New Storm Pic

Here is Larry Fox coming back inside. I have been in that spot before..it's miserable..and he looks miserable. This photo was taken by Chris Schwantes, our new met guy, who as out at work.

What does an Antarctic Summer Storm look like?

As I mentioned in the previous post I am recovering from pneumonia so I am working from Crary Lab in McMurdo today. Our guys are out at work in Condition 2 which means visibility is between 500 feet and 1/4 mile due to light falling snow and blowing snow kicked up by 35-50 mph winds. I just happened to catch our webcam image as one of guys has to go outside. So that's what a summer storm in Antarctica looks like. It's called a herbie down here, and it's considered a moderate herbie. A bad herbie would produce winds of 60-65+ mph and would not allow people to go outside.

Happy Thanksgiving and a Penguin

Happy Thanksgiving from Antarctica! The official Thanksgiving meal here is Saturday night (tonight) and all of the support people that work here get Saturday and Sunday off expect for the hard working dining hall people. CSBF doesn't normally take days off down here unless the weather shuts us down, and it did for half a day yesterday. Winds of 30-40 mph and blowing snow made it too dangerous to make the 40 minute drive to work. The weather improved in the afternoon enough to let folks go out for a while. It was bad today (20-30 mph) but just good enough to get to work. The weather has worsened out there now and is 30-40 mph, but will improve later today. We will have our Thanksgiving meal at 7:00 pm tonight in McMurdo. I will actually be staying in McMurdo today as I am still recovering from a bout of pneumonia. The folks at McMurdo Medical have taken good care of me as I go see them every couple of days and I am about 50% better now. I should be fully recovered by the time the weather allows us to do outside payload testing early next week.

A guy I work with was able to take a day trip tour to the west side of Ross island last week where there are some penguin colonies (penguins are rare in McMurdo and out at LDB). So here's a pic of an Adele penguin!

Measuring the winds--Taking the first PIBAL of the season

PIBAL is short for Pilot Balloon. It is the simplest, easiest and most accurate way to measure wind speeds at short intervals below 1500 feet above the ground. Since our flight trains (balloon plus parachute plus suspension ladder plus payload) are as much as 1000 feet tall at launch this wind measurement capability is critical for us. The concept of a PIBAL is simple. You inflate a small latex rubber balloon until it just is buoyant with an inflation nozzle of a known weight attached. Now that you have a known amount of helium in the balloon you know how fast it will go up when released. In our case that is about 600 feet per minute. We use an instrument called a meteorological theodolite to visually track the balloon (we keep in the crosshairs through the scope). This is part of what is called an ARTS unit (Automatic Readout Theodolite System).

When we first setup the theodolite we orient the instrument so that it shows an azimuth (direction) of 0 degrees when pointed to north, and an elevation (tilt) of 0 when pointed straight out. After we release the balloon we crank the azimuth and elevation so that we keep the balloon in sight. The theodolite automatically reads the azimuth and elevation for us and sends the data down a cable buried under the ice to a laptop in the building. We have a piece of computer software that then reads the azimuth and elevation every 30 seconds and computes the winds. We can do this because we know how high the balloon is every 30 seconds because of the known ascent rate. We know how high it is, and how much the azimuth and elevation have changed since the previous reading (or since the start) so simple math will let us calculate the wind speed and direction. The results are valid at the midpoint between the two levels. For example, the first level as seen in the last picture is at 150 feet above the ground. That's because the first reading is at 0 feet, and the next reading 30 seconds later is at 300 feet, so the mid point is 150 feet.

The first two pictures are of our other meteorologist down here with me, Chris. I am training him on how we forecast for balloon launches at CSBF. The next picture is a picture of the data.

