Route This!: Condition 2

Q & A

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Condition 2

We had some weather move in earlier in the week that shut down operations at the runway, helipad, and most of the closer field locations. The first day, McMurdo and Scott Base went to Condition 2 while everything else was Condition 1. The second day, McMurdo and Scott Base stayed at Condition 3 while everything else went Condition 2.

Here are the definitions of the conditions from the Wikipedia page on Antarctic Climate. I find the description of Condition 3 amusing given the thresholds.

Condition 1: Windspeed over 55 knots (60 miles per hour); Visibility less than 100 feet (30 meters); Wind chill below −100 °F (−73 °C); Description: Dangerous conditions; outside travel is not permitted.

Condition 2: Windspeed of 48 to 55 knots (55 to 63 miles per hour); Visibility 1/4 of a mile to 100 feet (402 to 30 meters); Wind chill of −75 °F (−60 °C) to −100 °F (−73 °C); Description: Unpleasant conditions; outside travel is permitted but not recommended.

Condition 3: Windspeed below 48 knots (55 miles per hour); Visibility greater than 1/4 of a mile (402 meters); Wind chill above −75 °F (−60 °C); Description: Pleasant conditions; all outside travel is permitted.

I took this video from outside the JSOC (Joint Spacecraft Operations Center) shortly after we were downgraded to Condition 2. The large blue building you see on the left side of the screen when the video starts is Building 155, the hub of most activity on the station, and is about 100 meters away.

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About the Title

A few of you may recognize the title. For those who don't, allow me to explain:

At a previous job (names omitted to protect the embarrassed),an upper mangagment driven redesign our network core resulted in us adding Extreme Networks’ 12800R series hardware, (which we commonly referred to as the “12ks” and later, as “the boat anchors”). After many months of outages, complaints, and support cases with the vendor, we were allowed to remove the 12ks and revert to the old, stable, Cisco core. That joyous Saturday night, after many hours of screwdriver turning and keyboard jockeying, we gathered around the pile of 12ks to celebrate and I remarked that I wanted to smuggle in a shotgun for a picture of me aiming it at the 12ks. The caption was to read: “Route this!”