A Great Friday 2014-08-02 00:45:21.000 - Kaitlyn O`Brien,  Weather Observer/Education Specialist A Birthday Celebration Happy Friday everyone! We hope everyone had a wonderful first day of August! Can you believe it's August already!? Today turned out to be extremelyhazy, but the haze sure did provide some nice color this evening as thesunset was briefly visible when we momentarily broke out of the clouds.Life on the summit is really no different from life in the valley,especially when it comes to birthdays! Today, we celebrated observer MikeDorfman's birthday in style with party hats, festive leis, and otherbirthday decorations. It also just so

Life on the Summit 2014-07-31 15:35:46.000 - Jan and Christine,  Summit Museum Attendants Spending time with this amazing summit crew is a personal and professional privilege, but what gives me the greatest joy is dinner time, not just because of the awesome food that is prepared by our volunteers, but to sit down and enjoy family style dining, too. That is the best time to really get to know these guys and learn of their many hidden talents. We meet around the large table at seven o'clock every night and exchange stories. Some are stories of summit life, but others

Thoughts from a Volunteer 2014-07-30 18:26:15.000 - Aylmer H. Given III,  Summit Volunteer Lakes of the Clouds AMC Hut It is quite an honor to spend a week volunteering with the Mount Washington Observatory staff. Just listening to the conversations in the tower and at the dinner table gives you just a peek into how much combined knowledge there is among the interns and weather observers.As we arrived on our first day, the volunteers were invited to listen in on part of the transition meeting. When the interns were told that there was a low pressure system forming and that

Science in the Mountains: Forecasting Wind Gusts on the Summit 2014-07-29 18:29:38.000 - Tom Padham,  Weather Observer NULL Our Science In the Mountains lecture series continues tomorrow at the Weather Discovery Center in North Conway, with this week's topic forecasting wind gusts on the summit. Ever wonder what creates a wind gust? Or why some days winds may be a steady breeze and others an erratic gale that tosses you around? I will be discussing a research project I worked on this past summer, where I studied wind data on the summit in order to gain a better understanding of

First Time As A Summit Volunteer 2014-07-28 18:31:28.000 - Rich Sullivan,  Summit Volunteer NULL To begin, I need to thank my wife and children for allowing me this time to fulfill my desire to spend the week on the summit of Mt Washington. It is the longest I have ever been away from them and I know it is a very huge sacrifice on their part.Lots of preparation was put into this week, along with 8 months of planning. I was able to become a member of Mount Washington Observatory and partake in this weeklong volunteer program. I made a

Snow In July? 2014-07-27 19:52:18.000 - Michael Kyle,  Weather Observer With the unofficial holiday of Christmas in July passing just two days back, it made me wonder if there has ever been a white Christmas in July here on the summit. It is not something totally unreasonable to think since we have recorded snow in every month of the year here at the Mount Washington Observatory. So I took a look at our archive weather observations and found some 42 days were snow has been recorded in the month of July. Unfortunately none of those 42 days were a July

Puuuuuurfect Day! MEEEOOOOWWW 2014-07-26 18:07:57.000 - Marty,  Summit Cat I'm Sleepy! Many meows from me, Marty! It's been a while since I last posted...you see I have been quite busy seeking attention from all the people coming up to see me this summer. I also have my full time job of watching over the observers and making sure they do their jobs properly. They don't like it when I sit on their data, but they don't understand that I'm really just checking their work!It's a full time job up here, especially in the summer. Plenty of lounging around, soaking in

Great End To The Day 2014-07-25 17:57:32.000 - Brett Rossio,  Summit Intern Summits Beginnning To Clear Out As Ethan said, I'm hoping for a visible thunderstorm soon too! The past couple of times the summit came close, but we were engulfed by fog and could only see flashes. That isn't discouraging me at all with the wide variety of weather I've already encountered up here!We finally escaped the fog this afternoon to allow us to get an early evening view of the horizon. The fog didn't discourage the public from coming up and seeing the summit, along with the erratic

Calm After the Storm 2014-07-24 15:03:57.000 - Ethan Wright,  Summit Intern Mt. Jefferson in the Early Morning Last night at the summit we experienced some thunderstorms associated with a cold front moving across the region. On the radar display we watched the storms approach the summit and waited intently for their arrival. By the time that the first lightning strike was recorded in the late afternoon, the summit was engulfed in clouds. The lightning show that we hoped to see was dampened by the foggy conditions at the summit. I have about two weeks left of my internship and still

Successful Experiment and Storms-a-Brewin 2014-07-22 19:18:36.000 - Caleb Meute,  Summit Intern Boom Goes the Watermelon SUCCESS! Well it took more than a few rubber bands to reach watermelon carnage, but it happened. Kaitlyn made the start of the experiment easy on us by purchasing 'only' 6 bags of rubber bands of various sizes. You might think these bags would contain maybe a few different sizes, but our friends at 'the rubber band store' (identity hidden) think closer to 15 different sizes would be just right. We sorted these out by each individual size because we thought it would be better