New experiences

So far things haven’t been too bad! I’m not saying I was worried about the whole ‘get frostbite and loose a toe’ thing but I was a little hesitant. After a delayed landing in -4°C Montreal, Trev and I struggled to find somewhere still open and serving nice food in the city. But with a wake-up call at 5 am I suppose it was just as well.

Prior to leaving the UK I was having issues fitting my snow boots in my suitcase. Finally I ended up carrying my duvet/snow coat in a plastic bag. This was fine until I started getting so flustered I nearly lost a bag completely. So before leaving Montreal to fly north I decided to minimise the number of bags I had to worry about. This meant wearing my very warm snow boots on the flight. As the weather plummeted overnight this turned out to be an inspired choice! Although taking off my boots during the flight may not have lead to the most pleasurable experience for the 7 rows of passengers on the Air Inuit Dash-8.

How long has it been since you experienced something so new that you have no idea what’s happening? Today, in my first experience of -20°C, my nose when all funny. I thought my nose was running (but it was dry), I thought I had accidentally inhaled some snow (but it wasn’t snowing) and finally I realised the hair in my nose was freezing on contact with the air! A surreal feeling but I think this will become one of my abiding memories of arctic weather…

I know we are not strictly in the arctic in Kuujjuarapik but the weather yesterday would beg to differ: Kuujjuarapik Weather Report.
Last night’s minimum temperature in Kuujjuarapik was -39.6°C. While tonight is only -31°C with the wind chill I still can’t face going out to the pub. A 5 minutes walk at -30 is a long, long way!

While I haven’t yet visited the local establishment (note the singular!), alcohol is really expensive here. Alcoholism is a major issue in the local population and this is combated by pricing it above most people’s price range. I don’t think Lucy’s (Carpenter, PI) worry about people getting hypothermia falling home from the pub will be an issue with these prices!

Today was an unpacking day for most people. The equipment arrived at the airport this morning (just before my flight) and, after a quick and tasty lunch, we spent hours getting all the boxes to the site. The boys were great for lifting all the heavy stuff. I spent most of the afternoon at the airport ‘helping’ to load the boxes. I tried my best by getting as many reasonably sized boxes loaded as possible but I am still a titch at 150 cm and there is only so much I can manage. There seems to be a number of boxes missing so far. Thankfully for me, all my equipment arrived in one piece (as far as I can tell) and the laser is now sitting in the basement of the accommodation block to warm up a little. We need to turn the laser on tomorrow and check and see if the shipping did any damage. We’re ready to realign the whole system but it would be nice not to have to wait that long before measuring.

When I eventually had to spend time outside today I found the cold weather tough to handle. At sunset I was at the site unloading boxes and the temperature dropped substantially over a few minutes as the night set in. My feet froze up and my hands were tingling. From now on the containers will be heated but it was hard today with nowhere to go when it got that cold.

For the University of York:
Lucy Carpenter is the PI of the project and specialises in quantifying halocarbons. Lucy and Karen Hornsby and Marvin Shaw from her research group will be running the online GC-MS Halocarbon system, flux chamber experiments to quantify halocarbons from fresh ice/snow as well as detecting iodine from denuder tubes.
Ally Lewis, James Lee, Sarah Moller and Jim Hopkins will be monitoring ozone, CO, NOx, VOCs (new cartridge method) and formaldehyde. And, of course, having many strong guys around to set-up and move everything is helpful :)