life in Mac Town Continued

A view looking down the dorm Hallway. Can you tell which door is mine? Yeah, we have the plastic ivy vine on our door.










100% of all waste generated on station is sent back to the US on the cargo ship that comes in Feburary. An interesting fact is that almost 70% of all the waste generated is recycled. All of the garbage is sorted and the recyclable materials are then sold on the open market.








With many people in a confined area the "McMurdo Crud" Goes around and can cause a problem. one of the solutions to reduce the spread of the crud is frequently washing your hands, so they have this hand washing station next to the entrance of the cafeteria so we can wash our hands at least before each meal. the soap and water disperce automatically...A great idea








I toured the "Mac Ops" (McMurdo Operations) office today. This is the communication center. All groups who leave town have to file a trip plan. They check in periodically when in the field and check back in when they get back. This office supplies all the logistics and communications for everything out of McMurdo and the South Pole (exept air traffic control, thats seperate).






This is a view of part of the weather center. There are weather forcasters and weathers observers who take data from many automated ground weather stations, live satellite imagery, and launch small balloons daily that record almost every parameter of the weather for the whole continent. It doesn't look like much, just a bunch of computers, but the stuff they can do is really cool. They have a computer modeling system that uses all the live data to generate forcasts. It was very interesting.