Weather: Cold, clear, windy. Temperatures around -30F, windchill -60F.
Cold and getting colder. Winter is fast upon us now. People are clearing out of the station and outbound passenger lists are long. We’re getting quite a few flights each day now (hopefully) carrying pax in and (mostly) out, bringing in cargo and taking out waste.
It was neat watching the planes today; I saw one land and one take off, all within a few minutes of each other. I have a video, hopefully I can upload a reduced resolution version soon.
Station officially closes in 5 days. Most pax are out on the 13th, including the rest of the SPT crew.
Excitement for winter is growing… all we need now is the rest of our food for winter, and our shipment of end-of-year freshies (which is hopefully on the flight tonight!).
I am slowly uploading video chunks of the EHT optics install that we did a few weeks ago. I have to break the videos up so that I can upload them within the satellite pass. Hopefully in a few days I’ll have the whole ~hr long process uploaded and can share that… not too exciting, but perhaps interesting to see.
Allen's South Pole Winter-Over 2020 (+) 
Am I seeing this right? Do do the planes have ski-like gear rather than wheels? Have they ever slid off into a wrong direction?
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yes, they have hydrolic skis which can be used instead of the wheels for landing on the ice. No they generally don’t slide sideways, thankfully!
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