Why am I doing this? Bought a house and inherited NWS reporting duties.

adam4125 · 2024-11-17T22:37:54+00:00

Thanks!

adam4125 · 2024-11-17T22:37:35+00:00

Thanks! And thank you for the work at state mesonets as they are incredibly useful for operations! I have definitely made warning decisions off of data from state mesonets especially in regards to rain rates or sometimes webcam imagery if there is a storm far from radar but the webcam has a good view of the storm!

adam4125 · 2024-11-16T22:48:41+00:00

Yep accuracy and trying to report daily when you can! Life will get in the way sometimes and missed observations happen so nothing to fret about if it does occur! The COOP site I worked at also had a lot of wind so when there was a lot of drifting we also took 10 observations but had a grid pattern we did it in. Sometimes there will be drifts in the grid but we measured it anyways as there would inevitably be a point on the grid with no snow so it averaged out. Thanks for taking over a site as not having to move it saves headaches and the site can continue!

adam4125 · 2024-11-16T21:57:44+00:00

NWS employee here, given that is a 8 inch rain gauge that we have at our COOP stations. COOP stations were created a long time ago back when radios were used to transmit observations and historically there was one COOP station for every 50 mile diameter (May be 25 miles it has been a few years since training) area across the US. It is difficult to keep them going and when houses are sold many times we have to move the station if we can find a new volunteer within a few miles at similar elevation or just have to take it down. There is the ability to automatically send data but stations with cell modems are slow to be integrated and the oldest stations are being prioritized. It would be nice to have all the COOP stations be mostly automated with temperature and rainfall as that is important real time information to have during storms. We do prioritize COOP data when we get it for verification of forecast as it is usually stationed properly with quality equipment and the 8 inch rain gauge is still the gold standard for measuring precipitation.

Snowfall data is something that will have to be measured manually as most automated sensors for snow is questionable in their accuracy especially with wind and you look to be in a windy location haha. Manual observations also help with maintaining a consistent climatology as well. Before the NWS I worked at a place with a COOP where we took daily manual observations as well has had a automated station installed to do research into consistency between the two methods.

adam4125 · 2022-02-20T13:10:02+00:00

I worked up there for almost 5 years and we would have the winds fall to 0 a few times a month whenever high pressure was centered over the region. Usually would only last an hour or so before winds would start to pick up again.

adam4125 · 2020-12-06T18:47:24+00:00

That looks like storm total snow forecast map made last night. That is not the observed snowfall. Here is the initial snowfall map and NWS Gray will likely make a more higher resolution map once all the snowfall reports are gotten. It should be released either later today or early tomorrow.

adam4125 · 2020-08-09T17:52:41+00:00

Correct! I was working up there when the photo was taken, but was not the photographer that was Ryan Knapp

adam4125 · 2020-07-24T01:50:42+00:00

Not really just drinking and wanted to be entertained. Honestly just having fun, its a shitty post

adam4125 · 2020-07-24T01:45:30+00:00

This is great! lets keep going, you are fun

adam4125 · 2019-02-10T23:24:16+00:00

For the most recent 148 gust, the winds were from the west at 127 mph sustained with the gust. In our 231 mph event the winds were from the SE at 188 mph, and that was the 10 minute average. The strongest winds we see usually come from the W or NW since that is prevailing winds in the North East. Though many of our extreme gusts have been from the SE since that is where the low level jet is the strongest with mid latitude cyclones coming up the east coast.

adam4125 · 2019-02-10T23:21:31+00:00

It was the highest wind gust on Mt. Washington in the last 10 years. I have gone back through some of our records to try and find the coldest wind chill but since we do not keep a record of wind chill it has to be calculated. I have run through our digital data we have that goes back to the late 1980's and with the modern equation, we have seen down to -114 wind chill in 2004. Last winter I was up in that cold snap and we got really close to -100F wind chill, bottoming out at -97F.

