“They tend to fold in half.”
More often than staff at the Mount Washington Observatory would like, that’s just how it goes for weather monitoring equipment high on the mountain’s slopes, according to Mount Washington Observatory Director of Weather Operations Jay Broccolo.
Mounted on aluminum tripod frames, the equipment is designed to monitor conditions including wind speed, snowfall, and solar radiation on the mountain Broccolo and others proudly say is home to “the worst weather on Earth.”
But even cutting-edge technology can’t always stand up to Mount Washington’s worst: As ice builds up on the equipment, the surface area exposed to the gales increases and increases. Sometimes, Broccolo says, the metal structures supporting the tech simply buckle.
The automated weather stations are part of a network the Mount Washington Observatory is in the process of expanding throughout the North Country and up and down the slopes of Mount Washington, Broccolo said.
The dozens of stations provide real-time weather updates and contribute to a log of local climate data that helps scientists track change over time and understand more about the White Mountains’ unique environment.
Data from high on the peaks is very valuable to the effort, particularly because it is so hard to come by, Broccolo said. But that’s for good reason.
The observatory’s main structures and infrastructure on the peak itself are hardy, but maintaining smaller, standalone weather stations is very difficult — particularly above 4,000 feet on a mountain where, in winter, top wind speeds may approach (or exceed) 100 mph on a daily basis.
“We’ve tried three times, and they’ve lasted not even a month into the winter on every single one,” Broccolo said, speaking to reporters, North Country business owners, and scientists at the foot of Mount Washington Nov. 18.
A new attempt at solving that takes the form of a collaboration between the Mount Washington Observatory and the Cog Railway. The Cog is aiding in the construction of a new, steel tripod station along its tracks that will — hopefully — prove more durable than the aluminum structures used by the observatory in the past, Broccolo said.
“It’s very much a trial-as-you-go situation,” he said. “There’s very few places on the planet that experience the weather that this place does.”