My project this week. 2008-02-04 21:35:54.000 - Steve Welsh,  IT Observer Midday Today Early this morning we finally cleared out of the freezing fog. After days of looking at a wall of grayness it has been really nice to see the surrounding mountains and valleys once again. The clouds today also really added to the views, especially the low undercast which was covering some of the nearby valleys. The sunrise was good but the sunset was spectacular. Looking at the most recent weather maps it will probably be the last views we get this week as a low pressure system

My first week. 2008-02-03 20:03:07.000 - Matthew Morin,  Space Grant Intern Me deicing. Hello and thanks for visiting the Mount Washington Observatory website! My name is Matthew Morin and I am the new Space Grant intern who will be spending one week atop this awe-inspiring mountain. This one week shift is just one part of my entire internship. I have another nine weeks where I will be gathering and analyzing data from the Auto Road Vertical Temperature Profile database. This three year data set includes temperature data from seven elevations (1600’, 2300’, 3300’, 4000’, 4300’, 5300’, and 6288’) along the

Internet problems, weather, and of course Marty 2008-02-02 13:44:54.000 - Brian Clark,  Observer Heat! Some of you may have noticed the lack of updates to the website last night and this morning. This occurred because we lost internet access during that time period. On this occasion, it wasn’t a problem with the point to point radio link to the Mount Washington Center in North Conway, it was a problem with the cable internet access that we have down in North Conway. After Steve talked with one of the tech support people at Time Warner(it took Steve a while to convince

Are we connected somehow? 2008-02-01 02:03:39.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist Six Degrees of Separation. While at dinner tonight, we met an edutripper and through conversation found out that she knew the girlfriend of a former observer here. All of this brought back the theory of a shrinking world back to mind from college. It is the belief that as the world’s population continues to grow; the more connected people become as the network of personal acquaintances becomes larger but at the same time more encompassing. It is partially what the six degrees of separation game is all about. The

My commute. 2008-01-31 01:02:53.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist This is how I roll. I like to think that my Wednesday mornings before coming up start like most peoples. Get up between 6 am and 7 am and roll out of bed. Prepare a cup of oatmeal, set the toast, and boil up a cup of tea with cream and sugar. Get dressed and get put in order in the bathroom. Check the weather reports and early news online. Warm up my car while loading work materials (in my case, a backpack and ice axe) and pick up the mail.

Island in the Sky 2008-01-28 00:51:13.000 - Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer NULL Today was one of those days when you feel most honored to have a job working atop a place such as Mount Washington. I woke this morning to the typical sight of whitish grey opaqueness outside. Around noon we broke out of the clouds, finding ourselves an island in a sea of clouds as far as the eye could see (about 80 miles). To the west, it was a flat plane of grey with hardly a texture to it. In the other directions, there were little undulations. Standing

Lady of the Rime! 2008-01-25 20:08:56.000 - Kyle Paddleford,  Observer Smile! If you ever have a problem waking up early in the morning and quickly falling back to sleep, or feeling like the walking dead, I have the perfect solution. You take a temperature of 17 degrees below zero, add some wind in the 80 mph range, go outside, and then get shaken and stirred and you have the prefect recipe for an instant exhilarating wake up. Doubling the recipe is not suggested. Those were the conditions that Ryan and I faced around quarter of six this morning while getting

Creepy nights 2008-01-24 15:02:35.000 - Stacey Kawecki,  Observer NULL “So you’re working nights this week?” This is what Kyle asked me yesterday afternoon. I figured, since I haven’t ever worked nights, and since he’s been working them since December, I’d give him a break and begin my night time adventure. So far, everything is ok. There is definitely something to it when those night observers talk about how eerie it can be at night though. Nothing particularly scary happened last night, but when I went out to get the precip can, at 0030 EST, my imagination started to run away.

Volunteer comments 2008-01-22 17:37:54.000 - Steve Moore,  Summit Volunteer Curious Cat. This is my ninth time visiting the summit, always in winter, and it's always different, except that Nin has always been here and now he has retired to the Valley. His replacement, Marty, is very black and difficult to see at night when the lights are out except for his bright yellow eyes. He is quite inquisitive and has spent a lot of time exploring cabinets, drawers and closets. Marty is also very acrobatic when playing with a mouse or ball much to the enjoyment of all of us.

Wind issues. 2008-01-21 23:45:34.000 - Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist Problems with our winds... Back when I was in college, I was required to take a number of general education courses. These courses where usually fun but what made them interesting were their sizes. My meteorology classes only had about five students where as my general education lectures would have upwards of one hundred people or more crammed in a lecture hall. But despite the class size, a handful of phrases were always repeated on the first day of each class in one way or another. One of them was, “Don’t