AntarcticDoctor

For those who went into a flat panic – no there are no polar bears in Antarctica. You’ve been had. Happy April Fool’s Day!

I have to pass on the latest weather record – the current storm, now several days old peaked with a wind-speed of 88 knots (45.3 m/sec or 163 km/h). That’s the same as a respectable hurricane or an entry-level tornado.

As far as updates go, if you look carefully at the links on the right you will notice that I’ve created a page on the medical facility here at SANAE IV. This has been a long time coming, so thanks for your patience. Next up will be a photographic walk-through of the base, detailing the significant areas.

Just a quick note to say it’s official: We’ve broken the 150 km/h wind-speed barrier.  The current storm outside has just had a peak gust hit 83.6 knots, or 154 km/h, with the average speed around 70 knots. There is no sign of abatement; if anything, it’s been picking up through the day. Everything that can hum, rattle or vibrate in the base is adding to the ambiance; one can feel the gusts through the floor and see the windows deform. They say the base can withstand 300km/h… will we find out?

I’ve been trying to set up a direct weather feed on this page, with some lack of success. However, in the meantime, I have a link which updates regularly. Click the link to Current Weather Info on the right, or the banner below to go direct to the WeatherUnderground site.

A frequent question from readers of the blog, and anyone with whom I have contact back home, is “How’s the weather?” Certainly, being resident on a continent worthy of the reputation of “coldest, windiest place on Earth” makes on cognisant of the forces of nature. I haven’t yet been clever enough to write some code to provide a continuous weather feed from our monitoring equipment, but what I can do is to update the blog every now and then with some of our info. To start off, I’ve bugged Santjie, our meteorologist, to give me our ‘records’ for the year so far: