Overview- We had a good week in McMurdo. The resupply ship headed north with our vessel cargo and the fuel tanker came in and is still here now. Planned redeployments were delayed mid-week because the vessel cargo personnel were top priority for northbound flights. There was also a bit of bad weather mid-week with high winds that interfered with Herc and Helo operations. Intercontinental flights are mostly back on track now. However, there will be no C-17 flights for the rest of the summer, so that seriously limits northbound airlift capacity. We have been told to be patient and remain flexible and I assume this applies to both passengers and our Comair cargo. There may be an Airbus later in February to help with redeployment flights. Rae and Renee returned from Lake Hoare on Saturday. Joe Levy is giving the science lecture tonight and he and his team are scheduled to leave tomorrow.
C-506 The stream team finished their last few day trips from McMurdo to close out the field season. They were also able to do their planned trip to Cape Royds to sample Pony Lake. The remaining stream team members are scheduled for bag drag tonight and will hopefully fly out on Monday.
C-509 Sydney flew north on Saturday after several days of delay. Elsa and I have a final week to finish samples, cargo and lab close out for the summer. Most of our analytical issues were resolved. The final two batches of cation samples that we planned to run here have been turned over to Science Cargo and will be finished at OSU. We are due to fly home on Feb 15.
Article Date:
02/08/2016