122 MPH Wind Gust and Record Cold

2008-12-08 20:10:17.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer

Houston, We Have A Problem

Some people need coffee in the morning to wake up. Some people need to geta hot shower. Well, I don’t drink coffee (it stunts your growth you know)and showers aren’t an option on the summit this time of year. Luckily, ona day like today I have the weather to wake me up, in more ways than one.

A wind gust of 122.4 mph (our peak gust for the day corrected for temperature andpressure at the time of the gust) at 5:33 a.m. startled me from my sleep.Shortly before that, temperatures bottomed out at a 25.2 degrees belowzero, breaking the record low for the day which waspreviously 24 below set in 2002. I headed upstairs and then outside to domy first observation of the day just before 6 a.m. I was greeted by windgusts well over 100 mph and temperatures right around 20 below zero. Thatmakes for wind chills of 70 to 80 below zero. Now if that doesn’t wake youup, nothing will!

After significantly calmer conditions tonight and into tomorrow, another storm moving in late tomorrow promises to bring more high winds. More than likely we will see wind gusts exceeding 100 mph, but the potential does exist for a period of sustained winds around the century mark. Right now, forecasting models are not agreeing, and it will all depend on which one ends up having the correct solution. For now, it’s just wait and see!

Observer Note: The picture shown attached to this post is of our microwave dish that houses the antenna responsible for our connection to the Weather Discovery Center in North Conway, NH. This connection provides us with access to our internal network as well as well as access to the world wide web. It was discovered today that the radome (the cover over the front of the dish to protect the antenna inside) was (mostly) gone. This is a bad thing, a very bad thing. Without a radome, the antenna is completely exposed to the elements and we don’t know what will happen when the weather turns bad tomorrow and Wednesday. The moral of this story is: don’t be surprised if current conditions, webcam images (from cameras on the summit), etc. do not show up on the website at some point in the next couple days. We are working on a plan to fix this problem and certainly appreciate your patience in this matter.

Brian Clark,  Observer