Chilling Video Shows Woman in Antarctica Struggling to Shut a Door as Snowstorm Nearly Sweeps Her Away

Far away in the forgotten valleys of Antarctica, whose sub-freezing temperatures act like an ice-cream machine, Tomasz Kurczaba (@tomaszkurczaba) spends each day of his life. Instead of neighbors, he is greeted by penguins and swimming manatees. He treads along, carrying a camera with which he snaps glimpses of little beaches, crevasses in icebergs, and hopping walnuts. The winds are bitter, but even the harshest summer sun looks a lot friendlier. Between 2022 and 2023, when he was the head of the “47th Polish Antarctic Expedition,” he posted a video titled “Typical workday in Antarctica,” showing a colleague struggling to close a door amidst a vigorous snow blizzard. Ever since, the video has been viewed more than 27 million times and is now making rounds on social media.

Kurczaba, a polar explorer and photographer, was working at the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station on Admiralty Bay in King George Island, the largest island in the South Shetland Islands off the coast of Antarctica. Invaded by colonies of Gentoo penguins and harems of Weddell seals, the island witnesses savage weather with bitterly whipping Antarctic winds, round-the-clock darkness, and a year-round blanket of pancake ice. The research station where Kurczaba was posted monitored the Earth's electric field, water and atmospheric pollution, and the calving of the Lange Glacier. But unless he posted this footage, no one could guess the barbarity of the weather that surrounded their station. 

The jarring footage shows Kurczaba’s colleague, clad in a blue puffer jacket, gloves, winter boots, and goggles, desperately holding on to the door of their cabin in an attempt to shut it closed. On one side of the door jamb is a grey bin, whose black shiny polybag appears to be fluttering in the stormy gale, and so are the strings dangling from the wall. The person seems to be standing at the edge of the cabin’s entrance while a monstrous blizzard flares in the background. Flurries of snow barrage through the dark blue sky, with tiny shimmery lights blinking now and then from an invisible source. This person seems unable to hold themselves against the fierce winds slapping their cabin.

The blizzard is so intense that it casts an illusion that a person is standing in a moving train. Another person inside the cabin tries to support them by extending their arm, but the colleague stuck at the entrance seems to be losing their hold in the wild snowstorm. In the comments section, people expressed amazement at the bizarre weather conditions Kurczaba and his colleagues faced during their expedition.

Many people wondered why the management didn’t set up sliding doors in the cabin despite knowing about the island’s weather. “Why don’t they do sliding doors there,” commented @klausroger69. @crullerqueen said, “That door needs a looped rope tethered inside so you can grab it and swing it shut.” Others speculated on the optical illusion that the blizzard cast in the video’s backdrop. “Looks like they're riding a train,” said @jens_baath. @basedwess wrote, “Looks like a speeding train.”  

You can follow Tomasz Kurczaba (@tomaszkurczaba) on Instagram for more surreal nature videos.