Flux Tower Project III 2019-09-29 15:47:12.000 - Ben Charles, Summit Intern   Hello everyone, after an amazing experience being an intern here for the summer I am lucky enough to say I am staying for the fall internship. This summer I did a lot from forecasting, giving tours, and doing research. My previous research project that I did this summer with intern Austin Patrick was called the Flux Tower Project. This consisted of comparing the accuracy and precision of handheld Kestrel instruments to the instruments on the Mount Washington Observatory deck and tower. Focusing on the variables of temperature, humidity,

Western Snow and a Look Ahead 2019-09-27 19:16:02.000 - Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist   Watching the weather over the past few days and watching a snow storm of epic proportions forming in the front range of Montana. A large low pressure system will be forming in the lee of the Rocky Mountains will create several days of easterly flow in Montana, leading to heavy upslope snow in the Glacier National Park area. Below is an image from the National Weather Service in Great Falls MT, in regards to what they think the expected snowfall is. As a person who

A Taste of All Seasons 2019-09-24 10:07:54.000 - Laura Kee, Summit Intern   Hello everyone, my name is Laura and I’m the new fall intern up here on the summit! I am very excited to be able to live and work at the Home of the World’s Worst Weather, which has been a dream of mine for quite some time. Earlier this year, I graduated from Cornell with a degree in Atmospheric Science and a minor in Climate Change. I grew up outside of Boston which has helped fuel my love of all things meteorological, given the wide range of

Information For Autumn 2019-09-23 05:30:06.000 - Ryan Knapp, Weather Observer/Staff Meteorologist   Autumn has arrived and like usual, we have been receiving inquiries about foliage and the operating hours of the summit. I thought I’d take a minute to address these two items so you might be better informed for the days and weeks ahead.   When will we see peak foliage? To be honest, your guess is as good as ours as there is no set day/week and things can vary from location to location and from year to year. A great example of this is a post that

Can I Bug You for a Minute? (Identifying an Insect on Mount Washington) 2019-09-21 09:37:56.000 - Tom Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   While enjoying a beautiful afternoon on the top of the tower I stumbled upon an interesting looking beetle and decided to take a photo just for fun. It was a picture perfect day with light winds and I was actually painting the very top of our tower, taking advantage of the rare, nearly calm wind conditions on Thursday. I’m very glad I stopped to take this photo. After doing a little bit of research to identify the species

Bring on the Wind! 2019-09-18 10:23:23.000 - Eric Kelsey, Lead Research Scientist   The next step in ensuring a long future of research-quality wind speed measurements occurred this summer when the next-generation pitot static tube anemometer was disassembled and modified to fix a couple of problems that arose this spring and summer. In the spring when temperatures began to rise above freezing regularly, we noticed occasional spikes in wind speed that looked unrealistic. While we expect the NextGen pitot to measure higher wind gust speeds than Pitot 19 (our operational pitot) because of significantly shorter tubing, some gusts were over

Types of Icing Events on Mount Washington 2019-09-17 14:23:48.000 - Ben Charles, Intern   The second week of my fall internship here at the summit of Mount Washington has been an eventful one. It had been since my first shift on the mountain back in late May since I have seen sub-freezing temperatures on the summit, but we were lucky enough to see temperatures dip below the freezing mark twice last Thursday and Friday! However, we were in the clear both times we got below freezing so we didn’t see much freezing other than some surplus trail runoff. Yesterday was

Lenticular Clouds and Mt. Washington 2019-09-16 11:03:58.000 - Ian Bailey, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   Yesterday, we had some incredible views of some Lenticular clouds over the summit! Once we cleared from the fog, I had gone outside for the hourly observation and was pleasantly surprised to find some towering “lentis” in front of me! I quickly dug out my phone and snapped the picture, luckily before my phone was blown out of my hands and down on to the deck (needless to say I’ll be swinging by the iGuys in North Conway this coming down week). But it was worth

When do we Average seeing our First Snow? 2019-09-13 15:29:53.000 - Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist   With winter coming fast in the White Mountains, it is always fun to look back at our records and figure out some averages. Since we are technically a sub-arctic climate on the summit, the first snow usually comes quite early relative to the surrounding locations. We have had a few good cold snaps recently with temperatures falling below freezing, though it has so far only occurred when we have dry air in the region so no snow yet. Finding the first snow of

In Search of Wintry Weather: A Look at the Week Ahead on Mount Washington 2019-09-09 08:30:46.000 - Thomas Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   With our much-advertised below freezing temperatures last night being a bust, (we sat at literally 32.0-34 degrees all night) I’ve decided to take a look at our next chances for potential wintry weather. “Wintry weather” we’ll define as at least some icing conditions, with rime or glaze ice forming on the summit surfaces, or better yet, snow! It’s still quite early for us to see significant snowfall this time of year, but typically by mid-late September the