Polarbear family visit, flying operations from Oden and hit by a second storm - Part 1

 

This post is again separated in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2

 

On the transit from the last ice station towards the next

The ice camp was left behind on Sunday (21 May) evening, aiming to head up north. However, the ice conditions were unfortunately not on our side and our attempt to go north failed: we were heading towards too thick icefloes so that the risk of getting stuck permamently in between them was too high. But we are not losing hope - the sea ice is really dynamic and continuously changes its shape, two icefloes can drift apart from each other forming cracks or larger leads (openings) in the sea ice or form rigdes when two icefloes collide. As we are going towards melt, the sea ice this much south should start melting soon - or become thinner and more mobile and vulnerable for storms and winds. So we still have hope to get over 80N, we just have not found the right path through the ice yet. On Wednesday (24 May) we started to head back southeast to follow a lead of a path northwards to the east of one of the large icefloes. Currently we have drifted quite a lot south (78.9N). It is still unsure when we will stop for the next ice station - we first want to go north. During the last days, we did stop occationally to do operations from Oden that require the ship to be stationary, as well as a helicopter ice station. And then we were forced to stop to wait out a crazy storm that hit us on Wednesday eve (see photo below).

 

Windstill before the storm (May 23)

Blowing snow from the sea ice over the ocean during the storm (May 25)

 

Sonja's 12 UTC weather balloon launch in the storm on May 25. Photo by: Jennie Spicker Schmidt.


Weather

During warmer temperatures and foggy conditions in the weekend, surfaces got wet and lot of wet snow was deposited on Oden. On Monday (22 May) morning, the temperatures dropped from 0.5 degrees down to -5 degrees or below. This caused icing on many instruments, the wet snow to freeze and outdoors on deck it was quite slippery. The windspeed dropped during the day and calm windstill conditions lasted throughout Tuesday (see photo above from the ice edge on May 23). In fact, we did have a weak warm airmass transport from the south in the night between Monday and Tuesday, which was getting weaker on Tuesday. The main track of this atmospheric river was to the east of Svalbard - and we were to the northwest of Svalbard. But something big was approaching us again - the next low-pressure system, similar to that during the Eurovision evening 1.5 weeks ago. We were hit by this storm on Wednesday evening and on Thursday (25 May) winds were up to 27 m/s (see photo above in the middle; blowing snow from the ice over the open ocean)! The windspeed in gusts can be much higher! The storm forced us to stay parked in front of an icefloe headed into the wind - it was craaazy windy outside! Strong storms hinder us to do any operations - both on the ice and from Oden or with the helicopter. For our met-team, we still had to launch radiosondes (weather balloons) every six hour. All the balloons during Thursday was quite challenging: sometimes the balloon took a detour towards Oden, then towards the helicopter and almost took a swim before it found its way upwards. We were at least 3 people helping out with launching the balloon from the helideck; sometimes the balloon launch-show in over 20 m/s winds interested several people that came out to watch (see me launching the balloon in the photo above). Despite the strond winds, we did not break a single balloon :D

 

Polarbear family

On Monday (22 May) eve and Tuesday (23 May) morning, we were lucky to again see polarbears (this time safely from the ship). A polarbear mother with her cub (se photos below) were very curious about who we are and also came quite close to the ship. The little one was soooo cute!!! On the photos you can also see the ridges (snow and ice piles) on the sea ice, which shows that the ice was quite thick around here!

 
Polarbear mum with her cub visit us on May 22 and 23

 

Continues in "Polarbear family visit, flying operations from Oden and hit by a second storm - Part 2"


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