The Wooly Bear

      As the spring months move into summer in more "southern" regions, Alert is feeling the effects of the annual summer melt. When May turns to June, we move from the shoulder season into the summer season, meaning the temperature stayed above 0° for 24 hours, even still it rests at a damp and chilly 2°C. Although this week it was dipping back and fourth below 0°, we're still considered in the Summer Season. As I walk down the roads, water pours over the rocks in the culvert as the winters icy blanket is stripped from the rocky surface beneath.

     Everything is to the extreme here. Snow bank water falls descend over sharp shale pieces that litter the ground and the thick mud is almost unbearable. We wear "over boots" which basically protect your foot wear and eliminate tracking so much muck inside... absolutely required.

     On my adventure into the mist this weekend, a friend and I walked into the shadows of the fog a few kilometres away from station. While searching for some interesting mineral specimens I found something much better in my opinion... a caterpillar!  


     Not just any caterpillar though, a "Wooly Bear" caterpillar or more scientifically known as "Gynaephora groenlandica". It will grow into a moth found within the Arctic circle, in Greenland and Canada. It is best known for its very slow rate of development. In the past, it was estimated that it had a fourteen year life cycle from egg to adult moth. In it's caterpillar state, it has the ability to withstand temperatures below -60°C! The larvae degrade their mitochondria in preparation for overwintering and re-synthesize them in the spring, and each instar of the caterpillar takes about a year. Subsequent studies have revised the life-cycle duration to 7 years. The Arctic woolly-bear caterpillars are unique in their combination of fascinating adaptations to the polar extremes. They spend nearly 90% of their life frozen and only about 5% feeding on the tundra during the month of June; the remainder is spent in summer aestivation within hibernacula (protective cocoons).


Although the landscape is barren, life slowly is beginning to creep further and further north into Alert. Little wildlife lesson of the day :) 

here comes the sun

Cradled between the two mountains, was our destination. We set off in the BV at 0900hrs towards Pullen and Crystal Mountains. Our journey was going to take about an hour and I could barely contain my excitement as we set ourselves up to carry on. I checked to make sure my batteries were charged, that I had two memory cards and that I had everything I was going to need - at least ten times. Then we set off.

Sitting in the back container, crammed in like little excited sardines, were ten people. Each member of the group had gone different lengths of time without seeing the sunlight, varying from just over a week to almost four months. I have just hit my 3 month mark and halfway point in my tour, so for me, I have gone 88 days without the sunlight – not that anyone is counting.

It's a very difficult concept for people to understand; 88 days without the sun. Roughly a few hundred people a year get to experience Alert but even fewer for the dark season. Explaining the darkness has always been a bothersome topic for me as I have a very different job here than many on the station, working many long hours in the seclusion and isolation of my office. For me, it was a permanent 2100hrs (9 o'clock pm) and I felt as if I ended up blending into the shadows of the perpetual night. The dark season, although I did not let it be apparent, was hard on me. I found it difficult to find the happiness, to find light and to feel at ease while alone in a strange and harsh environment without a reasonable effort made internally each and every day. It seemed each day, was smearing into the next without any recognizable difference from the last. The dark to me was a blur.

The sun however, was a focal point, a sign of hope and a destination that I would reach. When I was having a rough day, I would close my eyes and picture seeing the sun shining over the ridge of the mountains, the light streaming onto my frozen skin and it would begin to melt away any sorrows I was feeling in that moment. The sun to me is more than just the largest object in the solar system; it reaffirmed that it is truly the source of life.  

We carried along the bumpy trip with the frosted windows veiling any view of the outdoors. We passed the time with many laughs and a few motion sick passengers (it was really quite bumpy) and enjoyed the ride into the twilight as we pushed over the frozen land with evident purpose and excitement.

The freeze frame mental picture that particularly sticks out to me is March 3rd, 2012 at roughly 1000 in the morning. I will never forget the moment I saw the first of the suns rays sparkle against the frosted glass and shine into the BV. It is a difficult emotion to explain other than "lock yourself in a closet for 3 months and come out and see how excited you are" - those were my exact words to friends and family. I exited the vehicle and made my way into the balmy -50°C air and inhaled my first breath of pure contentment since taking my initial steps here, 88 long days ago.

I walked away from the group about fifty meters and sat down on the frozen mountain side. The sun, just cresting the ridge beyond where I was sitting, was as bright as I remembered but even more beautiful. So many thoughts crossed my mind in the moment where the light finally shined upon my face and even as I closed my eyes, I could feel the sunshine coming back into my heart. It was just as I had imagined. I was enchanted by the fact I could not feel any warmth on my cheeks as the tears froze instantaneously as they fell from my eyes. I was so moved by this experience that I will never take the smaller things for granted any further. Exhilaration, euphoria and simply happiness are all an understatement. I was in absolute bliss and my surroundings were stunning. I finally made it, it was finally the day.

The sun rise that day was nothing less than spectacular and absolutely amazing. Although the heat has not made it to Alert quite yet, I can feel my heart warmed by the shear realization that the smallest thing we take for granted, are those we miss most when living without.

