Nacreous clouds

Just the other day I witnessed a phenomenon that is unique to the Antarctica Winfly season. The phenomenon is known as Nacreous clouds. As per wikipedia: "...are clouds in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 meters (50,000–80,000 ft). They are implicated in the formation of ozone holes;^[1] their effects on ozone depletion arise because they support chemical reactions that produce active chlorine which catalyzes ozone destruction, and also because they remove gaseous nitric acid, perturbing nitrogen and chlorine cycles in a way which increases ozone destruction.."


I enjoyed myself a fine drink and sat on the porch of our dorm for a half an hour and enjoyed the view. What is really neat that the clouds slowly change colors as the sun set. I hope these photos do this entry justice. It is really cool.





Thus far the training down here has been good. We did a roof collapse drill/lost firefighter. We had to use LUNAR and all that jazz. LUNAR is a acronym that many firefighters use to remember what information you should say in a down firefighter situation. It goes Location, Unit (number or what truck you are on), Number of people down, Air (amount that you have left), and Resources that you need to get out. Some people also use RIT as the last R. In order to simulate this, we were on air and were crawling under a trap. The other firefighters jump on top of the tarp and force you down on the ground. I had never done a drill like that back home, so it was a good learning experience. We also have been doing a lot of training the past week to get everyone up to speed on how this department operates. We did large area searching drill the other day. I'm going through the driver operator class down here as well. I didn't have any experience doing that at FPC or at Rindge. It was neat to go through the class that many of my friends went through last year, I wasn't able because I came down so late. The test is going to be interesting, and due to the weather conditions down here the format of the test changed. Since we have had really cold weather, it has been hard to find time to pump water. So Monday we have a written test and later we will have a practical.

It has been averaging around -50 f or so, with windchill sometimes bringing the temperature lower. I attempted to pump the other day, but it was way to cold. The pump from Engine 2 seemed to not have been sufficiently drained during the winter, and it appeared that the entire pump was frozen. That was interesting to say the least.

I think that catches you all up thus far. I hope you all had a great Labor Day Weekend! I'll talk to you all wicked soon.