The ever changing Mount Washington

2012-03-02 21:11:38.000 – Roger Pushor,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist

Observation Tower at Sunrise

Now that I’ve been working on the “Rock Pile” for almost eight months I’ve seen a lot of the natural changes that go on up here. Some change is quit slow – It seemed that winter took forever to come however it did finally arrive this week for real. Other changes are very quick – Like how fast it can go from fogged in with next to zero visibility to a beautiful undercast with 100 plus miles of visibility. This sometimes only takes a minute or two. We watched the days get increasingly shorter until by mid-December when we were down to barely nine hours of daylight and now only a little over two months later we have well over eleven hours.

Today was a perfect example of a day of change – I woke up to fog. However, just after sunrise the sky was clearing to give us a nice sunrise then within a couple of hours we were back in the fog until about an hour before sunset. The sun didn’t quit get below the horizon before the fog came back in however now that it’s a little after 8:00 PM we’re clearing out again.

Our volunteers that help us down in the living quarters also change each shift bringing with them new recipes and experiences to share with us. Last shift we had a couple of local ladies, one from Jackson and the other from just over the border in Maine. This shift we have a brother and sister team that came all the way from California to share a week with us.

We also see a very diverse group of guests that come up to spend some time with us – Anywhere from just the day to a whole week for the German students we had the last couple of shifts. If you want to experience some of the extremes we do take a look at our Education page at Mountwashington.org and plan to spend some time with us.

Roger Pushor,  Weather Observer/IT Specialist