Pretty much every morning when I get up, I check the weather forecast. Sure, it’s not always the most accurate of creatures, but at least a quick glance at the radar can tell me whether or not to carry an umbrella. The next time I do that and I’m tempted to curse out Sydney’s variable weather, I’ll remind myself via webcam that I could be somewhere a lot more inhospitable: Antarctica.
We’ve covered Mobotix’s remarkably rugged Webcams before — they’ve got an installation near the top of Mount Everest — and for the past ten years they’ve also had a camera installation at a German research station down in Antarctica.
Mobotix’s cameras are installed in a sheltered spot on the station’s outside wall, where they’ve got to contend with weather that’s as warm (for Antarctica) as 10°C and as chilly as -30°C. That’s not still, either; weather conditions down there can create storms with wind speeds of up to 250kph.
You can check the Webcam yourself, although the images aren’t truly “live”. There’s not really a good enough data pipe down there for that, so instead images are taken every ten minutes and uploaded via satellite connection. Every once in a while, they also get visited by penguins, who have their own online fan community.