windy christmas eve 2008-12-24 17:01:51.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer NULL Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, 'Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?'Even with Rudolph's glowing beacon of a nose I wouldn't recommend a trip to the summit tonight. Conditions will be dangerous at best. Winds are forecast to be sustained near 100 mph, with higher gusts. It looks like the summits will see some mixed precipitation and even rain. Temperatures will warm to the lower thirties, coating the summit in glaze ice like frosting on a cake. Then, when temperature creeps

12 days of christmas 2008-12-23 10:33:44.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist Last year, I did a parody on the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” putting an obs spin on how the story goes. This year, I am putting a twist on the song “The 12 Days of Christmas”. If you don’t want to take the time to read it in order like the song goes, just scroll to the bottom for “day 12” to get a summary. I hope y’all like it. And since we are heading down today, a day earlier than normal due to the Christmas holidays,

Windy and Flying Solo 2008-12-22 15:34:03.000 - Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer NULL It has been an unusual week on the summit in terms of staffing. For one, as Ryan mentioned in a previous comment, we are lacking a volunteer. Ryan has been filling this gap most notably, and did a tremendous job cooking for 11 folks that spent the night on a guided climbing trip. On top of that, our intern, Mike Carmen, is working nights with Ryan so that he can soon swap to the other shift and become their meteorological observer. Brian who would normally work days, injured

A mile in anothers shoes. 2008-12-21 00:18:13.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist NULL When I was in grade school, our class taped out thumbs to our hand to experience what Jonny Tremain (from the book of the same name) had to go through on a daily basis. It impacted everything we did from turning a door knob to writing our names. It was something simple and artificial but it brought us a relation to the character. It showed how much we take for granted in our lives and brought a respect for others that have to learn to adapt to

Hello darkness. 2008-12-20 00:07:36.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist NULL My life on the summit is surrounded by darkness. Not the metaphorical type but literally the darkness of the night. My shift currently starts in darkness and ends in darkness. We work twelve hour shifts up here with my shift starting at 1730 EST and ending at 0530 EST the following day. The sun on the summit official sets at around 1615 EST and doesn’t rise again until a bit after 0700 the following morning. So from December 17 until December 27, the summit only receives about nine hours and

And then there were three... 2008-12-19 00:47:56.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist 5. No wait, 4. Um, make that 3. When I was a kid, Saturday mornings were great. No school, no homework, and cartoons in the mornings. On ABC, one of the cartoons I always looked forward to were a series of animated musical educational short films called Schoolhouse Rock! They lasted about three minutes each and had topics that ranged in topics of math, grammar, science, money, and politics. What was great were the tunes which were catchy and memorable so I was learning while being entertained. One

A Week on the Rockpile! 2008-12-18 08:46:04.000 - Nicole Moore,  Summit Volunteer Holiday Treats We have had all sorts of weather this week; 'warm' temps (30's) low temps (-7 beforewindchill), 'moderate' winds (40-50 mph)--by MW standards anyway-- and high winds(90 mph plus!) and plenty of rain! But while my family and hometown of Durham NHstill struggles with ice and power outages from the ice storm of last Thursday andFriday, we were virtually unscathed up here in this bunker. Once the winds exceed 70mph, we can hear rumbling in the tower and in the vents above the stove in thekitchen. But

demise of the wind turbine 2008-12-17 10:02:36.000 - Jeff Wehrwein,  Summit Intern NULL Jordan wrote recently about the new wind turbine that the state park installed on Saturday. It is an experiment for both the state park and the turbine manufacturer: if it works well the state park might be able to use wind to power the summit in the future, and the turbine manufacturer will be able to say that its turbine held up in the world's worst weather. Even as the turbine was being installed, the temperature was well below zero and the wind was averaging around 50

Frrezing Rain 2008-12-16 16:43:53.000 - Steve Welsh,  IT Observer NULL It has been much harder being away from home this week compared to most. In the scheme of things last Thursday's ice storm really didn't affect us much up here. After all we are living in a warm and comfortable bunker built into solid rock with two foot thick reinforced concrete walls. We have our own generators, lots of food and no commute to work. Freezing rain just makes things a little slippier than usual but otherwise isn't really a big deal. Compared to what happened in the south of

windy day 2008-12-15 17:57:00.000 - Jeff Wehrwein,  Summit Intern Sunrise yesterday. Today I did a poor job of managing my expectations. Since Friday, we have been eyeing the forecast models' predictions of good wind speeds today. Yesterday afternoon, one model was reporting 108 mph for 1PM today. Since models predict average wind speed, the peak is likely to be higher. In addition, the models often underestimate our wind speeds due to the unique geography of this area. So we were all pretty excited about getting some good wind, and I was hoping we would hit 110 or even top last