Condition 1!
Monday, October 13th, 2003The weather hit condition 1 today. It was pretty mild, actually. I have sen weather worse in NH to be perfectly honest, but never in the spring time i guess. I have little doubt it can get much worse. It was rated a condition 1 because it meet all the criteria of temperature, visibility and sustained wind speeds. I am not sure what those numbers were exactly. When I took my lunch break just before they declared con 1, I watched the visibility go from about 25ft to about 10 ft in 20 minutes. I couldn’t bein to guess the wind speed but it was a sustained gale to be sure. Yesterday we had a considerable amount of snowfall, considering we live in the worlds largest desert. When the wind picked up and started blowing the snow around visiblility decreased inversly and exponentially. Out the galley widow it looked a lot like it did up at Mt Hutt in NZ. Here’s that picture again:
So, they declared condition 1 about 5 minutes before lunch and most of the tradespeople were still all out at their shops. They had to be escorted by the fire department to building 155 (the main building) for lunch. It is back down to condition 2 now. Not as much wind but still a lot of snow blowing around and drifting.
Today, I took the first part of a 4 hr food handler’s course. They are pretty tight about sanitation considering how relativly microbe-free this land is. For the better I guess. Mostly stuff I already knew but at least now we know where we both stand; pluss I got a meat thermometer. I have been looking everywhere for one in Italy but can only find the $150 digital ones. We are supposed to take a simmilar course from the region of Valle d’Aosta for the license to run the hut. We keep putting it off. Hopefully this one will be somehow transferable.
Tomorrow is monday night football. A few of us get together and play a videogame version of football. At first I was disappointed that we didn’t have a TV in our room but after watching it a few times in the lounge I don’t mind so much. The movies are really bad “B” type movies and the sports are old rebroadcasts from last week. Plus, I am into Formula 1 racing which I know there will be no chance of seeing here.
My computer terminal dosen’t have a functional drive so no real pictures today. Let us know how it is going in your part of the world. ‘ till next time…
Day off!! The first one since we've been down here. Yesterday after work I went for a walk above town. Mcmurdo sits down in a sort of basin surrounded by hills made up ... 
This sunset lasted from about 7pm to some time around midnight. The sun just kind of skirts the horizon and the Royal Society Range in the distance. Probably one of the ... 
Luke