March 13th – Day 74 on Ice

Weather: Today the weather cleared up and we got some sunshine! The sun is down at 3 degrees elevation; there is only 1 week until sunset! Temps are rather warm today, -50F with lower winds than the past few weeks.

Here is another timelapse — this time from about 0430-5am from the large conference room, overlooking the Dark Sector. The changing clouds produce wildly varying Sun shape and brightness. If I were to speed up the clip it might look like a fireball crashing through the atmosphere! You can also tell that the road out to DSL is nearly completely blown over by snow and the walking path is now mostly soft snow drifts which are slow and slippery to walk through; much like soft little sand dunes.

Today will be a good day to grease the elevation gears, since the wind is low. We also learned on the conference call that we will be preparing for the EHT run starting March 21st — which is the day of sunset! To prepare for the observations we have to turn on all of their electronics, cool down their cryostat, and install their optics (remember the videos of the installation ( install1, install2, install3, install4)? — same thing, except now it’s close to 40F colder outside!).

In case you aren’t Facebook friends with me, I shared this video, in which I try to show somehow a little taste of what -100F windchill feels like. It also goes to explain a little about why it can get so hard to run outside; leaving a balaclava over your face helps to protect against cold and wind, but then I get claustrophobic and if I take it off, it’s a shock to the system and can be harder to breathe without it! (not to mention you’d get frostbite in less than 5 minutes).

Off to run! Gotta enjoy the low winds while they last!