Week Four

Some really nice clouds --you can't really see it here, but these are little curls over the top of mt. Jefferson. These are the same kind as the really well-defined K-H cloud that I saw on my second week up. They're formed by wind shear over the mountains.

Despite some of the worst weather the east coast has seen in a long time, this week on the mountain was pretty tame. Winds only reached about 85 mph and humidity was really low. I did the famous boiling water to snow experiment this week (thanks to some very excited German students), though, and saw some great sunsets. Saturday we took a really nice hike down to the Lakes of the Clouds, then back up past Tuckerman Ravine (Tuck's), and up the summit cone in less than 20 minutes (!!). The colors were really nice that day, with an undercast that burned off as the morning went on and a great ice crust for cramponing. The day before we'd gotten some freezing rain thanks to the first of two low pressure systems that came up the coast. The second low was the big one that hit the rest of the area on Monday, but we watched the edge of the cloud bank roll by to our east. All of the observers and myself also took the sleds out to a big hill on the east side of the summit for a couple of great rides on Saturday night. We watched a fantastic sunset on Saturday as well as Sunday, and enjoyed the good company of our friends over at State Park both nights as well. I got my first tour of the haunted building --Yankee-- on Saturday night. There were a few spooky parts of the building--creepy little bedrooms, but heavy duty radio equipment for the most part. Supposedly it's safe, but I may have permanently fried any hopes of having children.

Also this week, I started actually running some models for my research. Georgia (writing the paper) had me run a series of dates through a stability time series model, which outputs information related to the location of the atmospheric mixing layer. We found out that the diurnal patterns produced between the location of that layer and the agreement/disagreement between particulate matter concentrations at the higher and lower sites was pretty clear and conclusive. This was particularly exciting because of the numerous assumptions that the model was making, which were especially inaccurate for the uneven terrain we're looking at. There were still several things which don't make sense to me about the way that the data come out, and also about the variables that were outputted by the model, but I'm going to have a conversation with Georgia at some point this week.

For the future --I'm getting ready to accept a very exciting offer that I've had from the University of Portland Chemistry Department for this fall. The professors have been really helpful and the department very generous. I still get a term to officially decide on a research advisor, but there are two --now three professors in atmospheric chemistry who would be great to work with. So after NH, Portland here I come!

To top the week off, I went over to visit a friend of my aunt's in Porter, Maine Thursday through Saturday. Jackie and her husband Mike were really great to take me in for a couple days at their gorgeous farm house (my camera unfortunately is eating batteries like there's no tomorrow, so no pictures of that yet --although she invited me for anytime I want to go back!). They have: seventeen sheep (nine pregnant and about ready to burst), two horses, three llamas, sixteen chickens, three dogs (two boarder collies and a chow-looking mix), two cats, and 140 acres of beautiful Maine land. We snowshoed over to the beaver marsh on their property, past the babbling brook, through the woods full of Balsam Fir, White Pine, Birch, and Hemlock, and up over the hill with snowshoe hare prints. It was absolutely beautiful. Jackie made some fantastic quiche with eggs fresh from the hens, and I even got to try some of their lamb from last season (she doesn't eat meat, but Mike and I enjoyed it!). On Friday, I wanted to go for a run on the really nice road their house was on, and Mike suggested that I go the eight miles into Porter and back. Unbelievably, I did it!! I messed up my knee a bit on the very slanted edges of the road, but I think that's the farthest I've ever knowingly run in one go! Thank you high altitudde living! And, of course, thank you Mike and Jackie!!


The reason that we can't really play soccer in the rotunda... this is a painting of Lizzy Bourne, the first woman to die on Mt. Washington. It's an antique. I don't really understand why she's significant enough among the other figures in the history of the mountain to have a painting like this up in the rotunda during the winter, but there it is. A bit manly, but no doubt a very strong woman.


Janet Standley, one of our volunteers from the week, standing at the summit sign with the obs in the back to the WNW. Janet makes really, really good bread and jams. I stole some of her recipes.


View from the rotunda, looking south. The windows are mostly coated with plastic, but a few have been left open for viewing. This is a good window for sunrises.


I think that Marty had a good dose of catnip this week, because he was particularly friendly. He's never a lap cat, but he hopped right up when I was taking a Scrubs break on an especially frustrating day. You can see just how comfy he got.


