Weather is quite the celebrity around the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch the past two days. To hear more about yesterday's flight delay, check out my Capital Weather Gang post. Also, learn more about preparation for the flight south and see photos at Earth Gauge.
The following is a personalized version of the content that will be posted on Capital Weather Gang and Earth Gauge in the next couple of days. Please visit my traveling partner Dan Satterfield's Wild Wild Weather blog for even more photos, videos and in-depth coverage of our travel experience!
Jan. 6, 2010
3:00 p.m. (New Zealand time)
Boomerang: Return to the initial position from where it came.
I am currently in a U.S. Air National Guard C-17 “Pegasus” cargo jet flying over the South Pacific from Christchurch, New Zealand -- hub of the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program -- to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. I have to laugh. Upon waking up at 5:00 a.m. this morning, I had a gut feeling that today was not the day I would be going to Antarctica. After a 24-hour delay on our flight from New Zealand to Antarctica yesterday morning, I ignored this morning’s intuition, hoped for the best and went through the motions with the expected excitement. And now, after five hours in the air, we are going to boomerang -- that is, turn around and fly back to Christchurch because conditions at McMurdo are too bad to land on an airstrip made of ice. However, as you can see in the photo above, we are lucky enough to fly over the Antarctic continent before doing a u-turn.
The Trans-Antarctic mountains below our jet ... simply breathtaking.4:30 p.m
By this morning, the skies at McMurdo had cleared from a storm yesterday and visibility had improved. Forecast models suggested that the window would remain open through early afternoon, but hinted that conditions could again deteriorate. A few hours into the flight, the pilots warned us that there was a 50/50 chance we would boomerang.
In the off-chance that weather improved at McMurdo, the pilots waited until the last possible minute to decide whether or not to turn back. Peeking out of the few small porthole windows over the past few hours, we saw amazing landscapes of white sea ice and glaciers under the bluest of skies, until we came within 130 miles of McMurdo. We circled around McMurdo for one hour before the pilots received the report that the weather would not clear any time soon. The cloud ceiling was two low, visibility was too poor, and pilots would not have been able to distinguish the low cloud ceiling from the runway of ice about 2500 feet below.
Since November, the 2009-2010 austral (Southern Hemisphere) summer has had more boomerang flights and no-fly days than the past few years, all due to Antarctic weather. So, we are not the first to boomerang this season.
Antarctic weather has a mind of it’s own, and can get tricky to forecast. Without internet or satellite data, Dan Satterfield, Chief Meteorologist at WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama, and I -- both part of the Antarctic reporting team traveling this week -- had fun trying to guess what was happening. Even though travel delays and long flights have resulted, the past two days’ weather-related changes to our itinerary have been rather exciting for weather folk. I wish I knew more about Southern Hemisphere and polar weather!
Even though I have spent a week in transit to this astounding continent and have now seen it with my own eyes, it seems that the atmosphere is not yet ready for our arrival. It is a difficult feeling to fly over the ice without landing. Still, I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world to view this amazing scenery from the air!
Our trip will go on, despite the delays. If there’s one thing you can’t blame, it’s the weather.
Inside the C-17 jet.11:30 p.m.
After a 10-hour flight, we returned safely to Christchurch, but the stratus is still being blown in by easterly winds around McMurdo. We’re going to try again in several hours. Keep your fingers crossed that McMurdo clears by afternoon and we land safely on the ice ...
Update:
January 7, 2010
5:30 a.m.
We have a three-hour delay.
7:30 a.m.
Just kidding ... we have another 24-hour delay.
I really, really love weather. However, right now, our relationship is complicated. :)
Hi Ann,
ReplyDeleteMy daughter Elly is a freshman at Etown! She loves it! I am a childcare provider. One of my kids Dad is also at the South Pole doing Science work. He might have been on your plane. I know he had been delayed a couple of times in New Zealand. His name is Doug Whitely. If you see him tell him Big Kevin says Hi and have a great time down there!! His son Marc also says hi!