promising. Although it’s going to get “warmer”, it’s also going to be stormy, with snow and clouds. So I think we can forget about seeing the sun. In Antarctica, you definitely spend a lot more time thinking about the weather than at home. Everything is planned according to the weather – a lot depends on the wind conditions. Strong winds mean rapid cooling outside, poor visibility or white-outs due to snowdrifts, constantly tripping and falling over, getting up again, battling against the wind …
Wherever you see the colour green on the screen it means wind, blue indicates a light breeze and white is almost complete calm … when you see “orange” it’s starting to get unpleasant (even though orange is my favourite colour) and “red” means you’d better hold on tight! “Purple” means it’s not that nice…
The forecast for the next few days shows a lot of orange, red and purple … Time to do some paperwork. I once also walked through the entire station eagerly snapping photos to show all the technical equipment here in the ice. I started in our garage on the second basement level. I wrapped up warmly, because down there the temperature is always minus 15 to 20 degrees. Here you get a good view of the hydraulically extendable supports/tripods, provided the extensive fleet of snowcats, Skidoos, Arctic trucks, “cherry pickers” and even a crane aren’t in the way. In the corners there are large red “crates” holding fire extinguishers. The crates are heated so that the fire extinguishers don’t freeze. One of the snowcats is parked over a pit that was carved out of the ice using a milling machine and chainsaw, so that vehicles can be worked on from underneath. Next to the snowcat there is a huge fan heater to help thaw out any parts that need to be worked on … a repair shop with somewhat difficult working conditions.
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Mario, our engineer, spends much of his time repairing and servicing the snowcats. A few days ago one of them broke down eight kilometres from the station, and Mario and Andreas, our electrical engineer, had to go out there and get it up and running again – at minus 45 degrees. The repairs took over five hours; everything takes longer here in the cold. Your fingers get clammy and numb, and you have to keep getting into the driver’s cab to warm back up … at shorter and shorter intervals. And the cold saps your energy, even when you’re not shivering. Your body is working hard without you noticing. But working together, the two of them managed to bring the beast back to life.
Recently, we’ve often had clear skies and relatively little wind, but with temperatures frequently below minus 50 degrees. During this time, we did a lot of outdoor work, such as sea-ice measurements and checking the trail to the observatory. Particularly when it comes to sea-ice measurements, you’re outside for long periods; we’re often out in the “fresh air” for ten to eleven hours without a break, and can cover a distance of about 80 kilometres on the Skidoos. A very special kind of adventure that’s guaranteed to send chills up and down your spine … but absolutely beautiful and impressive… There are a variety of adventure trips that you can buy, but this one’s not for sale … driving 80 kilometres across a rugged ice desert on a Skidoo with trailer at minus 35 degrees and boring holes in the ice with a two-metre long drill, all the time under the watchful eyes of the inquisitive penguins.
Even the station has to be refuelled from time to time. This involves hauling two tanks from the winter depot five kilometres away back to the station. But first the container has to be dug out of the ice. One of the tanks was frozen so firmly in the ground that one snowcat had to pull on it while a second pushed it from behind, before it finally budged … and that brings us back to: “in Antarctica a lot of things take a bit longer and only work when you improvise” …
Enough about the cold … back in Germany the summer sun is warming hearts and raising everyone’s spirits … I get a lot of photos of mountains, lakes, grassy meadows, flowers, honeybees and bumble bees, photos of suntanned people in shorts and T-shirts. I love seeing them all, but feel like an astronaut on an ice planet, because everything seems so far away …
But back to our tour of the station. I’ve digressed a bit after my peek in the garage. From the second basement level we go up to the first basement level. There we can find the stores of food, household articles and spare parts for the vehicles and the station, the snowmelt, the hydraulic control centre for the tripods, the hazardous material storage, the batteries, the oil and lubricants, and a heated workshop. The storage rooms are also partially heated. In the corridors the temperature is the same as in the garage. In the photo you can see the side skirts, which prop the station against the ice. Once a week, these are released – accompanied by a shudder that’s sometimes louder, sometimes quieter – and then pressed against the ice again to prevent the station from being warped, a procedure known as “station equalisation”. Afterwards, I always have the feeling that the balls on the pool table roll more smoothly for a few days …
Now we go upstairs to Deck 0 … where the entrance to the station and the goods lift can be found. Further up, past the boards where the summer guests and winter teams have immortalised themselves with autographs, mottos and stickers. After Deck 0, there isn’t Deck 1, but instead an interstitial deck, the so-called “hayloft”. Here there’s an electrical station, storage space for tents and things that are rarely used, as well as a fire-extinguishing system for our CHP units, pumps, various-size pipes for ventilation and all manner of fluids, helium bottles for the weather balloons, and much, much more … I always discover something new when I wander through here. However, it’s not easy walking because the ceiling is extremely low and you have to watch out that you don’t hit your head on a pipe or girder…
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Go up another two flights of stairs and you’ll reach Deck 1. Here you’ll find the changing rooms, workshops, the server room, various offices, the basketball hoop, and in the gallery, the OR with treatment room, the corridor with the CHP units (the station’s heart), the radio room – or more precisely – the computer and communication centre (the station’s brain), the galley and mess room (the station’s stomach) and the spacious lounge with sofas, pool table, television, bar, table football, electronic drums, guitar and electronic piano (the station’s limbic system). I didn’t bother mentioning the toilets …
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On up to Deck 2, no flagging … here you’ll find the bedrooms, the air conditioning system, the sauna, the laundry rooms with washing machines and tumble driers, and, in the southern part, the laboratories (a lab for EDEN and guest researchers, and one lab each for atmospheric chemistry, meteorology and geophysics). Today I took a picture of our geophysicist Noah while he was busy “picking”, the “technical term” for evaluating seismic data relating to earthquakes, like the one on 16 July in Papua New Guinea …
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The rooms on Decks 1 und 2 are air-conditioned at about 19 degrees; in the gallery the temperature is 5 to 10 degrees higher…
But Neumayer III goes up even further … On the roof is the red balloon hall. Up here the temperature is once again frigid. The inside of the balloon hall’s new hydraulic doors is covered in a thick layer of ice. There are two doors – one facing east and one facing west – that are opened when the balloons have been prepared, depending on the wind direction at the launch. Today I photographed our meteorologist Anna preparing and launching the weather balloons at a wind speed of 35 knots. A weather balloon is launched every day, and once a week we also launch an ozone balloon, which is three times the size of today’s balloon …
Outside on the roof 21 metres above ground there is a wonderful view across the ice desert … if the weather is good. But not today … so much for “Here comes the sun” …
Back to my original topic … and the last photo for today. The Polar Night officially ends tomorrow, on 22 July 2020. And the sun probably won’t break through the thick clouds … but twilight will once again banish the darkness for five and a half hours between 10 am and 3.30 pm. But here’s the thing …
We already saw the sun on 18 July 2020 … with a clear sky and low temperatures, there are often mirages: the icebergs appear three times as high and the containers five kilometres away look like small towers. On the 18ththe sun, which was below the horizon, was reflected above the horizon and enchanted us nine overwinterers at the Neumayer Station III with its dazzling beams …
Here comes the sun … yeah, yeah, yeah
Until next time, here’s sending our best wishes to the rest of the world, particularly to all our readers and our loved ones back home…
Readers comments (1)
Aaron Miller
Love reading and seeing pictures of your place! I copy you on WSPR digital mode all the time. Can we do some domino or olivia 8-250 or js8call some time? AC3DB in Pennsylvania