Dealing with a big drift

2010-03-15 22:46:56.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist

Here is my very scientific meteorological evaluation of the weather pattern on Mount Washington for the last several weeks:

Sunny, sunny, sunny, STORM, sunny, sunny, sunny, STORM

The ‘storm’ part of that pattern has fallen on my shift for a while now. In fact, the latest storm just began to move out of the region this morning. Starting early Sunday morning and ending late this morning, we received over 17 inches of snow, all on moderate to strong east winds. Now last shift I wrote a lot about how uncommon east winds are on the summit and how difficult they can be to deal with. Unfortunately my shift has seen more east winds than any other direction lately. Just like the storm two weeks ago, we have had some pretty incredible drifting on the summit, especially in front of the main entrance to the Sherman Adams State Park building.

Here are some pictures from today:

A wall of snow

A very interestingly shaped drift

The full size of the drift, right before shoveling

A layered pic, showing before and after (thanks to Ryan for this great photo)

You can check out more pictures from today on the Observatory’s page on Facebook. Also, head on over to our YouTube site to check out two really neat videos from today: one of the drift forming, and one of us shoveling it!

Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist