Weather or mechanical?

We are having flight delays that do not affect me directly, but seem to get everyone on station talking. The question is usually "Is it weather or mechanical?" In Antarctica, the delays are often caused by weather. The planes land on sea ice, so even if there is no new snow falling, there may be enough blowing snow from the winds to cause poor visibilty on the sea ice runway. The picture below was taken minutes ago looking across McMurdo Sound. The bright strip on the sea-ice is blowing snow. The weather scroll informs us that it is weather condition 2 on the road from the ski runway (for the ski planes) to the ice runway (for wheeled planes). Meanwhile, we just received an email stating that the road to the runway is closed to wheeled vehicles due to drifting snow on the snow roads. The snow road is still open to track vehicles. Condition 3 is normal weather. Condition 2 and 1 are severe weather and may be called due to extreme cold, high winds or poor visibility.


People who were originally planning to fly south from NZ on Jan 2 were delayed until the 4th. Now they may not fly south until the 7th. The reason for this is Mechanical. Maybe it is just as well that they did not fly today because they may have had to boomerang if they did make it this far due to Weather. Some of my LTER team members who have been trying to get here boomeranged twice on Tuesday. Now they wait in New Zealand. People who were planning to head north from here have been waiting for this plane from NZ, but many people will be leaving today on an Air National Guard LC-130. This is not normal operations, but it's very good news for the people who have been waiting to leave. Most of the ones who have been delayed here waiting to fly north will probably miss their commercial flights and the rumor is that there are no reservations available until Jan 11. This is bad news for people heading back to university for classes. This is all part of the adventure for researchers in Antarctica.