The First Sunset of the Year
Hi Rebecca,
I have never felt any earthquakes. There is an active volcano on the same island as McMurdo. There are frequent quakes, but they are very minor, and cannot be felt. McMurdo is on the McMurdo Sound which connects to the Ross Sea.
The water is just a few hundred feet from where I work and live. I have seen some whales blowing out air just off shore. There are a few breaks in the ice where they can surface. The open water is still a few miles out. There are no polar bears here, they live in the Arctic.
There is a store where you can buy snack food, if they have it. Most of the food arrives on a ship in February, so we have good stocks now. Until the ship arrived, the only soda you could buy in the store was Diet Mountain Dew. Many times the food is past the expiration date before it arrives here. It is not uncommon to see food several years out of date. Our meals are served in cafeteria style, and the food is good. The menu varies from day to day.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi May,
It is fun being here in Antarctica. I am in McMurdo, which is the largest station on the ice. The South Pole station is much smaller and about a 3 hour plane ride from here.
The earthquakes here are very mild, and you cannot feel them. They are detected by the science equipment monitoring Mount Erebus, the volcano on the same island as McMurdo.
There are no bears here, in fact there are no land animals except a few flies that have no wings because they would freeze. I guess they should call them walks instead of flies. I have never seen them, but I hear they live in the Dry Valleys on the mainland.
I do not know if there are sharks in the waters here. The fish here have to be able to survive in water that is below freezing, so they have antifreeze properties in their tissues. They have an aquarium here with some of the local sea creatures on display. The largest fish I have seen there is an Antarctic Cod. I hope someday you get a chance to come here.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Tammy,
I am doing fine. We do not get a lot of snow here. The area where McMurdo is built is mostly rock. Out of town, there is a lot of ice and snow, but it has built up over many centuries. Most people think of a desert as a hot sandy place. A desert is an arid place with little moisture
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Johnnie,
You must be Johnnie Bennett. It is cold, windy and dry here. I have not had a lot of spare time. I have been working very long days, so I have not had much spare time. We have lots of activities for spare time. There is a library, a bowling alley, a hobby shop for models and other crafts, video tapes, and some real TV.
There are earthquakes from the volcano nearby, but they are very mild, and cannot be felt. In the office next to the one where I work is the Mount Erebus Observatory. There record the readings from Seismic sensors around the volcano. This time of year, there is nobody there all the time, but a technician comes in daily to change the chart papers. Yesterday I saw the tech changing the paper, and went in to talk. On the chart was a big quake that happened Saturday. It lasted for about 17 minutes, and was recorded on all the sensors. The tech said it was big enough to feel if you knew it was happening. It was the largest one I have seen yet. Most are very small quakes that average six quakes per day.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Natalie,
The food that I have had that is out of date did not taste bad. The temperature now is 16 degrees. August will be the coldest month with lows of 35 below. I heard you have been getting a lot of snow this winter. I hope you have been having fun playing in the snow. I know Zac has had fun this winter.
The only animals I have seen are penguins, seals, and skuas. Skuas look very much like sea gulls with heavy coats. If the ice ever moves out of the McMurdo sound, we should see more penguins and whales. There are no land animals or plants that I have seen. There is a place called the Dry Valleys that has a few mosses and some flies without wings. I have not been there, and have not seen either.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Tierra,
Mrs. Barrett must have been telling you about the time I went to Snow Craft school. It is a camping trip where the instructors teach us how to use the equipment in emergency bags. The bags are carried in the helicopters and vehicles used when we travel out of town. Most of the time I can get a warm cup of coffee. That morning I had to melt snow to make the coffee, and it was very cold and windy. Ice formed on the outside of the cup from where the snow was hitting. It was warm for the first few sips, but got cold very quickly. I still drank it, even if it was cold.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Marlyn,
I am very glad to see the letters from the kids. I am sorry it has taken a few days to reply, but I have been working some very long days and weeks.
Dave
Hi Lenita,
There are no polar bears here, they live in the Arctic. I have seen a famous teddy bear named Bishopdale T. Bear. He is originally from New Zealand, and has traveled around the world. I was honored to meet him, as he was visiting here a few weeks back. I am sure you will hear more about Bishopdale.
