When the wind blows…
After a beautiful day on Tuesday with sunny skies and very little windy, today started out grey and windy and it kept getting windier and colder throughout the day.
By early afternoon, those of us working in the “warm” science tent decided that it was very poorly named as the heat generated by the stove was not enough to keep the cold at bay. What to do then? Move to the mess tent, which has a larger heater for Linda Balfoort, Jae Ill Lee and Arne Ulfers and plenty of hot water and warm drinks to help us get through the day!
We also learned a technique to warm up our hands from oceanographer Ollie Twigge, who has spent several seasons on the sea ice. It involved flexing our hands (to help increase blood flow) and then rapidly shrugging our arms up and down. We might have looked a little silly but it seemed to help! The wind blew quite a bit of snow around, so after it died down, Ollie and Jim Marschalek shoveled some back around the base of the science tent to provide us with better insolation.
We were also visited by 3 skua, who seemed quite interested in the drill tent, where good progress is being made on the hole through the ice shelf.
Scientists Ollie Twigge and Jim Marschalek pile snow up around the edges of the warm science tent after the wind died down a bit to provide better insulation.
Three skuas found our camp and visited the drill tent
