Paw-don This Interruption 2016-05-05 14:15:27.000 - Marty, Summit Cat   With the distinct honor and privilege of being the Observatory's most distinguished and venerable staff member, I write to you with a belly full of scrumptious treats and a mind bursting with invaluable observations regarding high-altitude life as the sagacious Summit Cat. The summit observers tell me this winter has been a mild one, but I wouldn't know it. The cozy interior of the weather room has been my purr-imary dwelling place throughout the last few months. Anything below 40F is far less than ideal for my delicate feline senses.

Operating Schedules 2016-05-03 19:05:01.000 - Ryan Knapp, Weather Observer/Staff Meteorologist   With summer quickly approaching, we start getting questions via email and our social media pages about the operating schedules for the various entities on and around Mount Washington.   Mount Washington Observatory: Our Weather Discovery Center in North Conway is open Thursday-Monday from 10am to 5pm. Live From the Rockpile runs at 1115 am and 215 pm Thursday-Monday. Additional information can be found HERE.   Weather Station Tours - available when the Mt. Washington State Park Sherman Adams Visitor Center is open to the public (see below). Additional information

Another Round of Winter 2016-04-26 14:10:42.000 - Michael Wessler, Summit Intern      As a lover of all things snow-related, wandering onto the deck this morning to find a fresh coat of light, relatively low density snow draped over the landscape was quite the treat. While thoughts of warm, summer days are not far off in the future, and a few warm days are under our belt already, winter has a way of overstaying its welcome in New England and especially up on the Rockpile.        This time of year, changes occur that can lead to a highly

The Things We Do For Summer 2016-04-23 13:09:19.000 - Mike Carmon, Meteorologist   Today is April 23rd, meaning the calendar is inching ever closer to those months we call the summer season. This also means our snowpack is dwindling, and doing so in quite an expedient manner now. The sun rises higher into the sky now that the summer solstice is approaching, which means we're receiving more direct solar radiation. This is the result of the angle of the sun's rays with Earth's atmosphere in the northern hemisphere; these rays must travel through less of the atmosphere, leaving them with

I’m Back and Turning Nocturnal 2016-04-21 20:23:08.000 - Caleb Meute, Staff Meteorologist   It was a down going shift change a little over a year ago when I was loading a box of anemometers onto our snowcat and I felt my ACL pop in my right knee. I wish I had a cooler story as to how it happened like, we were experiencing 200 mph sustained winds and I was outside deicing when a 254 mph gust hit just my right knee and snapped my ACL, but unfortunately that’s not a reality. That day, I somberly went down to the

Soaking in the Sun 2016-04-17 17:43:40.000 - Michael Dorfman, Weather Observer/IT Specialist   The last few days have been wonderful! An Omega Blocking Pattern has set up for the last few days, giving us ample sunshine and not-so-frigid temperatures. It’s incredible how a 20 degree, sunny day in mid-April feels so much warmer than a 20 degree, sunny day in mid-January. Even though the temperatures are identical, the sun is at a much higher angle in the sky. This allows us to see much more solar gain from the sun this time of the year, and that can make the sun

Experiencing High Winds 2016-04-12 21:09:48.000 - Adam Gill, Weather Observer/Meteorologist   Being outside during high wind events is definitely a surreal experience. I started working here at the Mount Washington Observatory back in August of last year as an intern. During the summer and early fall, the winds up here are relatively weak compared to what we experience in the winter: 50 mph winds on a summer day is windy while in the winter, that is just a breeze. With that said, the first time I was able to experience a hurricane force wind was not until late September. Standing

The Art of the Game 2016-04-09 11:26:55.000 - Michael Wessler, Summit Intern   While this post is in no means an exhaustive expose on weather forecasting, I hope it will provide some insight into where your forecasts are coming from, and provoke some thought as to where you get your weather. With the advance of technology, and most notably the prominence of the smartphone and an endless library of weather apps, how we get our weather has changed drastically. No longer do we find ourselves huddled around the radio waiting for our region's forecast to cycle through on the weather

The Devil's in the Details 2016-04-07 09:28:46.000 - Mike Carmon, Weather Observer/Education Specialist   One of the tasks that weather observers must tackle on a daily basis is checking of the various forms that we utilize to perform and submit hourly weather observations, as well as collect continuous daily weather data. The first step of this process is to check each individual form on its own; we must ensure that all values observed on each of these individual forms are accurate and deemed reasonable by trained weather observers. Errors will inevitably be made, and the objective of daily check is

Another Wonderful Week On The Summit! 2016-04-05 21:42:38.000 - Michael Dorfman, Weather Observer/IT Specialist   It’s been another exciting week on the Rockpile! Upon arrival last Wednesday, the entire crew was waiting in anticipation for what looked to be very impressive wind speeds over the weekend. If the Model Output Statistics (MOS) numbers had held true, we could have seen gusts well over 100, possibly even rivaling the 133 mph gust the opposite shift saw the week prior! As is often the case we were “disappointed” as the models showed the pressure gradient slackening as the weekend got closer and