Looking to the south toward Portland (ish). I think this was the beginning of the second low that came in --the one that brought the huge amount of snow for most of New England. We could see the side of it roll on by before we got some light snow and freezing fog for a while.


The view a bit further east, with Wildcat there on the left.


Chris of State Park with Michelle Cruz, who works at the Weather Discovery Center (WDC) in the valley. Michelle just got engaged!! I inspected the ring --a very nice pick. Congrats, Michelle!


Standing at the main entrance to the obs, with hikers in the background, waiting for the snow cat to head down. Gus, one of the cat drivers, is on the left, Mike (an observer and friend) is on the right, and Chris of State Park is in front of him.


Mike and Chris of State Park. Chris is a carpenter as well as a cat driver, ex-fisherman, sugarer (he distills maple syrup and built his own sugar shack --a really nice one) and he now works for MW State Park as one of the caretakers.



This is Marcell. This is a ridiculous picture of him. He's a master's student at the University of Ruhr in Germany, where some of the recent German bachelor's students are also from. Unlike the others, though, Marcell stayed on the mountain --without coming down-- for three weeks. He was a really funny guy, and I'm glad that we got to spend lots of time with him. Among other things, he's a drummer for a Metallica cover band and has a whole slew of pet rats. Definitely a character. He will be missed.


Sleepy Brian (fellow observer and friend) in the observer office.


Gus (August), the cat driver. He's also quite a character, and very bright. He thinks I'm a bit of a pest, but he's still friendly.


Freezing rain on the windows, looking northwest toward Mt. Clay


Rime ice with some freezing rain over the top


Overcast with cap clouds flooding over the north Presidentials


The summit guitar... As you can see, it's very make-shift. A great guitar player came up with a hiking group this week, and it took him about an hour and a half to try to tune the other guitar --then probably an hour to fix this one. The strings aren't exactly the same distance apart on this one, but at least it stays somewhat in tune for the good part of an hour. This one is wicked hard to play because it's so tight, but he managed to play beautifully all night --pretty much any song we wanted.




A quick video tour of the observatory, upstairs...


Here's the weather room, with all the instrument readings, the windows looking out to the north and west, and the observers' desk. This is where we spend almost all of our time during the day --doing forecasting, writing/communicating for/with certain media, etc., etc. It's on the second floor of the obs, along with the rotunda and the main entrance. The living quarters and kitchen are on the first floor.


Next a look around the observatory deck, where we take the observations on the hour, where hikers look around when they reach the top, and where everyone gathers to sight see in the summer. This video starts looking at the tower toward the west over the Southern Presidentials (and Franconia Notch, although you can't really see it--it's the snow-capped ridge over there). The Northern Presidentials are the ones to the north of the obs (Clay, Adams, Jefferson, Madison). The part of Mt. Washington that kind of juts out is called Ball Crag, and the curved lines in the snow beneath it are the Cog Railway (closest; only runs in the summer), and the Auto Road. As you come back around, you can see the A-Frame that keeps us from blowing away and ice from blowing on us when it's super windy, what's left of Rimey the snowman, the ceilometer (cloud-o-meter) shack, and the rest of the obs deck.


This one is of the trip up to the tower, through the staircases. The tower steps are kind of cool, partially because I feel a bit like a mad scientist going up them, and partially because the tower reminds me of the one in The Sword and the Stone. Slightly different magic at the top. The big, noisy machines in the glass case at the top of the first set of stairs are the AIRMAP project, which used to measure all kinds of pollutants --due to loss of funding, it's now down to CO and O3.


This last one is a view from the top of the tower steps, onto the tower deck, and around the 360 degree view from the tower. The door faces WSW, the north Presidential mountains are due north, the observation deck is ENE, the hikers are standing at the summit sign, you can see the rest of the summit buildings and radio towers, with the southern Presidentials in the background, and finally the instrument railing at the top of the tower. This is a great place to watch the sunset from and the red, railed-in part is really fun when the wind is blowing. The tower deck is also where I single-handedly removed about 4" of hard, glazed ice that covered the cement this past week. Took me about three hours, but wow was it good exercise --and it made dinner even better than usual.