I Can See Myself From Here: Marilyn and Carolyn Weather Stations

On January 23rd, I was fortunate enough to be selected for flight out to Marilyn and Carolyn Weather Stations

located out on the Antarctic Ice Sheet. I went with Dr. John Cassano who is here with the science group O-283. They are based out of a Colorado University and they have several automated weather stations (AWS) located on the continent in various places- there are approximately 80 stations. This is the first time I've flown in a twin otter plane which was a lot of fun.

This picture is of Williams Field Airfield as we are departing.

This is the first weather station location- Carolyn. This is what the view looks like all 360 degrees around you as you turn in a circle. Flat wind scoured snow and ice as far as the eye can see. It's a beautiful and serene thing to see but also very desolate and eerie at the same time. It can be very disorienting. We actually had to fly around for awhile looking for the stations because they moved about 1.5 miles since the last time they were visited and GPS marked, which was about 3 years ago.

This is what the actual Carolyn weather station looked like when we got there- we moved several of the things up on the tower so that all the equipment doesn't get buried before the next time they are out there. It takes readings for temperature, wind, humidity (that must be near 0 most of the time), and it transmits all that information via satellite. It also measures snow accumulation and stores that information so that when the grantee goes out to visit they can download that info to a computer.

This is the twin otter plane we flew in.

There were 2 other guys along with myself and Dr. Cassano that went out to help with reconfiguring the weather stations. This pic is of the 3 of them assessing what needs to be done to the station.

I was wandering around taking pictures and this is my footprint path in the snow. It was a silly sight to see this trail of footprints going in circles all by myself while I took pics.

This is Randy and Shawn, the pilots, on top of the plane- I think they were applying something to the props to keep them from freezing or something like that.

After we were done at Carolyn, we flew over to Marilyn. This site had equipment buried under the snow by about 4 feet, so there was digging to start with. That's me in my green coat again digging out the snow. The pile of snow around this kept getting deeper and deeper.

We had to add an additional tower to the current one and then move all of the equipment up to the top. I volunteered to spend my time up that top of this hooking up all the equipment which was fun. The other guys weren't real keen on climbing up it. I spent over an hour up there attaching things and dropping wires down and hooking things up.

Success!! All finished and everything works correctly!! This is the 4 of us that were out working on it.

Another funny story about these weather stations- I asked how they got their names, and John explained that several of them are named by the PI for this project who often named them after girlfriends at the time. (The PI is not here this season- he's stateside.) He is in his 80's now and I suppose has had quite a few (now ex-) girlfriends as there are so many stations with the different names. I believe Marilyn is named after his sister, and Carolyn was possibly the secretary in the department for while. There are also sites named after members of the grant groups family and friends, etc.

The views from the plane on the way back were amazing. We flew over the Trans-Antarctic mountains.