Dec 19th – Day 39 at Pole

Weather has been extremely warm; we almost got to positive temperatures!! Temps now hovering around -18C (-0.4F)… The winds are rather high, though, with sustained 10 m/s winds (something like 20knts). According to our meteorologist we may even hit record warm temperatures over the next few days — nice for people, but not so nice for microwave telescopes.

We got an LC-130 plane in last week! First one in 2 years… which is a crazy thought. It brought some “emergency” food supplies to station as well as a bunch of SPT cargo. It was also some funny timing as the Air National Guard crew went to the ceremonial pole to take photos at the same time as some tourists that were here. Due to covid protocols they had to stay distanced, but it made for a funny picture of a queue for photos of the pole. Image that, coming to the South Pole and having to wait in line to see the pole!

There was also a big station event this weekend — the 4th First Annual South Pole Head Weighing Competition. Oh yea. big deal. This is an event where people dunk their heads in a bucket of water and measure the displacement (the weight of the water). So it’s more a volume measurement than “weight” per se, but still. Head weighing. Who knew it could be so much fun. There is a competition to see who has the largest and smallest head, and also a team competition where teams of people attempt to guess their combined weights; and whoever gets the closest wins. I was way off… I guessed 8lbs and was somewhere around 9.8 lbs; which turned out to be extremely average. So no prizes for me.

We have a busy week coming up, with the arrival of our cargo including hard drives and motor oil for the telescope. We will also be doing some EHT test observations later in the week.

Next weekend is our Christmas celebration and the annual Race Around the World, which I’m helping to setup and will be running (2.5 mile course that goes around the geographic pole). Should be fun, and hopefully there will be people taking pictures that I can steal 🙂