Wind Storm at Lake Untersee, Antarctica

This is a couple of minutes of a storm at our field camp at Lake Untersee in December 2011. We were sheltered by high mountains, so we mostly had gusty winds - some gusts were over 40 m/s. We had less snow and blowing snow, except at the front of gusts. In more open areas on the ice sheet and at Novolazarevskaya (about 80 km away), the storm produced blowing snow and essentially zero visibility for long stretches of time.

We were camped on the northeast shore of a peninsula (see location or http://g.co/maps/gm9g7) and the video is looking northeast. Most of our wind came down a col to the east. However, we also got major gusts from the south deflected in various directions by the peninsula, from the north off the glacier, and from the northwest when gusts coming down the slopes from the mountains to the west deflected gusts coming off the glacier to the north. It was a very turbulent landscape!

I am the person in the video, and I'm replacing rocks on the "rain" fly of one of the science tents.

You can learn more about our trip at http://dawninantarctica.blogspot.com

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Antarctica
• Storm
• wind
• turbulence
• camping
• tents
• snow

[sumnerd]

@SkepticalAaron I have a blog at dawninantarctica.blogspot.com that I'm not too good at keeping up, but does describe the science for this trip.

[SkepticalAaron]

Awesome! What are you doing down there?