Mt. Erebus (active volcano) and Pressure Ridges

We are lucky that we get to see some cool stuff at work and on the way to work. We go most days on Ivan the Terra Bus. We can see Mt. Erebus at work. It is 25 miles due north of us and is about 11,000 feet and is an active volcano. Pressure ridges that occur where the sea ice meets Ross Island are also cool. I took some of these pictures on the bus on the way to work. A fellow meteorologist of mine, Chris, took the closeup picture of Erebus venting.

A few pics at work (more later)

Here are a few pics from work at LDB Camp. It is about 8 miles from McMurdo out on the permanent sea ice. The first is an outside shot of the four main buildings, from left to right Payload 2, Payload 1, Rigging, and Telemetry. I will have pics of the payloads in a future post. Meteorology has an office in the Rigging building. That's the picture you see of me in the Brookside post with Bulldogs mouse pad.:

Some of the data displays in the Telemetry building:

Outside of the galley:

Brookside pics

Here are some pics I took holding some items from Brookside Middle School and out at work. Note the Brookside Bulldogs mouse pad in use at my computer at work! Go Bulldogs! Notice on the weather station data receiver it is 1F....nice spring day in Antarctica,

Discovery Hut in McMurdo

Discovery Hut is just to the southwest of McMurdo within easy walking distance. It was built in 1902 by the Scott Expedition and was also used by the Shackleton expedition. It is essentially untouched since 1917 and as you can see there is still a seal carcas outside and old material. There is still food inside as well. The cold, dry climate means it takes a long time to decay. Tours inside are given once a week. It is locked up outside of those times. Here are several pics with me in one of them:

McMurdo

McMurdo Station is the largest U.S. base in Antarctica. Around 1,200 people live here during the austral summer. We sleep here and eat breakfast and dinner here, but work at the LDB Camp (Long Duration Ballooning Camp) a Williams Field..we call it Willie for short. McMurdo is on Ross Island whihc is a volcanic island. That's why the soil is so dark. LDB Camp is on the permanent sea ice about 10 miles east of McMurdo.

The first pic is of the dorm where I sleep, Dorm 211:

This is one of the main streets in McMurdo:

A backside view of McMurdo:

Flying to McMurdo Station, Antarctica

You fly to the Ice with the USAP via three ways, a New York Air National Guard LC-130, a New Zealand Air Force LC-130, or a U.S. Air Force C-17. The C-17 is the best ride, a shorter flight (5 hours versus 8 hours), and a lot more room. These series of photos shows the process of getting in your USAP issued Emergency Cold Weather Gear (ECW) and pics from the plane. That's me in my lovely attire including the very fashionable "bunny boots". The last pic is a pic of the C-17 on the Ice at Pegasus landing strip on the permanent ice south of McMurdo. I also included a pic of Antarctica from the air.

Christchurch, New Zealand

In order to get to Antarctica with the U.S. Antarctic Program you must go through Christchurch. That is a good thing as far as I am concerned since Christchurch is a beatiful city full of very friendly people. It takes about 18 hours to fly from Houston to Christchurch via Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand. Here are some pictures of this beautiful city including the International Antarctic Center (USAP has a building in this complex), the Avon River, and Christchurch Botanic Gardens, the Christ Church Cathedral and the South Pacific Coast southeast of Christchurch.

Welcome

Hello to everyone, especially my family and friends and to everyone at Brookside Middle School and Wedgewood Elementary School. My name is Robert Mullenax and I am a meteorologist for the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. I am here in Antarctica with some of my fellow CSBF employees performing the launches of three large scientific balloons. Two of the flights will be science flights carrying aloft the CREAM and ANITA payloads (see links below to their pages) and a NASA test flight of a new balloon design. Here are the links to the CREAM and ANITA pages and to the main CSBF page. The CSBF webpage for the current camapign will be updated in the next 10 days or so:

CSBF:
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/
ANITA:
http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~anita/web/index.htm
CREAM:
http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream/cream.html

In the next few blogs I will have some pics from Christchurch (the gateway to Antarctica and base for the U.S. Antarctic Program) and from the first few days on the Ice.