Ice Stories: Dispatches From Polar Scientists » storm http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:40:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Beacon Valley Timelapse http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/beacon-valley-timelapse/ http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/beacon-valley-timelapse/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:02:35 +0000 Doug Kowalewski http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/?p=1991 BEACON VALLEY, ANTARCTICA– There are two things that I never get accustomed to while in Antarctica: the beauty of the landscape and the rapid changes in weather. This was best captured with help from Gareth Morgan who is a post-doctoral scholar at Brown University and currently enjoying his third trip down to Antarctica. (Thanks Gareth for exposing your new SLR camera to 14 hours of intense cold, wind, and UV bombardment). The time lapse begins at 10:00 am on November 14th and ends at midnight. The images are taken every 3 minutes from our drill site (yes, we have an amazing view from our “office”) looking down Beacon Valley towards Taylor Glacier and the Asgard Mountain Range in the background.

A small storm came in during the late afternoon and left a minor dusting of snow further down valley. Visibility quickly diminishes with the storm. Typically bad visibility in Antarctica is due to ground snow being blown around by the wind which can cause for a complete “white-out”. However this seems less common in the Dry Valleys where we work on a terrestrial landscape opposed to working on exposed ice which is often covered by a thin layer of snow. Finally, the camp experienced a beautiful late evening; one of many thus far in Beacon Valley this year!

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