Bring on the Winds Nor’easter

2014-11-01 17:49:00.000 – Caleb Meute, Summit Intern

When I was in elementary school, my dad used to bring enormous rolls of paper to our house for my siblings and I to draw on. I took advantage of this, by drawing massive tornadoes that would wrap around entire rooms. I would draw the tornadoes, put a couple of upside down cows around them and maybe a car or two, then I would bring them into my classrooms and ask my teachers to hang them on the wall.I was horrible with art and drawing pictures, so tornadoes were perfect for me. All I had to do was scribble on the paper, and then draw flying cows and cars. Granted, the cows may have looked like cars and cars may have looked like… Cows? I just wasn’t good at drawing. Anyway, my teachers always humored my passion for weather and because of this, I was able to stick with it throughout my schooling and eventually acquire my meteorology degree in 2012. As I was going through school, I remember multiple times when I would have to compose a research paper or make a speech, and often I found myself choosing Mount Washington as the subject.

Every storm that came through my hometown in southeastern Pennsylvania would disappoint me. Even the ones that put us out of school for a week would occasionally leave me wishing it was worse. If we were not setting records, I was bummed. Storms that would approach Chester County would always skirt around my town somehow. It was awful.

This is the reason I applied for an internship up here. I had grown sick of expecting a foot or more of snow only to have the track shift slightly and we would end up with a dusting. This is one of the many reasons why I love it up here. Not only am I surrounded by people who are also hoping for 100+ mph winds, copious amounts of snow, and the biggest of thunderstorms, but we actually get them up here.

This shift week has been comprised of mongering the storm that is currently moving up the coast, already dropping snow over the higher summits. I swear that I am like a kid at a candy shop up here. Every new model run has me doing a new dance when I look at the latest forecasted wind numbers (the observers would all confirm this). When I forecast for my town in Pennsylvania, I tend to go lower than what models are showing and am usually pretty accurate. Here at the summit of Mount Washington, models project high wind numbers and lots of precipitation. The experienced forecasters, who have been living and working up here for some time, usually tell me to go even higher than what the models are showing. IT’S AWESOME. I mean… Cough… It’s pretty cool and I like it. The highest sustained winds I have seen since I arrived in May were at 75 mph. This storm, with the current projections, is looking to give us winds sustained in the 80-100 mph range. Hash Tag -LET’S GO!

Caleb Meute, Summit Intern