NULL 2010-12-04 13:53:28.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer and Meteorologist NULL Whistling while you work definitely makes working (shoveling) a lot more fun. The famous seven dwarves really knew how to motivate people. Christmas music has been blaring out of our speakers since Wednesday, which means Christmas songs were on our mind for our morning shoveling routine! Kristin, Jen, and I began with an off-key, obnoxiously loud rendition of Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas. We continued in the A-frame by starting a lot of tunes; we didn't finish many. That's when we decided to come up with an Observatory-themed

NULL 2010-12-03 14:08:19.000 - Jennifer Finn,  Summit Intern NULL As promised, we're keeping you updated on our progress on dealing with all the ice on the summit. Steve and our volunteers did a great job yesterday getting most of the ice off of the A-frame. They spent a good amount of time using a mallet to whack huge chunks of it off and move them out of the way so we can walk through. Some ice chipping has also been done to make a clearer path through the A-frame. The door to the observation deck is a whole lot lighter

NULL 2010-12-02 14:31:39.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer and Meteorologist Let the fun begin! Happy December Everyone! We arrived at the summit yesterday to freezing rain and the most significant glazing event our shift has ever seen! During a normal icing event, we try to remove the large chunks of ice before they fall off the building and onto someone's head. This time, temperature was forecast to stay cold and the ice built up far too quickly to even pretend to keep up with it! We decided to wait until winds calmed, and temperatures cooled. I avoided going outside yesterday. Thank

NULL 2010-12-01 16:15:40.000 - Erica Sandschulte,  Summit Intern Flying a kite on the observation deck We are still experiencing significant glaze icing, which may knock out our Internet access. If website updates do not occur for a time, this is the reason and we'll get it back and running as soon as possible. Trust us - we want Internet access as much as you do! Today, Wednesday is our shift change day. Our crew will be heading down the Mountain and the alternating crew will arrive for another exciting week of weather. I must say, this past week was awesome.

NULL 2010-11-30 14:28:48.000 - Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer 12/01/2010 - 0700 EST Update: We are experiencing significant glaze icing, which may knock out our Internet access. If website updates do not occur for a time, this is the reason and we'll get it back and running as soon as possible. Trust us - we want Internet access as much as you do! So here we are at the other end of another shift. We have recently gone back into the fog after a nice respite for a day or two. Erica and I took advantage of the clear skies, low

Learning about glories 2010-11-29 16:22:27.000 - Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist Double glory!! Well, not exactly... I am the sort of person that like to learn new things. I'm happy to say that most days, I manage to learn something new, even if it is random and rather pointless. Today, I learned something about an optical phenomena that we see from time to time on the summit: a glory.A glory is created when sunlight backscatters off of a cloud layer (clouds with uniform droplet size work best) to its source, creating a ring of color on the cloud layer that

Whoops! 2010-11-28 23:51:35.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist First off, let me just say, sorry about todays higher summits forecast, I blew it. I tried my best like I do every morning. I spend two hours or more each morning pouring over data preparing for my morning forecasts. I look at several satellite loops with various color enhancements (done manually and not done by yelling "enhance" at the computer or tech support like they do in movies). I look at surrounding stations current and past observations. I look at our own mesonet for information. I look at NHDOT and VDOT

Ups and downs of weather 2010-11-27 23:08:56.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist As you may have read in other Observer Comments, we all pretty much love winter up here. So, when we exited October, and monthly averages were computed, most of us were living pretty optimistic about the wintry months ahead. At the end of the month or October, the temperature was 2.5F below the normal average monthly temperature. So that meant that the start of our winter months (October thru May) was starting off colder than normal. Precipitation saw a surplus of 0.40 inches which is always nice to

Winter Day after Thanksgiving 2010-11-26 16:25:01.000 - Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer Thanksgiving Dinner It is a nice, wintery Friday up here with yesterday's 100+ mile views replaced with freezing fog and a variety of precipitation. It has been an interesting day precipitation-wise with freezing rain and ice pellets falling and glaze ice accruing at 22 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a bit unusual as rime and snow would be expected at temperatures that cold, but there must have been a warm layer aloft that it was falling through before reaching us. I'll give a little reminder on the difference between glaze

Thanksgiving 2010-11-25 17:18:54.000 - Erica Sandschulte,  Summit Intern Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Today started off great, we had visibility of 110 miles and broken clouds over the summits for the better part of the day; overall it was another beautiful day...all we need is the snow to complete the beauty for a winter landscape. My wish for snow probably won't happen today, but just after mid-night this evening we are expecting another round of mixed precipitation. A cold front will cross the region tomorrow, temperatures will drop and snow will present itself once again to the higher elevations. After the