Solar Storm

Well this week so far has been interesting. As I'm sure many of you know, there was a solar flare on Sunday at approx 2300hrs which has been causing the largest solar storm since 2005. What you may or may not know though, is Space Weather is part of my job and since I have received several emails about the Solar Storms I thought I would elaborate a bit further!

The solar flare was an M-9 eruption which is only one stage below the most powerful type which is an X-class flare. As a result of this flare, the earth is being bombarded by three waves of solar storms from the sun. The first, Earth was being hit by electromagnetic radiation, next was a flood of protons and, finally, a coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME struck the Earth’s magnetic field at approximately 1000EST.

Something you may or may not know about Alert is we are actually too far North to witness any of the Auroras. The only effects of the solar storm we received were several communication outages, our polar-travelling planes being unable to contact different countries HF comms and chatter from thousands of miles away on our air to ground radio frequencies.

The charts above show the observed (o) and forecasted  (f) impact on different operations. Today, January 25, 2012 there were 1272 potentially hazardous asteroids forecasted to be hurtling towards earth. It has been interesting to see exactly how much the Sun impacts us (even when we can't see it!) and has definitely been an exciting week in the world of space!

34 days until the sun rises... Not that anyone is counting or anything!

week two random mash up

This is the hoar frost that coats everything. This happens when the white ice crystals, loosely deposited on the ground or exposed objects, that form on cold clear nights. This is when heat losses into the open skies cause objects to become colder than the surrounding air. Sceince aside, even the walls sparkle. I like it.

Lights of a plane through a plexi glass window. Too chilly for me to be outside.. not to mention into the blowing snow!

This is where I spend a large chunk of time... and I mean large. 1am until 3pm today large.

Looks like we have another visitor!

This is what happens when you toss a glass of boiling water into the cool -38 degree air.

I'm still smiling.

 

Winter Solstice

"December 21st is one of two days when the suns rays will strike one of the two tropical latitude lines. At precisely 12:30am (lcl) or 05:30 (utc) on the 22nd of December the winter solstice begins and we will have absolutely no light from the Sun in Alert. When the sun is 12° below the horizon, this means that the closest spot on Earth that's still bathed in direct sunlight is more than 800 miles away. All the light that you could see has struggled through 800 miles of air and around the curve of Earth's surface. It takes fully 1200 miles of air to fully extinguish the Sun's light and end astronomical twilight.

The Arctic gets just as many hours of sunlight as anywhere else on Earth — in fact, just a tad more. The reason the Arctic is cold is that the Sun never gets very high above the horizon, so its light always hits the ground at an oblique angle. The flip side is that the Sun also never gets very far below the horizon. Most of the time that the Sun's not up in the Arctic, it's skimming just below the horizon and yielding one or another flavour of twilight." (Sometimes invisible to the naked eye)

However, for today and the next few days there is no Astronomical Twilight effecting us here in Alert that means the best star viewing that I have ever seen. So awesome!

The Light in Darkness



The view of the stars from just outside my weather office. Note the lighter spots on the picture, this is caused by some ice crystals falling on the lens while the shutter was open.



The snow, torn by the wind, resembles the desert sand. The light box in the left of the picture is where we house the wet and dry bulb thermometers as well as the max and min. The red light is being reflected off the snow from the brake lights of my truck.



Invisible to the naked eye in darkness, the mountains lying beyond the horizon were visible to me today when I tried out some new settings on my camera. I raised the ISO value and left the shutter open for 11seconds to capture this photo. Again, the red lights is that of the brakes and the runway lighting illuminating the snow.



In these cold temperatures, your breath is always visible.



This is my view of the main station from my weather office. The view is lovely with the lights fading off in the distance.

 The stars today were spellbinding. Twinkling and sparkling throughout the afternoon. If it wasn't a cool -38 degrees Celsius I could have looked at them for hours but I had to settle for only a few minutes at a time. It's amazing how many things you can actually see in the darkness. I chased satellites and shooting stars for a few minutes, watching them dance across the tenebrous sky until the frost temporarily ceased my time outdoors.

I'm in a learning curve (aside from the climate adjustment / new job) with low-light photography, which has been burdened further by only being allowed to have my hands exposed for a few seconds. Without the pain of the icy air I'm sure I could learn more efficiently but as these photos were taken (and I'm happy with the outcome) it doesn't show me running inside 2 seconds after each shot was complete to warm my fingers. Arctic mitts aren't ideal for Cameras. But hot chocolate is ideal for the Arctic.

I feel like everyone is a present here. We are all wrapped up in so many layers it's almost hard to distinguish people from one another. After talking with some of the residents who have been here a lot longer than I, it shocked me that some literally only leave the main complex to get on the next plane to take them home. I go outside every hour... hardly fair.

I'm hoping that I will become immune to the bitter cold and learn to tolerate it a lot better. For now, I will continue to shiver with my frost bitten cheeks and absorb as much of the beauty I can find in the dark. So far, so good.