Site Removals, Mirages and Lenticulars .. oh my!

It's been a very busy last week down here on the ice and as a result, we have managed to remove all the sensors from all four sites. The Lorne and Tall Tower sites have been completely removed, to include the towers, anchors and power systems. Phoenix has been completely removed with the exception of the power system and Willie still has the towers, anchors and power systems. We hope to get those removed next week. The Lorne and Tall Tower sites (the two requiring aircraft to reach) were removed on back-to-back days last Friday and Saturday.  Because of the two years of snow accumulation at each site, it meant some of the towers that were originally buried in only three feet of snow were now buried in five to six feet of compacted snow.

Lorne before removal. The Lorne Antarctic weather station (which was not removed) can be seen at the far left.

Tom Laurie, Tim Klar, and Thomas Nylen work to remove the instrument tower at Lorne.

The five-foot hole I dug to remove one of the tower anchors.

The remains of the site at Lorne after everything had been removed. The Lorne Antarctic weather station can be seen in the background.

Tall Tower site before removal.

The remains of the site at Tall Tower, with the actual Tall Tower in the background. I'm told this tower (at roughly 100 feet) is the tallest man-made structure in Antarctica.

Each site had roughly 2,500 to 3,000 lbs of equipment that needed to be returned back to McMurdo. Much of the weight came from the batteries used to power the site. Depending on the sites, there were as few as 22  or as many as 38 car-sized batteries. Because of the amount of weight it was originally planned for two Twin Otter aircraft flights to both Lorne and Tall Tower to get everything back to McMurdo. We were extremely lucky to instead be given two aircraft to make one trip to each site. 

The two Twin Otter aircraft at Lorne.

This also meant I could get some unique shots of the aircraft with the sites. We were the second aircraft to land at Lorne and the first to land at Tall Tower.

The Twin Otter landing at the Lorne site, as seen from our Twin Otter above. The precipitation shield and its shadow can be seen in the lower right corner.

A Twin Otter flies low past the Tall Tower site as the pilots scope out a spot to land.

We are in the process of getting all the sensors packed and ready for shipment back to the U.S. as we work towards the end of our time here. The New Zealand scientists are expecting a college class to join them for a few weeks and have offered to help us dig the remainder of the stuff out of the Willie site as a way for the students to experience "truly working" in Antarctica. We'll gladly take the help!

Because we are ahead of schedule, I've also had some time to enjoy some of the other sites around McMurdo. We had a couple of days of relatively calm winds, which meant great opportunities to view mirages across the ice shelf. Mirages here usually occur when you get cold, dense air close to the ground that can bend the light, causing some objects to appear taller than they are or appear inverted. Sometimes you can get multiple inversions that occur along the light path causing inverted (upside down) and erect (right side up) images to get stacked on top of one another, making the object appear unrecognizable. This phenomena is known as a Fata Morgana mirage.

In this mirage, also known as a superior mirage, the islands appear to be inverted.

In this mirage, the white line in the middle of the picture is both an inverted and regular image overlain of the ice shelf below it. This type of mirage is also known as a Fata Morgana.

This mirage is a bit of a mix of a superior mirage and a Fata Morgana. The island appears higher than it is but the image is also "smeared" somewhat near the base of the island.

Lenticular clouds have also been common recently, especially during some of our windier periods. Lenticular clouds are lens-shaped clouds that appear to stay in one place. They are commonly found over mountains or along mountain ranges.

This cap cloud is hugging the top of Mount Discovery.

A lenticular cloud forms over the summit of Mount Erebus. The more puffy cloud above it is likely a plume from the volcano.

Another view of the lenticular over Mount Erebus. An odd hook-shaped cloud can be seen above it.

More to come as I start catching up on my blogs. I can neither confirm nor refute that there may be pictures of penguins in an upcoming blog ....