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

Wind! 2008-12-14 09:33:21.000 - Jordan Scampoli,  Summit Intern GUS Helical Wind Turbine If the summit of Mount Washington is so windy, why doesn’t the Observatory use wind turbines to generate power?I will attempt to briefly answer this question. The general public is mostly familiar with the three blade wind turbine. The summit cannot use this in the winter because so much centrifugal force is exerted by the spinning motion of the blades that if any rime ice were to form on the blades (which it inevitably would, since rime ice covers anything that the wind hits during freezing fogging conditions),

blown forecast 2008-12-12 14:09:06.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer Free falling temperature Yesterday’s comment was all about how excited I was for the coming snow, and that we should remain cold throughout the storm. Well, guess who was wrong. This is neither the first time nor the last time a forecast on Mount Washington has been shattered to bits and pieces. It does hurt a little though, and not just because my forecasting ego took a big bruise. While the summit got a little bit of ice, then a lot of rain, the rest of NH got hammered with ice. Over

let it snow! 2008-12-11 14:34:20.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer Let it snow! Snow is on the way! An area of low pressure fueled by the Gulf of Mexico’s warm air is heading northeast. Loaded with moisture, it should pass to the south and east of the higher summits, keeping us in the cooler portion of the storm, the warm front not quite reaching us. This means snow, and lots of it! In fact, the National Weather Service was calling for up to 14 inches in the mountains.Does that mean 14 inches of fresh powder for the summit crew’s personal recreational

Observatory Christmas List... 2008-12-10 05:30:03.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist Snail mail letter. Dear Santa-This year, I am starting early that way I can mail you the summits Christmas list since last year I forgot until it was too late. You really need to make your email a bit more memorable as I keep forgetting and losing the email you provided us a few years back in return to providing you with a Christmas night forecast for New Hampshire. But, just in case our letter goes to the South Pole instead of the North Pole, I will post a comment