Sunset

<> After weeks of pink skies and long shadows, the sun finally set on March 23. It was hard to know exactly when it set, because the refraction of the light through the atmosphere actually made it appear to be above the horizon long after it went down. Even after it had been gone for about a day, it did tricks like appearing high above the horizon again for a few hours at a time. The meteorology department had set up a pool where people paid 5$ to guess the exact time when the sun would set for good, and then whoever was closest won the pot. It became a hard one to call, and they ended up having to take back the prize and re-award it to a later guesser after the sun popped back up.

Lots of people who have wintered before said that this was the most beautiful sunset they had ever seen at the South Pole. We were extremely lucky to have very clear skies and good visibility on the horizon for the entire week of the most intense colors. There was an absolutely empty sky on the real day the sun set, and on the days following, when an eerie glow was visible swirling around the horizon throughout the day, we had sweeping cloud formations to be lit up with every range of pink, orange, and purple. People could be seen all over the station braving the cold temps just to get pictures of the sky or stand in awe of the sight of a sun setting over such utter barrenness. The color in the sky was a most welcome change to the ever unchanging white and blue we've seen since we landed here over 5 months ago.

The day after the sunset, the sky turned a darker shade of grey than the cloudy days we've been accustomed to, and a storm blew in. We had 25 knot winds for our first sun-less day. It's hard to imagine that when the clouds break, there won't be a sun behind them. In fact, it will be about 6 months before I see the sun again. To a girl who grew up going to the beach every day in the summer, that's a hard concept to grasp. I can't help but wonder what it will do to my spirits and my concept of time. I have become so used to seeing the light of day out the windows at every hour, even when I wake up in the middle of the night, that I can hardly imagine the reverse--waking up and going to work in complete darkness...heading in for lunch in complete darkness.

Through the clouds that have broken just this evening, an eerie greenish sky has appeared, just like the dusk after a sunset at home. The real treat and surprise of the day was an unusually beautiful and luminous full moon, hanging over the station that I first saw on my solo walk to the cryo barn today. It moved over the telescopes later in the day and was absolutely stunning. It felt like a symbol of the beauty to come in the long night, and I started thinking about the auroras that will be here in about a month.

Sunset

First week of Winter

Eighty-six people in the middle of the vastest space of white and blue I have ever seen, and the station starts to break.

Two days after we said goodbye to our last plane, I heard the bad news at lunch from one of the maintenance workers on station. Not many people besides upper management knew yet our sewage outfall was blocked. We were on the emergency sewage outfall, but we couldn't stay on it for long. Sewage is dealt with here by piping it into huge holes deep under the snow. The pipes are heat traced down to 200 ft so that the lovely waste doesn't freeze. Either the heat trace failed, or some other unforeseen blockage is going on, because the pipes are completely blocked at 74 ft, and the plumber's "snakes" we have for breaking blockages aren't coming anywhere close to penetrating it. The bad news is, the same thing happened 2 winters ago, and the station stayed on the emergency sewar outfall all winter. So it's too full for us to stay on it for too long. In the immortal words of our maintenance foreman, "then it's buckets for y'all." So there's a possibility we'll go down as the winter where everyone had to use buckets. What a claim to fame.

Just when news gets around about the sewar problem, another issue crept up, this one even scarier than the idea of peeing in a bucket for 8 months. I first got an inkling of what might be happening when I heard an unusual page over our station-wide all-call address system. It was the power plant mechanic. "Bill Henrikson, come to the Power Plant." This was strange for several reasons. One: Bill Henrikson is our top dog on station--people don't usually involve him in petty problems. Two: people don't usually give such direct orders over the all-call. They might politely request that someone call such and such a number, but a command like that was very odd. Three: the usually very relaxed power plant mechanic was doing little to hide the serious nervousness in his voice. And four: it was the POWER PLANT.... the thing that gives us heat and keeps us from freezing. About a half hour later, a nervous Bill Henrikson comes over the all-call and makes an announcement to science groups to turn off or secure their instruments because there's trouble with the power plant. "We probably won't lose power", he says, "but just in case. There could be a significant spike, drop, or change in frequency." Just then I hear a call for me over the radio. I have to call comms, where Bill has been stationed to orchestrate the power plant problem. When I call, I'm asked to go out to a far part of station and turn off the liquid nitrogen plant, which is eating up a lot of power. Apparently, the generator switch today didn't go so well and only the weakest one is able to run. They're going to put part of the station on an emergency satellite generator. I grab a snowmobile and head out. Sure enough, the station loses power a few minutes later. Luckily, this outage wasn't long, but the implications were a tad scary. If a failure like this could happen now, what if it happens when it's cold and dark?

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cool pic of last plane

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cool pic of last plane

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