What a busy week it has been on the summit for us here at the observatory! With the fall colors peaking this week and seasonably warm temperatures many people took advantage and came up to come check out the observatory. I have honestly lost track of the number of tours I have given this week, if I had to guess around 20 tours or so. I met a lot of great people who made the trip up the mountain just to come see what we do up here in the observatory.

In addition to the tours we were greeted with several clear days and calm weather. This weekend we started to get back to normal temperatures and finally got down below freezing. The conditions were just right for rime ice coating the summit cone and some surrounding peaks as well. All of you who made it up to the summit on Monday got to experience some interesting weather conditions with the all the rime ice, wind and even some undercast.

 

 

As I get more time under my belt here at the Obs, as we call it, I am given more responsibility and learn more aspects of being a weather observer. A portion of this job involves submitting hourly observations to the national weather service. This gets at the core of why the observatory is here on the mountain. Our observations are included into the weather forecast models along with data from other observers across the world. In order to get an accurate prediction we need to know what the weather conditions were initially. I have spent a lot of time this shift learning how to become competent in all of the weather forms and data submissions we need to keep up with. Come October 15^th we will have been here on the summit making hourly observations for the past 84 years in all types of weather.  That’s quite the legacy to uphold!