Editor’s note: We highly recommend listening to this story.
New Hampshire’s Mount Washington Observatory is well-known to weather buffs. Touted as "home of the world’s worst weather," the highest peak in the Northeast doubles as a tourist attraction and a research facility. And much of that research informs the weather reports you hear each day.
I wanted to learn more about what makes the Observatory such a unique place for weather and climate research, and about the people who choose to do their work there. So I took a drive with Charlie Buterbaugh, director of external affairs of the Mount Washington Observatory, up the famous Auto Road to the summit on what turned out to be a mild fall day. With temperatures just above freezing and calm winds, the view from the summit reached more than 120 miles.
Sight-seers from around the world drive, hike or take the Cog Railway to the peak to spend a couple of hours on the mountain. But the staff at the observatory spend more than a week at a time. One of their duties is to give tours.
Cassie Farnsworth is from Ohio and she’s only been with the observatory for a short time. She leads a group of visitors up the weather tower, a structure that resembles a short light house or castle turret that houses instruments for measuring current conditions.
Farnsworth says she’s yet to really experience the legendary Mount Washington wind and weather.
“We've had extremely calm conditions and it’s been quite boring, actually… I'm waiting for that low pressure to move in and do something interesting,” Farnsworth said.
Buterbaugh says Farnsworth won’t have to wait long. When the pressure drops and the winds pick up, this tower becomes a very eerie place with the howling wind.
“It can sound like a runaway train. It's incredibly loud,” Buterbaugh said.
The peak’s weather is notorious due to its topography, and the convergence of three major storm tracks. Its location, and the fact it’s the highest point for a thousand miles, leads to extremes.
The observatory conducts research to understand that extreme weather and climate by collecting precise temperature, wind speed, humidity, and other data at the summit. And they’ve been doing that every hour of every day for nearly a century.
Meteorologist Alex Branton is taking one of those hourly observations just outside on the terrace next to the tower. Because those readings are taken in the same location, with the same methods, she says they are very reliable.
"That makes our data set really appealing to work with, because we don't have to adjust any of that data to account for new technology,” Branton said.
That has implications for climate research far from the White Mountains. Mitchell Tsokatos has joined the Observatory team after earning his degree in meteorology in his home state of Alabama. His research focuses on longer range forecasts based on past patterns.
“The observatory has one of the longest standing climate records in the United States," Tsokatos said. "So that makes our data set very homogeneous, which is great because we can compare apples to apples very well from the past to now. And that makes looking at past data very easy.”
Research here involves looking at regional and global climate change, air quality, icing impacts and other specialized projects.
Buterbaugh says it all goes to provide valuable weather information regionally and beyond.
“Every single one of our hourly observations goes to the National Weather Service, as does all of the data from our remote weather station network around the White Mountains," Buterbaugh said. "And we actually are working on some joint internships with them as well.”
Winter is coming, and that’s exactly why researcher Tsokatos is here.
“I mean, we've had three digit negative wind chills before. So things get crazy up here. And… if you just love weather, you’ve got to experience it when you can," Tsokatos said.
