T’is the season - for the winter to arrive

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."
~Andrew Wyeth

- Amanda Winegardner

Well it is that time of year…snow is banked along the old building, parkas pile up in the coat room and the science staff wish that computer mouse pads were operable with gloved fingers! I was in the Northern on the weekend and noticed “texting gloves”; basically cotton gloves with tiny holes on the thumbs and pointer fingers, so that the wearer can still use their various electronic devices at sub zero temperatures. While these gloves weren’t designed for science, I can’t help but think the manufacturer might be onto something.

About mid-October we had a fairly quick freeze-up of the fen and tundra ponds surrounding the CNSC, followed by about a foot of snow. A spell of warmer weather towards the end of October left us without snow once again, but with beautifully smooth skating surfaces. The first few weeks of November brought high winds and blowing snow (not to mention the -30°C wind chill temperatures), to the point that I was beginning to wonder what the Bay was even looking like! My curiosity was satisfied yesterday with a sunny drive along the coast. While the Environment Canada image below (from Nov.20) shows open water around Churchill (with new ice creeping down from the north and up from the south), the view from the coast today showed ice as far as I could see, though still with some substantial open leads.





With this welcome to winter comes the end of bear season and a transition to winter work around the CNSC. We also said a temporary goodbye to Krista, the first researcher to move into the new building and the last to wrap up her field season. We’ll miss her presence in the LASS office but know she will be back! So what does science staff do in winter? Well we still have a few late fall field tasks to wrap-up as well as prep for January and February fieldwork, and you can be sure we will use this time to get caught up on data management and writing. Oh, and we need to find our new office friend, Oswald, a good home.