Keeping in Shape while Working on the Summit

2018-12-07 15:55:25.000 – Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist

Working up here on the summit can lead to a sedentary lifestyle easily if you let it, especially in the winter time. In the summer months, it is easier to stay in shape with long daylight hours and more tranquil weather. Winter has challenges that are very physical so sometimes you can be forced into getting in shape just by having to be up here. Through the years that I have been here, I have struggled to try and set up a consistent routine and to be able to set aside time for working out.

During the summer months, I will try and get outside for a few hours each day when the weather is nice. Most of the time, I will go for a small hike after I finish my shift, or if the weather is bad, a run down the Auto road after it is closed for the day. There are a few rocks around the summit cone that are a perfect height to do some box drills as well. If the weather is really bad or if there is rain, I usually will stay inside and do some basic exercises that you can do in a room or take a rest day.

Winter becomes much more complicated with not being able to go outside too often so hikes become limited to only a few times per month and usually not that far. Many of the workouts need to be inside. Living up here in the winter is also much more physical as well. During the summer months, we do not need to de-ice the instrumentation so we do not really need to go up the tower often. In the winter, we need to go up the tower almost every hour whenever we are seeing rime ice. Rime ice will be occurring almost 60% of the time in the winter. The stairs up the tower is about 50 feet from the weather room up several ladders. After 12 hours of going up and down sometimes multiple times an hour, it can get exhausting. Not to mention once you are outside, you are battling the winds and using a crowbar to get the ice off of the instruments.

The next big thing is shoveling. We have 4 doors that we need to keep as snow free as possible so if there is a big snowstorm occurring, we could spend 2-3 hours shoveling in a single day. Tuesday before shift change is the most laborious since we make sure that even the precipitation can is dug out with enough space around it so that drifting snow and blowing snow will affect our snowfall accumulations less. Sometimes the wind helps us out and blows all the snow away, and other times it will compact the snow so dense that you have to break it up with an ice chipper before you can shovel it. There is a snow blower but it can only work at one of the entrances, the other 3 need to be hand shoveled.

Our shoveled out deck entrance to the Observatory. All the snow we have been shoveling is piled high on each sides of the door. We also shovel out around our Thermoshack in order to prevent deep snow near the thermometers to influence the temperature;

Though in winter, it does not snow every day and we do not need to deice every hour on the hour so there are long stretches of doing nothing physical. Luckily we do have an exercise bike up here along with a few weights. When the building is closed, I will go for runs around the building and the public area since there are less tables and chairs. Running in the building gets boring fast so an audio book or good music is necessary to stave of the boredom. If you get into a good rhythm, 30-45 minutes of running is possible. The exercise bike is fun to use in the evenings after dinner. My co-workers and I will usually play some video games in the evening after dinner and take turns playing. Whoever is not playing will usually be on the bike.

Most of the tables and chairs get removed from the State Parks Sherman Adams building. This allows for some space to run along the outside of the public area.

It is good to do these exercises on a daily basis up here. It makes the physical parts of the job much easier and sometimes I will look forward to shoveling snow if it is a nice day with no wind.

Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist

Why is Every Snowflake Unique?

2018-12-01 10:17:17.000 – Chloe Boehm, Summit Intern

Since the summit has seen 110” of snow since the start of the snow season (July 1^st) and 58” during the month of November alone, I decided to take this opportunity to look all this snow in a little bit more detail. Most of us have probably heard the expression “unique as a snowflake” derived from the fact that each snowflake is, in fact, unique. The size, structure and overall physical appearance of each snowflake differs. But why? To answer this question, we have to go back and discuss how snowflakes are formed.

Snowflakes form when very cold water droplets freeze onto a pollen or dust particle in the atmosphere. This particle becomes an ice crystal which as it falls to the ground, get larger as additional moisture freezes onto it. The temperatures at which an ice crystal forms combined with the humidity of the air determines the basic shape of the crystal. This in turns means that the overall shape of snowflakes greatly depends on the atmospheric conditions at the time of formation. The graphic below expands on this concept showing conditions necessary for different types of snowflakes.

Graphic showing the effects of temperatures humidity on snowflake formation. Image via Kenneth Libbrecht.

As you can see, snowflakes formed in very cold conditions are normally simple crystal plates and column while warmer temperatures produce snowflakes with more intricate branching. The most popularly photographed snowflakes, called Dendrites, need fairly warm and wet conditions to form. There is actually an area of the atmosphere called the dendritic growth zone, or DGZ, which is a zone where the air temperatures is roughly between -10 and -20 degrees Celsius. It was given this name because looking to see if the air is saturated in this zone will give a good sense of where snowflake development is occurring. Although snowflakes can form in temperatures above or below this temperature range, their shape will stray away from what most people would consider a traditional snowflake.

So getting back to our original question, why is every snowflake unique? The DGZ is high up in the atmosphere, usually at least 14,000 ft above sea level. That means that the recently formed snowflakes have a long way to travel before you see them. As these snowflakes are traveling towards the ground, they are picking up additional moisture to add to their structure. The path that each snowflake takes is unique with ever so slightly different atmospheric conditions. All it takes is the slightest change in temperature or humidity to alter the structure of a snowflake. Therefore, each snowflake tends to look unique!

Next time you are outside exploring in the snow, see if you can identify the types of snowflakes you are seeing and what that means for the conditions of the atmosphere above!

Chloe Boehm, Summit Intern

Subzero Summit Science

2018-11-27 17:39:18.000 – Ian Bailey, Weather Observer/Education Specialist

It has been an incredibly interesting shift week. We had a great Thanksgiving here on the summit, and Adam and I even got to spend it with Taylor from the other shift! While cooking a hearty meal and spending the evening sharing stories around the dinner table was great, it was Thanksgiving morning that I had the most fun with!

