Still storm bound. We have blue skies, but the 45 MPH winds have surface snow blowing with a fury. Horizontal visibility can be 100’. The forecast says we may get out in 48 hours [on Friday], otherwise we’ll be stuck until Monday since the Guard won’t fly on the weekend.
The igloo remodel went well. I caved the flattening roof in and used the intact walls to build a new structure. Soon into the project the weather went to crap, so I took a short cut and capped the room with a flattened cardboard box. It has worked exceptionally well and the dark roof seems to be transmitting some solar radiation since it is now much warmer inside the igloo [up to -10c]!
We have word that chaos has ensued in town. Every year at the end of January the NSF brings in an ice breaker to create a path for the tanker ship and container ship to access the floating ice pier. They off-load a year worth of supplies for the facility and take back all the trash to the states.
This year the ice pier never froze to a safe thickness, so the plan was to bring in the Army Corps of Engineers to build a temporary pontoon bridge for the offload. Now we hear that the ice breaker is stuck in a South American port with unknown mechanical issues, the tanker ship is sitting at the ice edge several miles from McMurdo and the container ship is at Port Hueyneme with possibly disabling mechanical issues.
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