Bermuda is a difficult place for a meteorologist to gain experience with oncoming blizzards, penguins, or subzero temperatures.

That?s part of the reason meteorologist Kimberly Zuill and brother weather technician Kevin Zuill recently spent several months at the McMurdo station in the Antarctic. McMurdo is built on bare volcanic rock of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island, the farthest south solid ground that is accessible by ship.

Mr. Zuill had already done several stints in the Antarctic when he encouraged his sister to join him.

?I first heard about Antarctica in 2002 when I was working as a weather observer for the Bermuda Weather Service,? said Mr. Zuill. ?One of my colleagues there had been to Antarctica. On the night shift he would tell me about it. I thought it sounded really cool.?

Since then Mr. Zuill has spent about 25 months in Antarctica on and off, including an entire year.

There is something about Antarctica that ignites the imagination. When Mr. Zuill?s sister, Kimberly, a meteorologist at the Bermuda Weather Service, heard about his adventures, she wanted to go also.

?I had encouraged Kevin to get into meteorology and trained him as a technician,? said Miss Zuill. ?When I ended up going to Antarctica to work as a weather observer for the Scientific Research Corporation, he trained me, so it was pay back. I love my brother and I love spending time with him and working with him. He is like my best friend.?

The world that Miss Zuill discovered when she joined her brother in the Antarctic was literally topsy-turvy. At the McMurdo station, men knit sweaters with screw drivers, optical illusions literally create mountains out of mole hills, and strangely of all, world nations work together in total co-operation in the pursuit of scientific understanding.

It is also a place where temperatures are below zero even in the summer time, although it does occasionally get above zero. Naturally, temperatures like this aren?t very friendly to humans, so Antarcticans never leave home without an emergency breakfast, lunch, dinner, water, boots, gaiters, sweaters, wind pants, two pairs of gloves, hats, sunglasses and a hand saw in case they should suddenly need to build yourself a wall out of snow.

?It was so isolated, it was like being on a space station,? Miss Zuill said.

Mr. Zuill said one of the hardest things to deal with was not necessarily the extreme cold, but the extreme light or lack thereof. In the winter there are three and a half months of straight, total darkness. In the summer there are three and a half months of constant daylight.

?You get optical illusions called Fata Morgana, which is like a mirage in the desert,? said Miss Zuill. ?It makes a snow chunk look ten feet tall, and flips objects upside down.

?Before I went to the Antarctic it was really hard for me to envision a white out. It is pitch dark, but it is completely white and you have no reference at all. You will be walking and it is daylight, but because the sun isn?t coming through to cast a shadow off a snow chunk, it all looks flat white. You will end up falling and tripping and becoming completely disoriented.?

Mr. Zuill said the best way to experience a white out, is to stick a bucket on your head and then to shine a flashlight into it ? which is exactly what they did in snow survival school.

?Snow survival school was fun, but I wouldn?t voluntarily do it again,? he said. ?We learned about different levels of hypothermia. Then we had to set up a Scott tent that look like tepee. We had to build a snow wall facing the predominant winds to protect our campsite.?

They did this with a wood saw they carry in their emergency kit at all times. To make a snow wall, Mr. Zuill had to saw blocks out of snow and then pile them three or four levels high.

They also had to make caves in the snow to sleep in. The final test was doing everything in just 45 minutes.

Mr. Zuill learned just how important snow survival skills can be, one day when he and a friend became lost in the snow.

?I had a near miss one day at the end of the winter season,? Mr. Zuill said. ?We were setting up the observer tower out there, ready for the first flight to come in at the beginning of the summer season. We were in a van with big wheels. On the way back we got caught in a lot of blowing snow which restricted our visibility to about 100 feet. There are red flags out there that mark the roads.

?One of the flags was blown away, so we couldn?t see our way to the next flag. We missed our turning and went off the road where it hadn?t been ploughed. Instead of being in two or three feet of snow, we were in four or five feet of snow, and the truck wasn?t going to get out of that.

?We waited for three and a half hours. A dozer had to come in, hook up a tow and then we had to follow him back in because we couldn?t see.?

McMurdo is the hub of the Antarctic. All flights coming into the Antarctic come in from Christchurch, New Zealand, land at McMurdo. From there people disperse to various camps.

In the winter there are only around 250 people in McMurdo. In the summer the population can climb up to 1,350 people. Just about everything is recycled and taken out of Antarctica including human waste, to try to keep the region as clean as possible. Miss Zuill said, to avoid going stir crazy there is quite a lot to do in McMurdo.

?It is a very active community there,? said Miss Zuill. ?There is a bowling alley, three bars, the Chapel of Snows, and various gyms. There are also lots of classes in everything from scientific subjects, foreign languages, to belly dancing and pottery making. Knitting is really popular, and there is even a men?s knitting group. They knit with screw drivers. Knitting is good for stress relief.?

Miss Zuill learned to enjoy her free time, because she was quite busy as a weather observer.

At first she was working out on the ice in a Pegasus tower which looks a lot like a container from a container ship.

?All our computers are hooked up to automated weather sensors outside,? she said. ?We just recorded anything to do with the weather. The differences to being in Antarctica and observing in Bermuda are that you have to also report the horizon definitions and the snow surface definitions.?

She was hoping to shadow the forecasters, but she found this difficult while working out of the ice, because she was working 17 hour days including transportation time. Eventually, she moved into the town to do weather observation there. In town, she found more opportunity to interact with other people in her profession.

?It broadened my horizons in respect to my career,? she said. ?It was a completely different climate to Bermuda, and I was encountering things there that I never would have encountered here.?

Miss Zuill said it has helped her to get a fresh perspective on meteorology and climate.

?I now can look beyond the subtropical and tropical regions and realise that the interactions between the polar regions ? seen the effects of what one polar region can have on the tropic region.?

Miss Zuill said she was inspired by the way that everyone works together at McMurdo, and how people work so hard to keep the area clean and undamaged by humans

?The area is part of the Antarctic treaty,? she said, ?where the international nations have reserved this area for peaceful scientific research.

?They have all combined their efforts in trying to get as much information from Antarctica as possible. It is so unspoiled. For example, you find meteors all over the place when you are out in the camps.

?They fall into the snow and stay perfectly preserved. You don?t have man interacting with anything, and you don?t have much wildlife interacting with anything, so it is almost like science is frozen. It is just up to the scientist to discover their answers.?

She said that although Antarctica looks barren on the surface, it is teeming with life below the surface.

?Marine life is really flourishing,? she said. ?Everything is supersized and they have their own adaptations for the cold. Creatures produce their own anti-freeze for the cold, for example.?

The Zuills are hoping to give a talk about their experience at their church, the Wesley Methodist Church in Hamilton. Miss Zuill has already been invited to talk with children in several schools.