Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

some of the roofing-felt on the lab so I nailed matchboarding in place to minimize
further damage - a very cold job in the wind. Now that the wind had dropped it was
warmer in the hut, but I lit the hurricane lamp in the lab in order to keep the
temperature a little above that outside.
A week later saw a very sudden drop in temperature - to -12.9°C that evening.
We woke to a moderately calm day with gusts of wind and snow flurries. The sun
shone intermittently for 1.6 hrs in all. The temperature next morning was -3°C and it
fell steadily throughout the day, which was windy with flurries of wind-blown snow
to make it unpleasant. We saw that the pack to the south was very solid with only a
few narrow leads; there were many medium-sized bergs. Around the east coast was
a lane of open water between the pack and the as yet unconsolidated bay ice.
Elephant Flats was well frozen over now and we thought it should be weightbearing.
Winter l948. These large fluctuations in the weather ended abruptly in mid- May as
the temperatures plummeted, due to the dense sea ice now enveloping us and the
shift of depressions northwards. The temperature was down to -11.3°C that morning;
at midday it was -16C° and at 8 o’clock we registered our lowest minus temperature
yet, -20.4°C. We had entered a new seasonal phase and our bodies had to adapt to it
by acclimatizing again. A blizzard was blowing outside and it was not inviting. Our
little hut was now very cold and we huddled close to the fire: the temperature at
floor level was well below freezing. The sea was quite frozen over with no open
water. It continued to get colder. On the morning of 14 May it was -18.9°C, rose to -
16.5°C at noon and fell again to - 22.3°C that evening. The bay ice was now weightbearing
and what had been until recently an open lead between it and the pack was
frozen over and patterned with lovely delicate frost flowers. Next morning the
temperature was -22°C and remained so throughout the day.
The sea was all frozen over now as far as the eye could see. The consolidated pack
was to south and east and half-filling Normanna Strait; then an area of dark new ice
which was the last to freeze over; and around the coast a fringe of ice of 4-5 in
thickness and varying width. This younger ice bore our weight now but at the shore
there were tide-cracks and loose blocks in open water. It was still not really safe for
travel. I remembered that a safe thickness in Greenland was considered to be 5 inches
but we would wait a few more days before we measured out the baseline for survey
triangulation.
The daily pattern continued, with temperatures in the mornings below -20°C,
rising during the day to -18° or even - 10°C. The ice was covered with beautiful frost
flowers formed of radiating platelets which reflected the light from their faces. We
wandered up and down on the ice and chopped a hole in it to determine its
thickness; it was just about 5 inches deep. There was no change in the general ice
picture, but the larger growlers and bergy bits were surrounded with open water and
rotten ice where the tides had prevented consolidation.
On a typical day at this time Coronation Island was often very clear at daybreak
but clouded over during the day and was again clear at sunset. Usually after the 3.0
pm Ob. it was silhouetted against a dark blue-black sky, the peaks of the ridge a cold
matt-white broken only by the black of rock exposures. Over parts were subtle bluepurple
tints, and Mount Noble, peering over the white curtain of the nearer ridge,
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