So Long Summer 2012-10-21 16:43:01.000 - Steve Welsh,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist NULL Well it's that time of year again. After a really busy summer season the Sherman Adams building is now closed to the public. The Auto Road is also closed to the summit, however, they'll be running Snow Coach tours to treeline starting in December. Weather permitting the Cog Railway will be running trains to the summit until conditions prevent them from doing so.Anyone planning on hiking Mount Washington should now be prepared for winter conditions and realize that there are no facilities available to them once they reach

Work Hard Play Hard 2012-10-20 19:35:48.000 - Mike Dorfman,  Summit Intern NULL Here on the summit of Mount Washington, we have a very unique work schedule. With shifts between 6 and 8 people, we work for 8 days straight and then can enjoy 6 days off. Many nine-to-fivers might drool at this schedule, but it is not as incredible as it looks. When we're on the summit, work is nonstop and there is always something to fix, de-ice, digitize, observe or otherwise work on. We take observations once an hour, every hour of the day, every day of the year.

Thoughts from the Newest Observer 2012-10-19 22:06:25.000 - Brian Fitzgerald,  Weather Observer/Education Specialist Sometimes snow angels on the deck are part of work Life and work on top of Mount Washington can be as exhilarating as it is brutal. In the early days of the Observatory, observers would spend two three or four weeks at a time working around the clock to make sure a weather observation was made every hour of the day. In the 1930s observers were essentially unpaid volunteers to boot, but since the Great Depression had hit, staffers felt themselves more than lucky to have room

Climate Prediction 2012-10-18 23:33:35.000 - Mike Carmon,  Weather Observer/Meteorologist Graphics from the CPC Will the upcoming winter be snowy or not? Warmer than average, or colder?Today, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released their official predictions for the upcoming winter.As far as New England is concerned, there is a lot of uncertainty with respect to temperature and precipitation. In both areas, there is an equal chance of an above- (warmer/wetter) versus a below- (colder/drier) average winter season. The uncertainty is due to the inability of the CPC to nail down the behavior of El Nino. El Nino conditions (or a lack

168 Hours on Mt. Washington 2012-10-17 22:20:58.000 - Bill Ofsiany,  Summit Volunteer NULL Over the past 50 years of hiking this area, summer and winter, Barbara Althen and I have probably been on the top of Mt. Washington about 30 times. Because it is the halfway point in a day hike, we only spent about an hour on the summit each time, before heading down. That hour was a biased one though, since we picked the day and the weather, be it July or January. This week, we lived up here, and were fortunate enough to be here during the

Happy 80th!! 2012-10-16 18:26:19.000 - Brian Fitzgerald,  Weather Observer/Education Specialist L to R: McKenzie, Monahan, Pagliuca and Dodge Eighty years ago yesterday, Alex McKenzie, Robert Scott Monahan, Salvatore Pagliuca and Joe Dodge with the help of many supporters took their very first weather observation under a newly formed group of citizen-scientists known as the Mount Washington Observatory. Picking up where the U.S. Signal Service (the precursor to the Weather Bureau) had left off decades earlier, the new observers began settling in for their first winter at the home of the world's worst weather in the cramped quarters of the Auto

My Final Comment... 2012-10-15 18:36:07.000 - Anthony Grimes,  Summit Museum Supervisor Marty, trying to take over my job. Today is one of my last remaining days working in the summit museum. It's hard to believe that the season is coming to an end, but the recent blast of frosty weather that paralyzed the summit was a reminder that winter is just around the corner. It has been awesome getting a chance to live and work at such an extraordinary place. Joining the Observatory crew for the summer has allowed me to meet several amazing people and see some of the

The Darkness Cometh 2012-10-14 20:56:12.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Weather Observer/Meteorologist A typical week on the summit has a crew that consists of three weather Observers, an intern and one to two volunteers (FYI - in the summer, we gain one additional intern and a museum attendant). Among this small group of people, we divide ourselves into two shifts so we can maintain our hourly weather observations around the clock as we have for the past 80+ years. The two shifts consist of a day shift (two Observers and an intern) that starts at 0630 EDT (0530 EST) and lasts until

New Daily Record Low 2012-10-13 19:07:00.000 - Roger Pushor,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist Daily Record Low of 7.4 degrees Early on the morning of Saturday October 13th, we set a new Daily Record Low for this day of 7 degrees. The previous Daily Record Low was 8 degrees. So how much did we really break the record by you ask. Well record highs and lows are kept to the nearest whole degree and the temperature we read off the Low Thermometer was 7.4 degrees and that rounded down to 7 degrees. Had it read 7.5 degrees or higher we'd only tied

Technology. Can't live with it. Can't live without it. 2012-10-12 18:12:24.000 - Brian Fitzgerald,  Weather Observer/Education Specialist Confused yet? So am I. Up high at the Mount Washington Observatory we are surrounded by all forms of technology- some forms simple, while some forms are a bit more complex. The Observatory houses everything from radio antennas, microwave-link dishes, Polycom videoconferencing technology, digital barometers, anemometers to more low-tech items like mercury thermometers and mechanical barographs and wind charts. Given our isolated nature on the Rockpile it's extremely important as Weather Observers that we know how to operate, and perhaps more importantly, fix