Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room You think it's cold here...??

Current Mt. Washington (NH) conditions as of this writing:

Friday, 1/29/10, 3:30 PM (EST)Temperature -20.7 degrees F
Wind 64.9 mph
Direction 284 degree (W)
Gust 71.3 mph
Wind Chill -64.1 degrees F

Here's the link to the page where I got this, if you want to check the ongoing current conditions up there, which are particularly brutal during the winter months, but which can be "interesting" during the summer months too (there is no month of the year that doesn't register a 100+ mph gust and/or sustained wind speed during any given year).

Am very familiar with Mt Washington since I frequently hiked there before I moved from VT in 2005.

That's a good link. The one used by New England hikers is often this one.

Great site! I'll have to bookmark that one when I get to work on Monday. Thanks.

CaT

This thread brings to mind my first wife.

Speaking of frigid, about 4 hours ago, the temp on Mt. Washington was -26 with the wind gusting to 77 mph!!!

It is, and notice that it gives you the air temps at various elevations. This is particularly important, despite the relatively low elevation. You may start in northern New England, but 3 or 4K feet later, you're in sub-arctic conditions.

Noticed that -- I thought that was one of the finer features of the site.

CaT

Not as cold, but the breeze was stronger...

Yeah, I heard about that. Bummer for Mt. Washington.
But I had always been under the impression that the 231 mph record was the highest non-thunderstorm wind speed in the world, and was surprised when I heard that the 253 mph speed was considered to have broken the 231 mph speed record, because the 253 mph wind speed was recorded in a typhoon (hurricane), which I thought was in a different category of wind speed records than the non-storm wind record at Mt. Washington. Apparently, I was mistaken. Regardless, the 231 mph speed was, in fact, a non-storm wind speed that was set up by a freak juxtaposition of very strong and geographically close High and Low pressure systems in just the right way to funnel the air over the Mt. Washington area at a ridiculously high rate of speed. If someone is ever successful at measuring the wind speed inside an F5 or F6 tornado in a way that could be validated for purposes of records, then no doubt even the 253 mph wind record will be broken some day. I've been a very long-time afficianado of severe weather (esp. tornados and weather extremes/records); so this subject is very interesting to me.

CaT

According to the meteorologists, there are several reasons for consistently high winds on Mt. Washington. One of them is that the jet stream regularly dips down rather low near that mountain, and when it's coupled with storm systems or high/low pressure system differentials it can get particularly breezy.

All true. Actually, there isn't one month in the entire year that doesn't experience >100 mph winds (either sustained or gusts) in a normal year -- even during the summer months.

...so are there times you can be up there and it's calm? Or is it always windy?

Oh sure, there are times when it is either calm, or more likely, slightly breezy. But it tends to be more windy more often during the winter months. For example, I just checked the Mt. Washington weather hourly observations for the last 72 hours. The wind is currently at a relatively benign 17 mph. Since midnight, it was 16 mph, decreasing to 7 mph at 4am, increasing to 20 mph a couple of hours ago, and then back down to the current 17 mph. On the flip side, at 10pm on Jan. 31, the sustained winds were at 87 mph gusting to 97 mph (with an ambient temp of -8, by the way ... BRRRR!!). Looking back over the current 72-hour period, probably 2/3 to 3/4 of that time was fairly windy, with some of that wind over hurricane force, while the remaining 1/3 to 1/4 of the time was comparatively uneventful, even if not totally calm.

If a Pitot tube/static port system can measure supersonic speeds in aircraft quite reliably (except for the A330), why can't extreme weather be measured the same way?

If Mother Nature's favorite toy is a double-wide, her second must be the cup anemometer.

Yeah, well someone's gotta get the thing into the heart of the tornado -- not quite the same as attaching it to an airplane.

Then there's all that pesky debris flying around. Those double-wides flying at 100 mph aren't kind to pitot tubes.

Only 100?

In a word, yes. Have been up there many times in all seasons, and occasionally the winds are extremely light. I don't think I've ever personally experienced a "dead calm", but nearly.