'As a child, I was drawn to meteorology and astronomy.
I thought of studying astronomy at college, but I became more aware of weather during the March 1993 storm that hit the east coast [of the United States]. That storm stretched from Alabama to Maine. Then there was the blizzard of '96 that dumped about one metre of snow where I lived. I guess those extreme events fired my passion for severe weather and were just one more reason why I ended up here on the mountain.
We have a 12-hour shift; two observers at a time on day and night shifts. These run from 4.30am to 4.30 pm for the day-shift person; vice-versa for the night-shift person. We work from Wednesday to Wednesday, followed by a week off. A shift can take on a whole array of tasks, first and foremost weather observing, which takes half our time - going outside to read temperatures, checking for precipitation, measuring wind speed and direction and determining cloud type. Cloud type can help determine the types of storm systems moving into or away from the region. We report this every hour to the National Weather Service (NWS). This in turn gets disseminated to the public for general use.
Every three hours, we do a bigger, synoptic observation. These are done all around the world at the same time and include measuring precipitation, pressure, pressure tendencies and high and low temperatures for that period. All of that information is used in climate models to make global and regional forecasts. The rest of our day is spent maintaining the building and instruments. We have a lot of severe weather, so it's a task just to keep everything running and the readings accurate.
How severe is the weather up here? What happens on Mount Washington is a bit like taking the cold of the Arctic or Antarctic and combining it with the worst weather from the rest of the world. Three reasons account for the wind: a lot of air masses coming across the continent exit out of New England and Mount Washington, being the highest point in the region, sits in a pretty adept spot. The mountain range sits perpendicular to the prevailing wind and thus amplifies it, and the ravines around the summit add to the lift of the wind.
When the weather is really severe, you don't go outside unless someone else knows about it. A lot of it is common sense, but going outside in all types of weather is another aspect of our job. If the winds are blowing at more than 160km/h, we have to prepare for that. Luckily, a lot of our instruments are placed in areas designed to protect the observer, so we don't usually get the full force of it, except when we climb to the top of the instrument tower, which is 12 metres above the observation deck. It's not uncommon for it to be 30 or 40 degrees Fahrenheit below zero [minus 35 to minus 40 degrees Celsius].
Three years ago, temperatures dropped to [minus 42 degrees Celsius] and we had winds of 128km/h to 160km/h. The lowest wind chill we had then was on the morning of January 15. It was [minus 77 degrees Celsius]. When we go outside, there's a very systematic layering of clothing: one or two layers of wool socks, heavy-duty thermal underwear, wool or fleece [trousers], fleece jacket, down jacket; a pair of thermal snow pants, insulated boots, goggles, face mask, hat. By the time we are clothed, we look twice our normal size. Of course, we can't have any exposed skin, because at 60 [degrees Celsius] below zero it freezes in less than 30 seconds. It's great, though; once you're outside, you know that probably no one else on the planet is experiencing what you are.