Directed by the weather...

On Thursday 19th very bad weather was forecasted to arrive.
Normally I was supposed to fly out on Friday bound to the Novo runway,together with 14 others,
Given the forecast, this wasn't a certainty any more.
Ok, I have to admit that we were very lucky to have a sunny, nearly clear sky during the last 4 days; but bad weather precisely on our planned departure day... hmm...
The past few days maximum temperatures were around -15°C (-20°C at night in the tents), but in the sun it felt nice because of the low humidity level.
During the night it is also becoming nearly dark now, at least from 21:00 till 01:00.

The announced bad weather arrived on Friday, as predicted. It became more and more overcast, wind increased from hour to hour and snow started to drift around noon. The visibility was still good and our flight to Novolazaravskaya would still have been possible until around 17:00, but unfortunately the the aircraft's arrival at Utsteinen was only scheduled for 17:50...
Conditions worsened within 30 minutes, snow started to fall, the wind gusts enhanced up to 40 knots,
snow drifted, and the visibility decreased to 30m. There was no possibility for the plane to land, and halfway it had to turn back to base...

As in the meantime we had already taken down our tents, we installed ourselfs on the interior of the station. Looking from inside to the outside conditions, gave the good feeling that the station is well designed and built: cosy and warm inside and bending flagmasts, endless waves of drifting
snow over the ridge, visibility less than 20 to 50m, the sound of the wind, outside...
It was good to know that we didn't have to sleep in the tents...
That night I slept in one of the 4-bed sleeping rooms in the annex of the garage. It’s not heated and temperatures in there are somewhat below 0. But I slept a lot better than the other nights, probably because the temperature stayed constant and didn’t decrease.

Saturday morning the weather showed no change.
The storm was still raging, the snow was still drifting and the wind was hauling.
No improvement was predicted before the coming night.
This gave us the opportunity to continue work inside the station, to wait for the weather to improve, and for a possible flight on Sunday... or on Monday...
In the meantime the bad weather system also arrived at Novo, so that everybody is being blocked at the moment ;-)