Well, it's hot for Antarctica. The snow and ice on the roofs and eaves of all the buildings is melting off into giant puddles. The roadways have a super slick surface of hard packed snow. The sun is bright and shiny; the sky is blue and the winds are almost non-existent. Conditions like this never last but while we have them, everyone is cheerful.....except for the people who are concerned about the thickness of our new new ice pier, which is used during annual vessel (goods, supplies, and vehicles) and tanker (fuel) offload.
At the end of last season, the new ice pier floated away in a storm. It's been spotted some 20 miles or so away from station, complete with electrical poles, quonset hut, and bollards for tying up the ships. Here is a photo taken from a helicopter of the ice pier lodged in annual sea ice.
The environmental team will work on removing all of the material out there on the sea ice but in the meantime, fleet operations have been working on making a new ice pier this winter and winfly. With our incredibly warm temperatures this year, the new new ice pier is only 9 feet thick but it should be 17 feet thick at this point in the season. We'll see how this one works out for us...
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