Hello, everyone!
The flag’s been taken down on the airfield and the station has once again been prepared for the approaching severe-weather front. All the vehicles – except for two caterpillar trucks, just in case we need them – have been returned to the garage below the station, the massive entrance cover has been hydraulically sealed, and we’ve even done our best to fill the cracks between the station and garage with packed snow. Everyone grabbed a scoop or shovel and pitched in as the winds continued to rise. For the next few days, only the most urgently needed work will be done outside, like refilling the snowmelt and doing upkeep on the observatories and the EDEN greenhouse. But there’s plenty to do indoors: various pieces of equipment in need of maintenance, answering interview questions, and team meetings, not to mention a group cleaning day (the station’s interior dimensions are ca. 68 metres by 24 metres and it’s home to 2100 square metres of heated areas) …
On Sunday the storm worsened to gusts of 44 knots. Starting at 40 knots, the station vibrates a bit, a sensation that takes some getting used to. Outside, the drifting snow swept over the roof of the garage, and the flags on the snowmelt took a beating. For the past three days, an emperor penguin still in moulting had been hiding in the lee of the containers and station library, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the wind blew away the last of its old feathers and it headed off toward the ocean …
Every day we make our rounds through the station. At the garage entrance, we can see that the drifting snow has managed to penetrate a number of small holes around the cover. If you stand under the cover, you can feel on your face how the wind blows snowflakes through the tiny cracks. We use snow to seal the cracks. The mounds of snow in the driveway don’t seem to have grown any higher … at least so far.
Like on every other first Sunday of the month, Roman and I perform telemedicine tests with Reinkenheide Hospital in Bremerhaven. We hook up the recording cables to our test subject (our cook Wanderson), connect a simulated lung (balloon) to the anaesthetic machine, and all the resulting data is transmitted to the hospital’s senior physician. The connection is good and they receive all the data … it’s nice to know that, if there ever is an emergency, we’re not entirely on our own. And that Wanderson is apparently fit as a fiddle … ;-)
Last Wednesday night the weather improved a bit, which encouraged me to take one of the skidoos and scout the local landscape, heading toward Atka Bay. I was curious to see how it had changed. Every time I go there, it looks different … so much for everything being white, just snow and ice … there may be open water one day, and the next, you’ll find thick ice floes that spin around and fit together like some giant game of Tetris, or icebergs drifting by, then it’s back to thick pack ice all across the bay, stacked up in hummocks … and in between you might see Weddell seals lazing about on the ice, predatory seabirds (skuas) circling overhead, solitary emperor penguins sliding across the ice on their bellies, and every now and then, Adélie penguins, who waddle about as hyperactively as if they’d forgotten to take their Ritalin …
There’s so much to see, experience and do … so don’t worry; we’re in no danger of getting bored. It’s more like there aren’t enough hours in the day …
See you soon … and in the meantime, we’re sending our best wishes to the rest of the world, which we think of fondly.