Another crumbling berg. Robbie ,Paul and I skied to these Bergs and sitting here we could hear a noise , like air escaping. Always aware that even these bergs could overturn , we carfully backed away. But the noise was too regular , like breathing.A look down a tide crack next to the berg proved the breathing to be correct. A Seal doing it tough. This must be only spot for this poor bloke to get a gasp of air for miles.
 

A trip to My favorite field refuge , Robbo Hut to replenish all supplies resulted in the most stunning weather we have had for a long time. This berg is rotting. :Look at the top to see the dark colour. A stark contrast to the beautiful blues. 

Footprints in the snow. Our weight compresses the snow and the surrounding powder blows away , leaving a mini tower of a foot imprint 

Some more amazing cloud formations from Casey Station 

For the last 24 hours we have been transferring fuel from the bottom fuel farm to the top fuel farm . Over 1/2 a million litres . A slight cloud cover kept the temps to around -10 to -16. Quite pleasant. But this afternoon , during wrapping up of procedings , the wind whipped up , blowing surface snow, giving us this photo op. 

Stoney trying to capture a blizz on Video.
 

The steps. After blowing and snowing for 24 hours straight , the blow stopped and allowed these formations to form from the falling snow. Nature giving us her best again..
 

The Doctor,lloyd , Tracey our Comm's tech and Myself at -30 odd. It cold very cold here at CAsey last week. Its usually in the minus 20's . Look at the result!!  

This is a rolled ice berg. It has been bottomed out in this bay down the coast for all of this year , and is locked in this majestic beauty by the sea ice. 

The Rising sun , complete with blowing snow at about 40 knots. 

Law Dome East. After 2 years , this was all that was sticking out of the snow.8 meters of acculated snow.
We dug a trench as close as we dared with the Dozer , then cut blocks with the chainsaw. We then carefully dug the whole unit out.
 

Using the Nodwell as a raising platform. Here you get an idea of how much of the Law Dome East AWS was buried by accululated snow. We have fully serviced this AWS , fitting new anemometers, snow height sensors , humity readers, temp sensors and other secret MET gear. these AWS send their gathered info to Satelites , which is the relayed to weather forcasters around the world .  

We had a couple of nice days, but that was over shadowed by the breakdown of the Dozer. After a days work , codensation in the starter motor turned to ice and the soleniod in the started burnt out. So it was off with the starter in -35 degrees , dress up the conatcts the best we could and hope it would start the following day. Its did , but then the day after , it froze up again.
By this stage it was time to head back to Casey . We had a couple of options open to us , Drive the 36 hours abct to base in one hit , or park up for the night and leave the Dozer idling. This option we didnt take. As 10 hours idling was fuel we couldnt afford to be burning for no gain. Possible other problems had to be taken into account. So we headed off. The trip home wasnt without its problems . The soft snow took its toll on one of the sleds and a ski joining chain broke , causing the rear sled to track off centre.A couple of huge 'D' shackles fixed this problem.
After 24 hours of driving , the charge light came on , meaning one of a few things : a fault in the alternator , a broken wire , or broken fan belts. It was the later. So I took an educated deciesion to turn off the machine.Being hot , I figured it would start easy. ( I hoped !!) After a record 2 min belt change , it fired up without a problem.
Unfortunatly , out Met Tech went to the loo, and on exiting the door , wasnt holding it quite tight enough , and the wind took care of the rest for him and tore it off its hinges.
The rest of the trip , was thankfully incident free, and we got back to station at about 1am 

The Sastrugi was intense in its unusual shapes. 

The extreme cold , -35C (-31F) made some interesting ice formations on the machinary.

 

The weather wasnt kind to us . We set off on a marginal weather forcast , and it blew snow for 3 days straight up.Navigation was by GPS and Radar , as vizability was nil.
A re-inspection and sensor check of the Law Dome weather station after ercection and 7 days operation , showed all was well.
The train and Nodwell in motion. 

Im Back !! This is what we went on Traverse for , to service this automatic weather station at Law Dome.Under this post coverered in weather gathering sensors is a stand of 3 44 gallon drums welded together.So 3.5 meters of snow has accumulated in this spot.
This is Law dome east , 80 odd kilometers from Law Dome towards the coast. This A.W.S didnt get serviced last year .Due to the masses of soft snow last years crew started to use more fuel than they had allowed for , so they turned back. We took extra fuel to allow for this.We used it as well.3985 litres of fuel was used to travel 400 km.plus a couple of operating the dozer , to dig out the second A.W.S that Im standing next to here.