Antarctica isn't all blizzards and sub zero temperatures.
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| Blue skies and blue seas.... Not exactly what I was expecting |
It was one of the things the caught me by surprise really. Of course I knew it was Antarctic summer, but I never fully comprehended how 'good' the weather could be. Antarctic is after all the most inhospitable place on earth, I naturally assumed that its didn't get good weather. And by good weather, I mean sun and no wind.
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| Heading through the Lamarie channel, sunny with little wind. |
This day, halfway through the trip, we were repositioning slightly further south. And most of us spent the day outside watching the scenery pass by. It was warm enough to be out in just thermals. I even remember someone wandering around in shorts and t-shirt (I personally didn't think that it was that warm)
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| Deep blue skies, the glare off the water and ice was blinding at times |
There was a massive high pressure system moving over us. It was quite something to witness. Even the sea became glassy flat. It was like sailing over a mirror.
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| Bergy bits |
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| Calms seas, blue skies |
Its still Antarctica though. The wind never let up for long though. And even in bright sunshine, the wind kept the temperatures low. It was especially pronounced on the ship. Walking out of the protection of the superstructure of the ships leeward side felt like walking into a windy freezer.
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| Wind chill made it colder than it actually was. |
It was also interesting to observe the localised weather that could be seen on shore. The warm air meeting the cold air of the ice encrusted mountains, mixing in with the katabatic winds of the glaciers produced some very memorable sights. Considering how nasty the weather would have been on shore and on those mountains, we were sailing on by in beautiful sunshine and almost no wind.
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| Localised weather |
The cloud never seemed to be far away, but then again, we could see it coming from a long was off. It was rather exiting to watch these weather systems approaching. In the UK, I rarely get to watch what looks like something straight out of a text book. They never seems to be so well defined, or as big, nor to we have such an easy line of sight.
I would say that we saw a lot of Altostratus, that uniform grey cloud that just looks to be a long way off. I still classed this as seeing good weather since there was still the problem of glare off the ice and water.
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| Iceberg with a bridge |
What I mean about glare can be seen in this picture. The skies were cloudy, nearly 100% covered in a pretty uniform grey. However the ice still looks like its shining white as if its in sun. Sunscreen was always put on before going out, even if it was cloudy.
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| Some grounded icebergs |
This sort of cloud made for some interesting sunsets.
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| At a Gentoo Penguin colony |
This was possibly the most dramatic clouds we saw. The picture hasn't been filtered or tweaked, this is exactly what it looked like. Massive clouds, backlit and haloed by the sun.
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| Out on the water. |
Of course, one of the things I had expected and I found out to be true, was how quickly the weather could change from calm, to rough. Almost in the blink of an eye. Story for another time.
