22 November, 1997

Hi Everyone,

Saturday started by being a beautiful day at Siple Dome.  It was a day,
that makes a bear think of spring.   The weather was warm and hardly any
clouds were in the sky.    The pretty blues of the sky met the white ice
leaving me think about water color paintings, only they usually have trees
and running water.  I set about working  with my companions to finish the
permeability  on the ice cores that the drillers  had brought up from the
ice field for us.   We worked in the cold trench built into the ice to do
our work with no wind blowing for a change and the sun shining brightly.

Mid afternoon came about with the wind starting to blow.   It lifted the
flags, that are placed around the camp and the roads, which make them look
like they are waving to you..    Without warning, even from the weather
man, a sudden fast moving storm appeared on the horizon in the form of a
big black cloud.  It is so flat here that you can see for a very long way
no matter which way you  look.   It is so neat to see forever since I came
from home where there are mountains even buildings that block my view.  The
wind picked up and the snow started to blow which left very little to see.
When this happens you cannot see anything  or barely anything.    The wind
howled and the snow blew as we rushed back to camp before all visibility
was lost.   As I sat on the sled behind the snowmobile, I watched as the
red, orange, or green whipped past us.   There were times that I was really
glad that I was not driving since I could only see one flag at a time and
then sometimes I even missed  a flag until I had passed it.  The wind and
snow was setting in for the night.

 The neatest thing happened as we watched the sunís shape through the
clouds that had moved in.   A halo, like an angelís, appeared around the
sun.  The halo  looks like a yellow ring  a distance from the sun giving it
a unique effect.   Between the halo and the sun, there is a darker gray
which sets it apart from the rest  of the sky. The halo effect is called a
Sun Dog and it can come in many different forms.   The explanation that the
scientists give is that the ice crystals (frozen water) in the air make the
sunís light waves bend to form a circle (halo) around the sun.    It is
kind of like a rainbow but without colors and just around the sun in the
sky.  It was really neat - the sun put on a spectacular show for us that
afternoon.

As I retired to my tent early on a Saturday night, the wind howled as it
brought in a storm from the ocean.    The snow swirling, wind howling and
my tent creaking  from the motion, I drifted off to sleep  thinking about
how I was going  to get out of my tent in the morning!!!!