Ice Climbing 2009-10-08 22:12:11.000 - Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer Off the Ground and on Ice! Well, it has been quite an eventful day on the summit. As Ryan mentioned in his last comment, we experienced our first winds over 100 mph last night, topping out at 107 mph a little before 10PM EST. It was nice to go to bed listening to the roar of the wind outside the window, changing pitch with the gusts and lulls. It's like a natural white noise machine or your own personal freight train. Really, who wouldn't want a freight train out their bedroom

100 - we finally got it! 2009-10-07 21:33:52.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist It had been 167 days since we saw a similar chart 167! No, I am not exclaiming that because we reached that wind speed. I am exclaiming that because that is the number of days that have passed since a wind gust over 100 mph passed over the summit. That is more than a third of the year and just shy of being over half the year without the sight of a wind over the century mark. That is a long time on the summit but sort

NULL 2009-10-06 08:19:28.000 - Mary Ellen Dunn,  Summit Intern First Snowfall of the Season. Why meteorology? I get asked that question a lot. Some people are curious, why chose to study meteorology in college? Well, for me personally, weather is such an exciting, rapidly changing science. I have always loved a good thunderstorm, the first snowfall, a beautiful sunrise, and of course, Twister but, it was in my high school Earth Science class when I first considered the idea of becoming a Meteorologist. My teacher was so enthusiastic about the weather in her teaching that I instantly became hooked. A

NULL 2009-10-04 15:11:07.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer the view from above Autumn is one of the most beautiful seasons, and its colorful display is created by nature's necessity to survive winter. After a blooming spring, and a sun and rain kissed summer the deciduous trees start to prepare for winter. The trees, like bears, actually hibernate. Why, then, do we get a brilliant show? Plants make their own food through a process called photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, chlorophylls in plants (usually in stems and leaves) combine water, carbon dioxide and solar energy to create sugar and oxygen. 6CO2 + 6H2O =

Casey 2009-10-03 04:13:22.000 - Casey Taylor,  Outreach Coordinator Footprint in the snow Observer Mike C. may have told me it was a cliche, but it was really exciting to be up here for the first snowfall of the year this week! Though we were asleep when most of it fell, intern Mary Ellen and I were eager to get outside and "play in the snow (aka mostly rime-covered glaze ice)" on Thursday morning. Now, my fondness for New Hampshire winters is still in its development phase, but there is something undeniably special about that first snowfall of the year. I

October 2009-10-01 05:28:03.000 - Mike Carmon,  Staff Meteorologist Black & White September is officially history, and October is here! But in the wake of a relatively dry first 29 days, September decided to wait until its curtain had nearly closed to bring our first snowflakes of the season. Generally the first measurable snowfall of the season is witnessed in September (the average monthly total is 2.2"). Last year, however, our inaugural flakes held off until October 2nd, giving the summit its first snow-less September since 2004. This year nearly made it two in a row, but at approx. 5:45 PM

A wonderful week! 2009-09-29 16:56:35.000 - Barbara Kresse,  Summit Volunteer Hi, my name is Barbara Kresse, I've been the OBS volunteer for the week and can't believe it is almost over. I spend lots of time cooking with the big old gas stove, from the well stocked larder, but there is time to have fun and explore outside. It is so awesome here, you have to see it in person (when it's clear). One day we could see 135 miles to the Adirondacks, but other days just 25 feet was visible. It rained, and we had a high of 74

Building things... 2009-09-28 20:00:26.000 - Will Tourtellot,  Summit Intern Some of you may have noticed that our North View webcam was out yesterday (Sunday). That is because Brian Clark and I spent a good portion of the day fabricating a new shelf for the webcam. During the winter our windows become covered in thick rime ice so to combat this icing we have a heater right next to the north view webcam to keep the window relatively ice free. In the past, this hasn't been terribly effective, so our goal was to build a snug little home for both the

Cold is a Relative Thing 2009-09-27 17:15:37.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist Fall with frosted winter tips. The digital age has made communicating important and relevant information speedy and efficient but it has also sped the dispersion of irrelevant information as well. If you have an email account whether at work or for personal use, at some point you are going to get on someone's forwarding list or spam list consisting of "bad" jokes, useless information and advertisements. Sometimes we know the forwarding party responsible for sending us the sheep jokes or blonde jokes but then other times, we get

Contrasting colors 2009-09-26 16:08:38.000 - Brian Clark,  Observer and Meteorologist Colors starting to pop in the north Fall is a great time of year, in my opinion, both on and off the mountain. One of my favorite things about fall on the mountain is the difference between the colors on the summit and the colors showing up in the valley. All the alpine vegetation here on the summit, by this time in the year, has turned back to its usual shades of brown (it's only green for a month or so during the summer). This is contrasted by the shades