Seriously, what is up with these winds

P1010835

No new pic for this post, so I insert an old pic of a tent day from 2011!

Third tent day in a row for ANSMET! The wind sounded better than yesterday for a while there, but I just went out to take some measurements and it’s not looking great: 30 mph at -4 degrees F. I had a sad start to my morning: The propane tank for our stove ran out right after I made tea but before I could make breakfast. I had to drag my butt out of the tent into the blowing snow to switch it out before I could eat. Super sad face. Eventually we all went outside for a bit and did some camp chores like covering our skidoos to prevent them from becoming packed with snow (better late than never?), digging out our food boxes, and starting to consolidate our remaining food stores into fewer boxes. Brian is taking one for the team and is out there grooming the runway right now in anticipation of Johnny and Con’s scheduled departure this weekend. They are going to splinter off from the main group to do some recon work in Elephant Moraine to see if there might be good meteorite hunting over there. I wonder how this weather might affect their plans. In any case, we’ll see if we can’t get a few more meteorites before it’s time to go home. Yesterday marked four weeks in the field, and due to our slightly delayed start we have under two weeks left. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here so long! Now it’s time for our traditional 4 pm tent day Firefly viewing, but stay tuned for our next installment of Nerds of ANSMET: Jim Karner edition. Get ready–it’s gonna be good.

–Posted ……  (message was cut off,  probably Nina with editing by rph)