May 18: Preparing for the storm

A storm is in the forecast for tonight, peaking tomorrow morning.  A little storm, not too crazy, but with decent winds up to 30 knots, and some snow. Some forecasts say 30 knots, others say 10 knots.. We’ll see what we get, but we decided to err on the cautious sides, and tidy up camp, bringing inside anything that could fly or get buried in snow, make sure there is enough snow on the tent flaps, that any openings are tightly closed etc.

In the middle of the afternoon, some blowing snow could be seen on the horizon, and it slowly got closer, visibility went down. It’s not windy yet, but we can tell that something is brewing.

We also brought food inside for the next couple of days, so that we don’t have to dig it out too soon if we end up getting buried in snow. The thing about Arctic storms is that, even if it does not snow, the wind picks up the snow on the surface, and redistributes it around objects, as if it were determined to flatten the landscape of any asperities, and make it all cleanly white. This is what a storm is like: “white out”, air, ground, sky, everything becomes white, so that you cannot tell where you are, whether there is a wall or a hole in front of you… It can be disorienting!