Simpson has worked out[301] that there is an almost constant pressure gradient driving the air on the plateau northwards parallel to the 146 deg.  E. meridian, and parallel also to the probable edge of the plateau.  The mean velocity for the months of this December and January was about 11 miles an hour.  During this plateau journey Scott logged wind force 5 and over on 23 occasions, and this wind was in their faces from the Beardmore to the Pole, and at their backs as they returned.  A low temperature when it is calm is paradise compared to a higher temperature with a wind, and it is this constant pitiless wind, combined with the altitude and low temperatures, which has made travelling on the Antarctic plateau so difficult.

While the mean velocity of wind during the two midsummer months seems to be fairly constant, there is a very rapid fall of temperature in January.  The mean actual temperature found on the plateau this year in December was -8.6 deg., the minimum observed being -19.3 deg..  Simpson remarks that “it must be accounted as one of the wonders of the Antarctic that it contains a vast area of the earth’s surface where the mean temperature during the warmest month is more than 8 deg. below the Fahrenheit zero, and when throughout the month the highest temperature was only +5.5 deg.  F."[302] But the mean temperature on the plateau dropped 10 deg. in January to -18.7 deg., the minimum observed being -29.7 deg..  These temperatures have to be combined with the wind force described above to imagine the conditions of the march.  In the light of Scott’s previous plateau journey[303] and Shackleton’s Polar Journey[304] this wind was always expected by our advance parties.  But there can be no doubt that the temperature falls as solar radiation decreases more rapidly than was generally supposed.  Scott probably expected neither such a rapid fall of temperature, nor the very bad surfaces, though he knew that the plateau would mean a trying time, and indeed it was supposed that it would be much the hardest part of the journey.

On the night of January 15, Scott wrote “it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours."[305] They were 27 miles from the Pole.

The story of the next three days is taken from Wilson’s diary: 

“January 16. We got away at 8 A.M. and made 7.5 miles by 1.15, lunched, and then in 5.3 miles came on a black flag and the Norwegians’ sledge, ski, and dog tracks running about N.E. and S.W. both ways.  The flag was of black bunting tied with string to a fore-and-after which had evidently been taken off a finished-up sledge.  The age of the tracks was hard to guess but probably a couple of weeks—­or three or more.  The flag was fairly well frayed at the edges.  We camped here and examined the tracks and discussed things.  The surface was fairly good in the forenoon -23 deg. temperature, and all the afternoon we were coming downhill with again a rise to the W., and a fall and a scoop to the east where the Norwegians came up, evidently by another glacier.”