Clear views of the snow-covered peaks…

2006-10-27 09:00:35.000 – Jim Salge,  Observer

The snow-covered summit…

I honestly think that it has been an entire year since the Northern Presidential Range has looked this white. The density and depth of the early season rime has allowed it to coated everything, and has trapped a large portion of the snow on all the slopes. Given the winter that we had last year, since last October’s record snowfall, I can’t remember them this evenly coated. Perhaps the lower density snow just blows off during mid-winter, perhaps summer is clogging my memory.

The summit has in fact cleared this morning, and an undercast leaves nearly everything within our viewscape a bright white. Finally able to survey the size of the drifts, I can tell you it’s far more than I expected. This shot shows drifts up the tip top house, while this one gives an exaggerated sense of scale. And one last photo shows the changes with elevation that the White Mountains experienced with this storm!

While we currently sit at the 3rd snowiest October on record at the Observatory, and considering the storm poised to hit the peak tomorrow, we should easily move into second despite the risk of mixing for a while. This has been quite a month!

Jim Salge,  Observer