On Saturday afternoon I drove the weather technician, Edward, out to do his ice and snow surveys since his coworker had just gotten frostbite and was unable to go outside for a week. It was a beauitful clear day without the slightest breeze, so -31 was feeling quite pleasant. We jumped in the Environment Canada super duty truck and drove off road down a rocky slope to Parr Inlet. We had to walk a far ways down to the actual ice since the slope started to get pretty uneven and I was nervous about getting us stuck. There was about seven inches of snow on top of the ice that Edward first had to shovel off before he got his drilling equipment set up. Around 20 to 30 minutes later, Edward had manually drilled through nearly 6 feet of ice! (I can't recall the exact measurement ) The ice will keep getting thicker until sometime in March, and then the temperatures will start to rise a bit during April.
Below is one of the two trucks the main operator and I take to the GAW lab and other various places. We mainly use this one, "Brown Betty" since the four wheel drive is more reliable then the newer truck, "Big Red".
Once the drilling and measuring was done (and of course, some photos were taken) we hiked back up to the slope, which felt a bit longer going up then it did coming down. I then followed Edward in the truck as he took snow depth measurements at ten different sites along the way back. (I swear in my actual job I do more work then just watching others work.) . As you can see from the photos it is getting pretty light up here in Alert! These were taken around 11 30, which Edward told me was "solar noon hour", when the sun is directly south of us or at its highest elevation and the sky is at it's brightest. The first sunrise is this coming week!
I took a quick video of the ice survey and am trying to upload it but I highly doubt it will work on this limited interet connection. After loading for an hour and a half I still see no hope of it finishing.
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