There are several old volcanoes in the area. The town of McMurdo is built on volcanic rock on Ross Island. There are some inactive volcanic cones on Ross Island, but Mount Erebus is still active. It is about 25 miles away, and over 2 miles high. It must have melted the ice when it was active enough to build the cone. It erupts from time to time. There is a phonolite bomb fragment in the display case of the lab where I work. It is a piece of a 2 meter bomb erupted from Mount Erebus during a set of explosive eruptions in 1984.
When the wind is calm, there is a column of smoke rising from the volcano. One of the scientists I met a few months ago told me there are several lava pools in the cone, the largest measuring 50 meters across. A few years ago there was a lot publicity about Dante the robot. They tried to walk the robot down into the volcano.
It is very hard to get used to the 24 hours of daylight. On February 21, that will come to an end. We get our first sunset of the year. That means the daylight will get shorter, and it will get much colder. It was 7 degrees this morning when I got into work, and very windy. I would estimate he wind was about 40 to 50 mph on the hill where the station is located. I would not say I like that kind of cold.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Lauren,
I am doing fine. The largest quake I have seen was last Saturday. I looked at the chart recording the quake, and it lasted for about 17 minutes. The technician there said it was large enough to feel if you knew it were happening. The investigator for the Mount Erebus Observatory told me that the quakes average 6 per day. Most all are so mild that they cannot be felt.
It is very unusual to have 24 hours of sun. The sun is just around in a big circle in the sky. It is getting lower in the sky every night, and in a few days we will have the first sunset of the year. In a few months the sun will never rise above the horizon for months.
I have not fallen in a cravasse, nor have I met anyone who has fallen. I have heard stories, and seen photographs of rescues. The Snow Craft school I attended taught us about the crevasses. The trails here are marked by experts that know how to spot them. The training was fun, and we camped on the Ross Ice Shelf. When I was at the school I wore several layers of clothes. For a normal workday, I wear the same clothes you would wear on a cold day. Most of my work is inside. If I have to travel a long way, or work outside then I bundle up.
The snow is very dry when it falls. We get very little snow. The most I have seen is about 1/4 inch, but the weather records indicate we can get about 6 inches in a month's time. The deep snow and ice is created over many years of accumulation. The snow on the ice shelf where we camped has melted and packed over the years. We used saws to cut blocks of snow and pile them to make walls to keep the wind away. If I were to drop the block, it would break into tiny grains and feel like sand. I could not make a decent snow ball.
McMurdo is the largest US research station in Antarctica. In the summer there are over 1000 people here. Most have left, and the last plane leaves February 21. There will be some early flights in August, but the normal flights do not arrive until October. During the winter, there will be about 250 people.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
Hi Erin,
Yes I have had fresh food lately. This time of year they bring fresh eggs , fruits, and vegetables in by plane. That will stop tomorrow as the last plane leaves for the season. Most of the fresh fruits come from New Zealand which is about 2300 miles away, so Kiwi fruits are very common.
I live in a big dormitory. It has walls about one foot thick for insulation. I believe there is a picture of the dorms on Ms. Weeg's web pages. Possibly Ms. Barrett could show them to you. I am attaching pictures of the dorms and Crary Lab where I work most of the time. Crary is the big building in the middle of the picture.
I had some frostbite many years ago when I was a kid. It was not bad, but I
hope it never happens again.
My beard freezes quite often here, when moisture from my breathing freezes
on my beard. It makes it stiff
and heavy.
There are some portable heaters, but we did not use any when we went camping. When we were camping, we could not have a campfire. There are no trees here, so there is no place to gather wood. We were on the Ross Ice Shelf, so if we built a fire on the ground, it would just sink into the ice and snow, and put itself out. We used camp stoves for cooking.
There are no snow rabbits, in fact there are no land mammals. There is no good soil here, we only have volcanic rock in this area. It is not a good idea to import soil to grow things, as they do not want any foreign species imported. Soil can contain seeds, spores and bacteria. Hydroponic growing does not use soil. Instead of soil, the plants grow in water supplemented with nutrients. I have not been in the greenhouse here, but I hope to visit there sometime during my stay.
Thanks for writing,
Dave
David Hess NK3T