Buildings of McMurdo Station et al

Above: Big gym and Helo Hanger

Carp Shop

Ballfield Compressed Gas Storage

Ballfield

Ballfield

140 - Post office, central supply

120 and 121 - supply - food, beverage, electrical, etc. Band room.

Ballfield

Dorms and storage

Transantarctic mountains with glaciers flowing off the polar plateau

Dorms and storage

MCM vehicles

Unheated storage

Ballfield

More ballfield

Vehicle Maintenance Facility 143

Waste Barn 185

MCM vehicles

MCM vehicles

VMF

Fuel Storage

120 and 121

Skua

Dorm 201 - the Firefighter Dorm

Balloon Inflation Tower

Supply warehouses and comms shop

Chapel

JSOC - the NASA/ internet security/server building

Dorms

MacOps - weather and field camp communications - sat phones, HF radio, etc

Gerbil Gym - aerobic equipment

Winter Film Festival, Continued

Discordia - Concordia

Daydream - Swoya - Japan GOOD

Eradication - Macquarie - Austraila GOOD

Ride to DDU - Dumont Durville - France

Blazing Skies - Mawson, Australia VERY GOOD!!!

Dancing Doll - Maitri - India

Map Art - KEP - South Georgia

Watchman - Halley - UK

It's The Thought That Counts - MCM

DD - MCM

Annie Way But South - Mawson - Australia

South Pole - Smoke and Fire

Sword Saint - South Pole

The NoLight Zone - MCM

Castaway - South Pole

The Beaten Path - South Pole

Recapture the South Pole - Troll Station-Norway Dronning Maud Land

Palmer Sounds - Palmer

Big Brother - Scott Base, NZ

Mouthwash - South Pole, USA

Julia - MCM

Proximity - MCM Fire Department

Who's in the Galley - MCM

Catch U Chicken - MCM, by Dan and Karen Simas

Cold One - MCM, by Shayne Dombroski

Fix My Truck - MCM

Magagalinus Kergelensis - Kerguelen- French

Dreamy Mechanic - Maitri Station - India

The Little Things - Mawson, Australia

Eggbert - Halley Base

2010 Winter Film Festival, Continued

From Rothera With Love, Winner of Best ScreenPlay Award. Rothera UK.

Mission Unmoppable, Winner of Best Use of Elements, From King Edward Point Base, UK

Row, Row, Row - MCM

Today's Wx Forecast

11 September 2010
MCMURDO WEATHER FORECAST INFORMATION
THIS INFORMATION IS FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
AND IS LIMITED TO ACTIVITIES SPONSORED OR RECOGNIZED
BY THE UNITED STATES ANTARCTIC PROGRAM
REGIONAL WEATHER SUMMARY: A bit of fair weather for today with increasing clouds toward evening and snow overnight into tomorrow morning as a low pressure system dips down from the north... Of course, snow tonight means the blow tomorrow with gusty winds returning for Sunday brunch.
Today
11 September
Tonight
Sky: Cloudy
Visibility (mi): 1/4-2 in snow
Wind (kts): NW-NE 8-16
Min Temp: -31ºC/-24ºF
Min Wind Chill: -47ºC/-53ºF
Sky: Mostly to Partly Cloudy
Visibility (mi): 1-3 in snow becoming 1/4-1 in blowing snow by mid morning
Wind (kts): NE-E 10-20 becoming 14-30 by mid morning
Max Temp: -26ºC/-15ºF
Min Wind Chill: -46ºC/-51ºF
Tomorrow
12 September
SCOTT BASE 24-HR TEMPERATURE High: -34ºC/-29ºF Low: -42ºC/-44ºF
ASTRONOMICAL DATA
Sunrise: 0804L
Sunset: 1739L
YESTERDAY’S EXTREMES
Maximum Temperature: -26ºC/-15ºF Minimum Temperature: -30C/-22ºF
Peak Wind: 44 knots Lowest Wind Chill: -55ºC/-67ºF
Forecaster: Mike/Christine
Sky: Partly to Mostly Cloudy
Visibility (mi): Unrestricted
Wind (kts): NE-E 7-18 becoming NW 6-15 afternoon
Max Temp: -27ºC/-17ºF
Min Wind Chill: -44ºC/-47ºF

How Antarctica’s Scientists Chill Out: With a Rugby Match on the Ice

from Discovery website:

(a few of our firefighters played in this game, including two who defected to the Kiwi side).

