Back to Truck and Van Season 2019-04-26 12:30:33.000 - Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist   Winter seems like it has come to a fairly abrupt end up here on the Rockpile this year which is quite the difference from the previous few years. We went from having plenty of snow on the mountain from top to bottom taking the snow cat from the base up to just using the truck and van the whole way in only a matter of weeks. All this warm weather and rain melted the snow fast and allowed for the Auto road to make significant

Happy Earth Day! 2019-04-22 10:07:30.000 - Chloe Boehm, Summit Intern   Today is Earth Day which means it is a great day to recognize the beautiful planet we live on and the vast number of species that inhabit the planet with us. Living and working on the top of Mount Washington gives us the unique opportunity to experience the extreme weather that this area sees as well see the incredible sights on a daily basis. Not many places in the world can you go from a day of sunny skies and light winds to recording a peak wind gust of

Signs of Spring 2019-04-19 15:30:09.000 - Thomas Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist    Photos taken by Weather Observer Ryan Knapp of the progression of our melting snow pack ahead of the weekend rain.  Signs of spring are finally working their way into the surrounding valleys here of northern New England, with most of our snow melted here in the North Conway area. Spring birds have been here for the last few weeks, and we even had a few sightings here on the summit of Mount Washington! With rain currently falling as of this writing and temperatures in the 40s, it makes

New Personal Wind Record! 2019-04-16 20:14:03.000 - Ian Bailey, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   We had a pretty exciting night here on the summit last night! Most of us set new personal wind records, with a maximum verified gust of 142 mph! It was a long night of deicing and monitoring the Hays Chart, and we did not expect it to get anywhere near as fast as it did! Looking back on what lead up to the event, I can’t help but laugh. As a crew, we were sitting around the dinner table last night commenting on how fast we thought

Intern to Night Observer! 2019-04-15 06:50:58.000 - Jay Broccolo, Weather Observer/Meteorologist   It has been a bit since my last blog post, but for good reason. I have been training and becoming accustomed to the night shift. I recently hired as the Night Observer and Meteorologist and there is not a whole lot of overlap going from Intern during the day to Night Observer. The only similarity is the forecast, which I am thankful for the time spent as an intern so I could familiarize myself with the microclimate of Mount Washington and its orographic effect on the weather. The rest has all been

85th Big Wind Anniversary 2019-04-08 10:25:42.000 - Staff, MWO     The founding staff of the Mount Washington Observatory in 1932: (L-R) Alex McKenzie, Bob Monahan, Joe Dodge, and Sal Pagliuca.   Nearly 85 years ago, on the tallest peak in the northeast, a group of hardy individuals witnessed a truly unforgettable event, a storm which brought a world-record 231 mph gust of wind to the summit of Mount Washington. It was an incredible event, and a test of both observer mettle as well as equipment on the rime-shrouded peak. The event hit home the importance of maintaining a manned

Still Winter In Our "Backyard" 2019-04-08 05:49:55.000 - Ryan Knapp, Weather Observer/Staff Meteorologist   The acronym “NIMBY” (Not In My BackYard) is typically used for a person that objects to something perceived as unpleasant/dangerous in their local area. However, growing up around Lake Tahoe (CA) I always heard this acronym used to describe the mentality behind the sudden spring slow-down in businesses associated with winter activities like ski resorts, snowmobiling, lodging, restaurants, etc. It didn’t matter if we had enough snow to last us well into June or July, when the Central Valley and Bay Area (where a lot of

The Culprit Behind This Wintry Weather 2019-04-07 12:53:02.000 - Chloe Boehm, Summit Intern   Even though meteorological spring has sprung, the summit has seen its fair share of wintry weather recently with more on its way. Many of the recent precipitation events have not been organized low pressure systems but due to upper level disturbances in the atmosphere. Since this terminology has been common in our forecasts recently, I thought I would take the opportunity to explain a little bit more what it means. When meteorologists talk about the upper levels of the atmosphere, they are usually discussing elevations with

Wind Statistics From Winter 2018-2019 2019-04-05 15:49:02.000 - Thomas Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   It’s been a very memorable winter season, something I’ve mentioned before in past blogs but still can’t really get over is how windy it’s been! I decided to do a little more digging into just how windy this winter of 2018-2019 has been, and also how it stacks up to our all-time records going back to the 1930s. The cherry on top to this winter season has obviously been a new February record wind of 171 mph, but I’ll focus more on the frequency of high

Yay Spring...Just Kidding! April Fools! 2019-04-01 12:24:18.000 - Ian Bailey, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   Of course, shenanigans were bound to occur this shift with today being April Fools Day. However, while pranking each other is all in good fun, being pranked by the weather certainly hasn’t been. Our shift started very spring-like indeed. On shift change day, we came up to a summit that had been sitting under clear sky conditions for over 20 hours! Temperatures were on the rise, and we actually had wind chills that weren’t below freezing! Our crew was settling into the idea of transitioning out