October “Winter”

2007-10-14 21:41:16.000 – Aubrie Pace,  Summit Intern

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On Friday we were experiencing icing. Here on the Summit we get two kinds of ice: glaze and rime. I have already experienced rime ice (see the ObsCast slide show from September 17), which has a beautiful feathered pattern. Friday, I got a chance to see glaze ice, which looks just like frozen water against everything. Ryan was out to de-ice many times and our volunteer Steve Walsh took a video of him at work. The wind was from the NW at 65 MPH with temperatures of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. There was blowing snow at the time and the Summit was in the fog. Click here to view the video. Friday afternoon when we hit 32 degrees, I went out to help Brian take down one of our Sonic Anemometers. We brought Steve Welsh, our newest IT Observer, up as well to give him his first taste of Mount Washington weather. While taking it down, our volunteer managed to again catch a video opportunity of Brian and Steve Welsh atop the parapet removing the instrument. At the time of the video the wind was gusting at about 55 MPH, the temperature was 31.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Summit was in the fog. Click here to view the video. The affects of Mount Washington’s October “winter” weather has been in full force for most of the weekend. We saw some snow fall or snow blowing as the snow typically does not fall peacefully in the Summit winds. We got a chance to ski and play in the snow on Saturday after a remarkable sunrise. Today we had great conditions to film our ObsCast, which should be up by the morning. In all, this weekend has been an interesting start to an eventful fall and winter, which we will of course be writing about soon.

Aubrie Pace,  Summit Intern