New Zealand’s dark uniforms have earned their national rugby team the moniker “All Blacks.” But here in frosty Antarctica, the Scott Base players prefer to call themselves the “Ice Blacks.”
Like the national team, the Ice Blacks begin the match with a traditional posture dance known as the “haka.” In a staggered formation near the middle of the field, the players slap their thighs and pound their chests, yelling wildly in the native tongue of the Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.
The haka is loud and impressive, but while it is meant to intimidate, today’s haka seems to have the opposite effect on the Americans.
“I’ve been pumped for this for months,” says Leard, a 29-year-old carpenter from Waltham, Massachusetts. “It’s cool to have the haka done to you.”
Preparation for the match began months earlier, when McMurdo’s summer shift began to arrive near the end of August. Days in Antarctica are a little unusual. The sun never sets in the warmer months—which last from September to February in the southern hemisphere—and the entire continent is plunged in darkness in winter, which prevents flights to and from the ice.
Rugby practice for the Americans began in mid-October, with weekly Sunday drills. “Half our guys didn’t know how to play the game,” Leard says. “They’re used to high school football, used to forward passes, which aren’t allowed in rugby.”
Legend holds that the New Zealanders are so highly skilled that they don’t need to practice in advance of the match. But in recent years, the Americans have managed to put some points on the board by scoring a few “penalty goals”—free kicks worth three points each—motivating the New Zealand team to prepare just a little.
“Anything worse than a blanking is an embarrassment,” says Albert Weethling, a 49-year-old water engineer who is New Zealand’s captain. “We’ve done very well historically.”

Winter 2010 Pictures

Some of the winter's loveliest aurora pics- (brazenly looted from Fleet Ops Loui's IDrive postings. Thank you, Louis) et al

Red 4 vs The Big Winter Fire

Photos of a fuels truck that caught fire on the Ice Runway work site. Courtesy of ice runway workers and a quick-thinking Crary worker who used a camera and the telescope. (Photo sequence starts at the bottom)

The fire was off-road and out of town, so crews responded in grip-track-equipped Red 4 and Ambo. Ambo's crew attempted to slow down the fire with their handheld extinguisher. When Red 4 arrived on scene, the handline was pulled. Unfortunately, a faulty solenoid prevented the foam valve to the handline from opening, so the crew only had drychem to work with. (Red 4 uses 4 large bottles of compressed nitrogen to produce CAFS/drychem mixed or separate at the tip. It seems like a simple, workable system, but frequent pesky leaks of highly corrosive Arctic foam throughout the system play hell with all the sensitive electronic bits and brass fittings. The truck is only a few years old and 0-for-2 on fires now). Application of drychem from 20' away lent a lovely purple hue to the smoke, as seen below. Final extinguishment was achieved by falling back on the reliable old technology of shovels and cold, dry, snow.

In other news, the week was made pleasantly eventful by the simulataneous breakdown of nearly all our ARFF equipment. Red 4 was felled by the aforementioned CAFS system failure. We will now get to test and trouble-shoot all of the Renegades. Red 6 succumbed to a mysterious nitrogen-tank leak, radio failure, and inability to start in the morning. Red 3 committed hari-kari in three different ways and left its lifeblood pooled in an oily, reddish puddle in the snow. Apparently it had a frozen air intake, frozen fuel filter, blown transmission, and maybe a couple other things I've forgotten, all at once. It now resides at Station 4 (aka the Vehicle Maintenance Facility). Red 2's generator has developed a severe fuel tank incontinence issue and the truck has been frozen a couple times. And the grand failure, discovered by none other than myself (this means I get credit): Red 1. The entire 110 electrical system in the truck's package has been fried due to it inappropriatedly being powered by a three phase power supply at the airfield. It needed 2-phase.

On the plug-in lineup, Red 5 shivers alone and contemplates the miseries of its brothers.

Winter Film Festival- The News- Casey (Australia)

Winter Film Festival - Dr Strange and the Incredible Machine - Dumont D'Durville (France)

Winter Film Festival - Dolores, the Deer, and the Chicken - Bird (GB)

Winter Film Festival - Mechanic vs Abomidable Snowman- Arctowski (Poland)

Winter Film Festival Best Acting - Camembert Man by Crozet (France)

The 2010 Antarctic Winter Film Festival Winner - 'Fitness Month' y Davis Station (Australia)