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Life at Halley this month has been somewhat calmer than last months blow of 60 knots. At the moment we are bathed in sunshine and slowly creeping our way back to 24 hour sunlight. Even at midnight there is still an orange glow in the south. The auroras when they do appear are barely visible now just a green smudge in the sky. With the increase in sunshine there has been a display of the various effects and sun pillars and halos have been more common along with miraging of the Macdonald Ice Rumples and the coast. They are caused by ice crystals in the air diffracting the light as it passes through. I would often see them in the morning during my stint on "nights" just before I headed off to bed. With the blows we have had a large amount of snow dropped, changing the appearance of the base. The platforms don’t stand as high in the air as they once did, tunnel entrances are now almost level with the snow surface, sledges get buried, fuel dumps are almost buried, but it does give the place an "untouched" look. All the containers are now in huge wind scoops together with the Garage and the Drewery.
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The ever increasing amounts of light and warmth has brought a whole new life to the base. Skidoos can be commonly heard running about outside and the first of the post winter trips have started to go out. The first of these consisting of Karl Farkas, Richard Turner, Gary Middleton and Tom Rieley headed out to the Hinge Zone. They enjoyed a couple of days of skidooing around Second Chasm and Baby Chasm. The Hinge Zone is an active crevassed area where the Antarctic ice sheet flows onto the sea to become the Brunt Ice Shelf.
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| The First Field Party preparing to leave. |
There have been regular trips to see the Emperor chicks down at Windy. The chicks are piling on the weight and a number of them are too big to fit in the parent’s pouches. A few of them are starting to wander about freely. In the large groups of adults this causes mayhem as chickless adults end up trying to dive on the poor chick to claim it. Usually the chick squirms out and legs it whilst the adults fight it out. The whole thing is hilarious to watch. Unfortunately a few of the chicks die and you always see a number of them lying on the ice where they fell. Some of the chicks are starting to gather in creches. Most people head down on the skidoos to the caboose there. From the caboose you can hear the colony and the chick's calls for food.
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The return of the sun has meant a busy time for the Met. Department - Cathy
Moore, Dan Carson and Elizabeth Hudd. They are continually carrying out
ozone observations to determine the size and depth of the ozone hole over
us. Only a few short weeks ago we were covering ourselves up for protection
against the cold, now we cover ourselves up for protection against the
UVA and UVB. As well as this they are still running their various experiments
of sampling pollutants in the air, taking snow samples etc.
Base work has been aplenty with the fuel sledges having to be moved because of incessant blows, refueling of the underground flubbers. This has been done using the new bulk fuel system, which is to replace some of the 1700 barrels which we use over the course of the year. This has been mainly done by Andy McConnachie, helped by Paul Sharp.
The end of the month brought Mark Ryan’s birthday. Unfortunately a number of people were off base at the time but by all accounts still a good night. Birthdays are quite a big event here. One saturday night we had a BBQ and we were trying to watch for green flashes from the sun. Occasionally these occur just as the sun drops below the horizon. Unfortunately we didnt see any that night but they really are spectacular when they happen.
Finally we would like to say hello to everyone at Rothera who last month lost one of their facilities to a fire. Everyone there must have been pretty devastated to have seen almost a years worth of research go up in flames. We are glad that no one got hurt.
Richard Borthwick - Halley Heat + Vent. Eng.
