Results of the Mascot Primary!

2008-01-09 07:34:02.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer

A rather snowless summit….

I know that most people are visiting the website this morning to see which cat-idate was victorious in our Mascot Primary. Well, I’m going to hold you in suspense for just another moment while I tell you about the weather we have been seeing on the summit. After all, our main reason for being here is to observe the weather, right?

We haven’t talked much about the weather lately, mostly because of the excitement of the aforementioned Mascot Primary. In this observer’s humble opinion, one word sums up the weather of the past few days on the summit: depressing. We rose above freezing in the early morning hours on Monday and have stayed there since. We reached a high on Monday of 39 degrees, tying our daily record high for January 7th, set in 1998. Yesterday, we saw temperatures hover right around 41 degrees for the better part of the day, however no records were tied or broken as the record high for January 8th is 45 degrees set in 1998.

Now I described the weather as depressing because of the picture you see to the right. We cleared out of the fog late yesterday afternoon, and were able to see the damage done to our summit snow pack by the warm and foggy conditions. With the exception of the larger drifts and small snowfields scattered about on the summit, it’s all gone. Of course, I speak only of the summit itself. Tuckerman Ravine and the larger snowfields still have plenty of snow. Trust me, that’s not going anywhere fast. As a lover of snow and cold weather, as well as a skier, seeing so much snow melt is very depressing. I am sure I am not going to be any happier to see how much snow has disappeared in the valley when I get there later today.

Ok, now on to the results you have all been waiting to hear.

Through this Mascot Primary, we wanted to give people a chance to voice their opinion on which feline should continue the long standing tradition of cats at the Observatory. The people certainly have spoken. We received an impressive 8,013 votes yesterday between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. 1057 of those votes were cast in the first hour of voting. I know these numbers certainly exceeded my expectations.

So, with a vote count of 4,255 and receiving 53% of the vote, the winner is

MARTY!

Wilson came in a rather distant second, receiving 2,074 votes or 26%. Sarah received 1,684 votes or 21%.

Thank you to all who participated and helped make this a very interesting and fun event for all. It has certainly been fun for all our staff to see the interest generated by this event and we are all especially thankful to those who became members yesterday because of it. In fact, we gained 113 new members yesterday alone, more than likely the biggest one doy boost in membership in our history. If you haven’t become a member yet, please consider doing so. We rely on support of members to continue our mission. More information on membership can be found here.

Now it is time for the Electoral College(a.k.a. some of the observers) to go visit the cat-idates and make the final choice. Obviously it will be kept in mind that the vast majority of the popular vote has chosen Marty to be the next top cat. Look for pictures next Wednesday when we bring our new mascot up the mountain to take residence on the top. Also, we will be taking name suggestions in our forums starting sometime next week, after we get the cat up and are able to post some pictures.

 

Brian Clark,  Observer