Fun weather effect

Walking over to Crary this morning, I saw something I'd never seen before.

There were these little flickers of light, maybe a couple of dozen per second, spread across my visual field. It was like old-time TV static, but in real life.

I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing at first but when I turned my head it was obvious what was going on. The wind was blowing toward me and (unbeknownst to me) there were extremely tiny ice crystals blowing in the wind. They were too small to see and invisible head-on except when they'd occasionally reflect the sunlight for an instant. When I turned my head, I was looking away from the sun so the crystals were all catching the light and I could see them streaming past. When I looked straight ahead, only a tiny fraction were reflecting light toward me so I'd only see momentary flashes of light.

It was nice to have a freaky optical illusion to liven up the 3 minute walk to "work".

The weather forecast tomorrow for both McMurdo and the Pole looks good. I'm hoping that this will be the last day I spend in Crary this year! That's the exterior of Crary with the usual vehicles you'd see parked in front of any normal office building :-)