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Science at the Summit
| Article
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18846 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
2,966 Words |
| Author
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Joseph E. Brown
Joseph E. Brown is a free-lance writer based in Rockport,
Maine, who specializes in science and natural history. |
Whenever weather scientists gather to discuss their discipline, especially its superlatives, chances are that the conversation will eventually get around to Mount Washington in the northeastern United States.
Mount Washington is not a particularly impressive peak in the sense that the towering Mount Everest, the exquisitely symmetrical Mount Fuji, or the recently violent Mount St. Helens are. Rising 6,288 feet, its summit is lower than that of many American Mountains. There are other mountains whose slopes present a far more formidable challenge to hikers and rock-climbers, and yet others that are more appealing to the skier.
Yet, in one particular aspect, Mount Washington towers over all the other mountains on earth: its weather. With good reason, one author profiling this peak, which is situated in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, titled his book The Worst Weather on Earth.
Located at a point where three major storm tracks merge, Mount Washington does indeed have truly ugly and dangerously capricious weather, even in midsummer. Ice, fog, frost, snow, rain, sleet, and wind--all are part of the Mount Washington scene. No month of the year is immune to these conditions.
In any given year, an average of 20 feet of snow falls here. That's only an average; in the 1968-69 season, a record was established of 47 feet of snow. In winter, a toll road, which corkscrews eight miles up to the summit, is choked with snow and a specially-designed, tracked snow vehicle is required to resupply the Mount Washington Observatory and a television facility whose adventurous crew lives a hermit's existence on the peak all year.
The summit is shrouded in clouds 60 percent of the time. More often than not, clouds obscure the splendid, bird's-eye view of surrounding New Hampshire and four other states, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean, for which the Mountain is noted. Year-round, the average temperature is 26.7o F, and the highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded here were -72o F (in 1975), and -47o F (in 1934).
Always the wind
As if it was not bad enough, there also is the ever-present wind. Often making the task of mere walking about difficult and dangerous, it blows at a gale force average of 35 MPH throughout the year,
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