Thanksgiving and the day before, we smashed several low temperature records! On the 21rst we dropped to -20° F, breaking the previous record of -17°F set in 1987. And on Thanksgiving, we bottomed out at -26°F, with wind chills at -75°F! That not only smashed the previous record of -11°F from 1987, but it also broke both the monthly and seasonal records as well! The point I am trying to make is that it was bitterly, bitterly cold. And by far the coldest temperatures I have ever experienced. Now of course, with those incredibly cold temperatures, we had to take every precaution while going outside to take our hourly observations. We were decked out in full cold weather gear, including heavy boots, snow pants, 2 jackets, gloves and liners, 2 face masks, goggles, and a hat! No exposed skin allowed, unless you want to get frostbite in less than a minute. It was pretty intense!

But that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have fun with it…

You see, when you are experiencing such incredibly freezing temperatures, you have the unique opportunity to perform some fun cold weather experiments; an opportunity that Taylor and I seized and ran with! So we set up 3 experiments and gave them a try, documenting our experience as we went. It was a resounding success across the board, and a ton of fun to perform them. So check these out!

The first experiment that we tried was the Banana Hammer. And hilarious name aside, I think this was our more successful experiment that we ran. It was very easy to set up! We took a banana from our pantry and tossed it out in a snowdrift for an hour. From being in direct contact with the snow/ice and from being exposed to the arctic air, the banana froze completely solid. Once it was frozen, we went out of the deck with a 2X4, a small nail and a roofing nail. And using the banana, I was able to drive the nails into the 2X4 with no issue! It was crazy! The once soft and squishy banana was so completely frozen that it could be used effectively as a hammer, with minimal damage to the banana itself! Needless to say, I was incredibly impressed.

 

For our second experiment, we “cooked” up some Freeze Fried Eggs. We left a skillet out in the cold with the banana, letting the metal’s temperature become so cold that it could “fry” an egg. Again, I was skeptical. But when I cracked the egg onto the skillet it actually began to cook! It didn’t cook very much, but enough where I could get a spatula underneath it and flip it over! Impressive!

 

Finally, Taylor cooked up some ramen and wanted to turn it into a Ramen Lollipop! So we took the noodles outside and she tried to hold them up in the air to get them to flash freeze. Unfortunately, the water in the bowl was too hot to allow for the flash freeze we wanted. So Taylor took the noodles on the fork and held them up into the wind. And that’s all they needed! They flash froze in about 30 seconds! However, the winds were still gusting high while we were doing this, and a 90 mph gust sent Taylor sliding across the deck! But she’s experienced, and has mad skills! She spun in a 360 and slid to a stop right before the Cosmo Shack, holding the bowl the entire way! It was awesome!

 

All 3 experiments were incredibly fun to perform! And the experience certainly peaked our appetite for more fun experiments to perform as the winter progresses! So stay tuned, and the next time we have some sub-zero temperatures, your mountaintop scientists will be sharing more experiments with you!

Ian Bailey, Weather Observer/Education Specialist

What A Start to Winter!

2018-11-16 09:18:25.000 – Tom Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist

 

With that said, we are heading into the heart of the snow season, where the vast majority of our precipitation falls as only snowfall with very infrequent rainfall. As of this writing, snow is currently falling with a departing Nor’easter, and we’re expecting at least another 6” of snow over the next several days. 28.3” has fallen for this month of November so far, and we are well on pace to have an above average month (38” is average for November).

 

For the total snow season the summit is now up to 81”, roughly 3 feet above average! October in particular was a great month from a snow standpoint, ending up as our second snowiest on record. Unfortunately, most of that snow is no longer on the ground up here due to a combination of high winds and some melting and rain. The winds have also been above average these past few months, with an impressive 19 days with hurricane force winds in October, more than half the month!

Even if the rest of the winter turns out to be just “average” there’s still plenty more snow to be had. “Average” snowfall December through May should total another 19 feet, and there’s always the potential for much, much more! With the real winter season just around the corner, this observer hopes to see a whole lot more snow up here soon!

 

Tom Padham, Weather Observer/Education Specialist

A Windy Start to Winter

2018-11-11 13:48:59.000 – Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist

This year it seems like we have seen a greater frequency of strong storms that produced 100+ mph gusts up here on the summit. Taking a look at this year, as of today November 11^th, we are sitting at 8 days since July 1^st where we have hit 100 mph. This does not sound like much but usually our frequent high winds don’t start coming until December, then we see it much more regularly. Last year was also fairly windy but there was 7 days that had 100+ mph winds by this time.

Looking back at our history, the next year that tied or exceeded our total so far was 2005, where there were 10 days of 100+ mph wind gusts by this time of year. For the last 20 years or so, the amount of 100 mph days we have seen up to this point has averaged pretty low, averaging only 4-5 days. The 1980’s saw the most where most years were in the 8-10 day range.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at some of the historical weather maps on days where the winds got quite high during the 1980’s and there were pretty consistent large storms that traveled up the coast or came out of the Great Lakes region. Many of the storms that were seen multiple times a year in the 80’s would be a significant storm to even have just once here. I did not have the time to go through and see if I can find any sort of correlation with the ENSO (El Nino/la Nina index), NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation), or the AO (Arctic Oscillation).

These oscillations influence the weather, with the NAO having the biggest impact on East Coast weather. There have been projects done in the past correlating these oscillations with snowfall and precipitation up here on the summit but it would be fun to do a more wind climatology and see how much of an effect these oscillations have on the winds up here!

Adam Gill, Weather Observer/IT Specialist