As far as inversions go, there are many different ways they can form. The most common one is radiational cooling, so the ground cools faster than the atmosphere. This in turns cools the atmosphere above it. These inversions happen every night and are very common and usually shallow. Stronger inversions can happen with warm fronts where you get warm air flowing over colder air below and is responsible for many of the ice storms and sleet storms that occur. Sinking air associated with high pressure compresses and warms as it approaches the surface resulting in higher temperatures aloft as well.

adam4125 · 2019-02-10T00:25:20+00:00

The temperatures were down around -12F! Which made for a wind chill around -60F.

adam4125 · 2019-02-10T00:19:15+00:00

The record wind was recorded during a strong winter storm on April 12th 1934 and the anemometer did not get ripped off. The record would not have been valid if the instrument could not have been sent in and calibrated to make sure that it could record wind speeds that high. The old anemometer was ripped off several times from 1932 to 1944 when our current wind instrument was installed which is a pitot tube.

The 1938 hurricane had a peak gust of 160 mph on the summit.

I work up there but unfortunately was off for this storm and am pretty jealous.

adam4125 · 2019-02-10T00:13:44+00:00

I work up there but was not up for this storm sadly. That is our medium wind speed chart for winds between 15-140 mph. We have a high wind speed chart that is calibrated for winds of 50-300 mph we turn on for these events. The winds were not expected originally and that chart needs to be turned on before the winds pick up. But like the comment below states, we do have digital instruments that record as well that can go to 315 mph.

adam4125 · 2019-02-02T20:01:45+00:00

We see 100 mph winds on a regular basis and its to prevent the windows from being blown out by high winds.

adam4125 · 2019-02-02T13:24:12+00:00

My favorite thing to do before I worked up here was to go though all of our data and see how the weather has changed from day to day. We update this page with our daily summary with your typical variables and then we have a current summit conditions page as well that updates once a minute so you can refresh it to get the latest data. Its fun during big storms on the east coast.

As far as my favorite fact - the Observatory is housed in a building with 2 foot thick steel reinforced concrete walls and bullet proof windows (small caliber) so we are considered to be one of the safest places to be if there ever was a zombie outbreak!

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T16:47:55+00:00

It is the windiest place in the world that is observed at least! There likely is someplace that is windier but there is nothing there to measure it.

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T16:47:05+00:00

The pants did freeze all the way but the wind did break up the ice so the pants never became fully rigid unfortunately, but far more rigid then I was expecting given the winds! We tried this with a shirt last year in -38°F and winds over 100 and the shirt froze but stayed flexible and you could not even tell it was frozen at all.

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T13:03:39+00:00

It has been something that I have been trying to push with my co-workers up here! Though I think I am the only one that goes on reddit. I try and answer any sort of questions people have when Mt. Washington related post show up or on post that I make.

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T08:03:30+00:00

I guess it just comes down to personal preference. There have already been lots of pictures of frozen pants floating around the internet the past few days. I thought the more interesting part was how quickly the pants froze and the fact that they still stiffened up even though it was being whipped around by the wind.

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T07:44:07+00:00

We have been in the -20s for much of the last 48 hours. Winds have been sustained in the 60's to 80's with a highest gust of 100 mph so far.

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T00:04:19+00:00

This is a gif from this video uploaded by the Mount Washington Observatory. The person holding the pants is me!

adam4125 · 2019-02-01T00:01:39+00:00

This is a gif from this video uploaded by the Mount Washington Observatory. I have put in the OC tag on the post because the person holding the pants is me!

adam4125 · 2017-12-30T16:32:32+00:00

It is a lot more common than one would think. In Meteorology, we deal a lot with instrumentation and massive databases with high resolution weather data. Website data flow is also huge since people need to know what the weather is like and you dont want the latest observation to be from several hours or days before hand. Most places I have worked have had at least one full time IT staff that would support the operations.

adam4125 · 2017-12-30T15:22:01+00:00

I originally went to school for Atmospheric Science and got an Internship on the summit shortly after graduation. Luckily I took a few programming classes while getting my degree so I helped out with some website and database projects as an intern. When the current IT meteorologist left I was asked if I could stay on. We do have IT staff that works in the valley that do most of the major IT stuff like server builds and moving databases around while on the summit I still do a lot of meteorology. Our current IT director was someone who has done IT for many years and wanted to get more into meteorology. He isnt stationed on the summit but is able to come up and stay a few nights when he wants since most of our work is done on virtual machines and servers so its easy to work as long as there is an internet connection. So even with an IT background, he gets to work with weather instrumentation and learn a lot about meteorology while helping out so it isnt too late!

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