Bike Week 2006

2006-06-16 16:48:03.000 – Tim Markle,  Chief Observer

End of the Rainbow

The beginning of this shift week has been met with a task list of projects a mile long. Unfortunately, this work has made us neglect getting a comment posted sooner. We apologize for that and will try to be a bit more diligent in the future.

The weekly departure of Jim and Ryan has meant that much of the weather so far this week has been sunny and mild, albeit a touch on the windy side. This nice stretch of weather has allowed the crew to get a few of the left over projects from last week done, as well as start a few more. The tech crew, with the help of a specialist, has gotten all of the fiber optic lines around the summit connected so that we are now ready to begin putting in new weather and radio equipment. These lines will not only allow the Observatory to place wind devices at various locations on the summit, but also allow for the development of a mountain top meso-net. A meso-net is a mesoscale, or mid range, network of weather stations situated within a certain radius. Our network will comprise of ski resort summits and AMC huts. The stations will only report temperature and humidity once operational, but will provide a copious amount of data in which to learn about temperature and moisture variances within the White Mountain region. We hope to have this up and running by the end of the summer season.

Other projects have been research oriented. Currently we are logging data from multiple wind instruments on the tower in order to do a comparative study to see which instruments perform best in given wind ranges and weather conditions. A similar study is also being done with various temperature sensing instruments.

It hasn’t been busy just inside the Observatory either! The Auto Road just had the Ride to the Sky, the second of two motorcycle only days run in conjunction with Motorcycle Week. It was estimated that close to 2,300 bikes thundered up the road yesterday alone! The Auto Road will host another well-known event tomorrow, the Road Race. This race will feature runners from all over the world sprinting the almost 8 miles up to the summit in an attempt to beat the record of 56 minutes and 41 seconds! This year it looks as though the weather will be cooperative with clear skies, a steady breeze, and temperatures around 50 degrees.

Tomorrow is also the Observatory’s Annual Meeting. This year it will be starting at 4pm at the AMC Highland Center in Crawford Notch. This meeting is open to all members and there is still time to register! Events at the meeting include a silent auction and a talk about climate change from Professor Cameron Wake from UNH. Click here to learn more.

Tim Markle,  Chief Observer