June 10, 2016

A white, warm, and windy day

No flights today. Plane secured against the blizzard.

It has been snowing most of the day, the wind has picked up, and temperatures have been up to -5°C. In other words, we have been lucky to carry through several flight missions over the last week in very good weather conditions. Today we could by no means have received a Skier. In the caves, work goes on unaffected by weather, but surface work becomes difficult and even impossible under the present conditions.
Nevertheless, in the morning, a new outhouse (green tent) was installed, and work has been done on the main snow smelter, in Swiss camp, in the carpenters garage, and at the water vapour sampling site. With the wind hauling outside it was cosy to watch a movie in the unusually dark polar evening.

What we have done today:

1. Preparing placement of first beam for drill tower support in drill trench
2. No Twin Otter mission today due to crew rest and weather
3. Packing pallets with Nettles seismometer equipment
4. Cleaning main water tank for debris by vacuum-cleaning
5. Lowering camera into borehole at Swiss drill test site.
6. Continuing setting up the surface processes program
7. Upgrading camp from 3 to 4 stars by installing a second outhouse

Weather today: Mostly overcast, snowfall, snowdrift, and wind from altering directions. Temp. -5°C to -16°C. Increasing wind from 4 to 30 kt from S-E-W-S-W-NE. Visibility 1-5 miles and poor contrast, later whiteout.

FL, Anders Svensson