Transitioning Seasons

2013-09-20 07:56:18.000 – Samuel Hewitt,  Summit Intern

A passing helicopter on a beautiful day

It may only be the start of my second week on the summit, but I am already knee deep in fulfilling my responsibilities as an intern and I love every moment! Clear skies and light winds across New England over the past few days have made the summit a very popular place.

On top of giving numerous tours of the Observatory, I am preparing and broadcasting 36-hour forecasts for a local radio station. Today in fact, I will begin my intern project which involves digitizing a few years of our weather data from the 1940s. I am excited to delve into the early climatology of the summit, as well as learning about the differences between early data collection and today’s methods.

It is hard to believe that the first day of fall is just a few days away. The weather we’ve been experiencing at the summit lately makes it feel more like summer. However, this is not uncommon as the fall is known to be a transition season. There will be days when there is abundant sunshine and warm temperatures and others which feature cold temperatures and even snow showers. For example, last week on September 11th, the summit reached 63 degrees, breaking the daily record high of 60. 5 days later on the 16th, the temperature plummeted to 19 degrees, 4 degrees shy of the daily record low.

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Samuel Hewitt,  Summit Intern