No planes today either

Once again the weather is messing with us, but it's not too bad. Yet. For the third day in a row, less than ideal conditions here at South Pole and then at McMurdo have kept the Basler from returning here with more summer people. Today, at McMurdo they're having up to Condition 1 weather where the wind speeds are greater than 55 knots and visibility drops to less than 100 feet.


Down here, it's a beautiful day with clear skies, temps around -45F and winds around 10 knots.

It's work as usual and we're all taking advantage of the extra time to get things done before the masses arrive.

A fuel line has to be laid out from the fuel tanks in the arch off of the Dome, around past the geographic pole, around the station and out to the flight deck fuel pit. The hose gets rolled up on a giant spool and put away during the winter and then rolled out and laid down again during the summer. By the time the LC-130s start landing, scheduled to be happening a week from today, the hose will be all set to go to offload fuel from the planes, fuel that we use to run our generators and power everthing on station.

We'll see what the weather brings tomorrow...