Not all rainy days are boring!

2013-08-09 16:42:36.000 – Tom Padham,  Summit Intern

Flooding on a mountain peak?

Today is a very rainy day on the summit. In fact it’s probably the rainiest day so far this summer, with over 3.43 inches of rain falling so far today and still more falling as I write this. Rainy days in most locations mean time spent indoors watching movies, but up here on the summit there’s still plenty of work to be done rain or shine, and our observers still need to go outside to do hourly weather observations.

Although today has been a very rainy day, it certainly hasn’t been a boring rainy day. At 5:30 this morning I awoke to bright flashes of light in my room. Confused, I turned to my room’s window to see that the lights were actually very frequent lightning! I was able to witness the tail end of the storm, which still offered up plenty more lightning and also a good downdraft with a peak gust of 56mph. After the first batch of storms, the rain never really let up here on the summit. The rain even caused a little bit of flooding in the parking lot, something I’ve never seen in my time up here.

Tomorrow should bring some more exciting weather as a cold front crosses our area overnight. Winds are expected to top out somewhere in the 60-80mph range tomorrow morning, with higher gusts than that likely. I’m looking forward to seeing how some of the findings from my wind gust project stand up (figuratively) to some high winds!

Tom Padham,  Summit Intern