Mt. Washington, NH
11 posts
9 users
3k+ views
9 users
3k+ views
I know that the weather there is always totally freaky, but it still feels good to know that someplace in the same time sone as us has serious snow on the ground. From the Mt Washington, NH Observatory (www.mountwashington.org):
Quote:
03:29 PM Mon Oct 17, 2005 EDT
136 mph.
34 inches of snow.
Wow.
Looking outside it could well be February. That is not a figure of speech, it really could be.
Fins of ice 2ft tall stick up from the deck. A fall in the winds would really hurt now. I wailed a knee on one yesterday while they were still small. It hurt.
Portions of the tower have more than 3ft of solid ice on them. Deicing the instruments has been constant and utterly exhausting. My arms are jelly from swinging the crowbar. We'll all be buff by the end of the winter at this rate. That is of course if we stop gorging on the feasts prepared by Judy Richardi in the kitchen. It seems she has kept pace with the storm baking a loaf of bread for each time the winds gusted above 120 mph, which was a lot.
There is a drift near the precip can that is gargantuan. I've never seen anything like it. It stands well over 10 ft tall. Stranger still is the composition of the snow. It isn't really snow at all. It is ice pellets. Do you know how hard it is to accumulate 34" of ice pellets?? This is simply absurd. The result is a very dense pack with little "fluff" factor. There is little to no air space stored inside and tremendous water content. At the height of the storm last night we received 9.2" in 6 hours. The water equivalent was 3.84." That just ain't right.
I've always heard of crazy October storms up here. Now I've lived one.
Neil Lareau - Observer
Hard to believe it was 60 degree there last week. they have picture of a guy skiing on www.mountwashington.org under weather.
I check this site like everyday, one of the more interesting places in the world.
I check this site like everyday, one of the more interesting places in the world.
There in 2 weeks 
Found this on the Mt. Wash site. http://www.mountwashington.org/newsroom/2003/05/04.html
Interesting read about collapse of Old Man of the Mtn, natural stone profile. Saw it several times in my life, near Cannon Mtn ski area. Missed the original news about the collapse in 2003 and didn't hear about it until about a year afterwards.
http://www.mountwashington.org/newsroom/2003/05/04.html
Interesting read about collapse of Old Man of the Mtn, natural stone profile. Saw it several times in my life, near Cannon Mtn ski area. Missed the original news about the collapse in 2003 and didn't hear about it until about a year afterwards.
http://www.mountwashington.org/newsroom/2003/05/04.html
I visit the site daily as well. Look at the updated daily report. Crazy pics!!!
Check out some TR'S here in the next couple days. Its going to get hit soon...
This is like the coolest thing ever, temps down to the high teen, with winds calming to aroud 60mph.
looks like 15-20" frozen granular with natural moguls.
The Mt Washington/White Mountains area in NH is one of my favorite places. I have not skied there, but the hiking there is simply epic. Before my daughter was born, we would drive the 13 hours up there every Fall for a week of hiking.
The mountain top hikes are amazing - and very challenging. There are only a couple hikes to a Presidential peak that are shorter than 8-9 miles and include less than 3500-4000' of vertical! Treeline is around 4000', and there are a couple dozen or more peaks over that. Once you make it to the top of one of these giants you are greeted with 360 degree views of nothing but wilderness.
To put the Whites in perspective - if Old Rag (a mountain in Shenandoah National Park where you have to pay $$ to climb and frequently shuffle your way to the top behind long lines of fellow hikers) were in the Whites - no one would climb it! It simply doesn't rate compared to the other climbs up there.
It was not unusual to encounter heavy snows in the early Fall in the Whites. Conditions at 4000' and above are dramatically different to the valleys below. I remember being chased from an Alpine lake just below treeline by a whiteout and 20 degree temps in late September. When we hiked down to our truck it was in the 70's.
Its a wonderful place.
Tom
The mountain top hikes are amazing - and very challenging. There are only a couple hikes to a Presidential peak that are shorter than 8-9 miles and include less than 3500-4000' of vertical! Treeline is around 4000', and there are a couple dozen or more peaks over that. Once you make it to the top of one of these giants you are greeted with 360 degree views of nothing but wilderness.
To put the Whites in perspective - if Old Rag (a mountain in Shenandoah National Park where you have to pay $$ to climb and frequently shuffle your way to the top behind long lines of fellow hikers) were in the Whites - no one would climb it! It simply doesn't rate compared to the other climbs up there.
It was not unusual to encounter heavy snows in the early Fall in the Whites. Conditions at 4000' and above are dramatically different to the valleys below. I remember being chased from an Alpine lake just below treeline by a whiteout and 20 degree temps in late September. When we hiked down to our truck it was in the 70's.
Its a wonderful place.
Tom
POWPOW,
Come to think of it, I tought that it looked kinda familiar. Just like east-coast conditions
-Warren-
Come to think of it, I tought that it looked kinda familiar. Just like east-coast conditions
-Warren-
Here's a report from one of my friends who skied there after this storm. http://www.telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=11936
I haven't skied there since June and in fact he was there that day. I need to get more serious about skiing.
I haven't skied there since June and in fact he was there that day. I need to get more serious about skiing.
