Time to post the pictures I have taken during this past shift week, which started last Wednesday, November 18 and will end tomorrow when I go down the mountain. Through the first several days of this shift, I was starting to worry that I wasn't going to get many picture opportunities. Last Wednesday and Thursday were clear and dry with hardly a cloud in the sky. Then Friday into Saturday morning was foggy and wet. Luckily, things changed for the better through the remainder of my shift.

The fog broke late Saturday morning to reveal this view off to the south:

Here's a similar view, this time focusing on the stratocumulus clouds that were building from the stratus:

We had gotten a decent amount of glaze and rime ice from the tail end of the storm Friday night into Saturday morning. This is a view of Bigelow Lawn. I thought the patterns formed by the ice on the rocks and alpine vegetation were neat:

A few hours later, I came back to the same spot. Here is a panorama of what I saw:

Things were starting to get a bit more interesting for sure. Now here is a closeup of some clouds moving up the western slopes of the southern Presidentials, in particular, Mount Monroe:

Sunset Saturday evening was very nice and produced some pretty colors. Here is a photo showing some of that color on glaze ice that formed on the building:

The few clouds that were above the summit showed the best color after the sun went below the horizon:

The next morning, I awoke to a very nice undercast off to the northwest. Pay particularly close attention to the shadow of the mountain and you'll see a glory (WIKI) around the tip of the shadow:

Here is a closeup of the mountain shadow. Technically, the shadow together with the glory would be called a Brocken Spectre (WIKI):

On Monday morning, low pressure was moving up the Atlantic Coast. It was far enough away to keep precipitation and fog off the summit, but the onshore flow associated with the system pushed low level clouds pretty far inland. We could see the edge of those clouds:

The sunset that came later on Monday was spectacular. Here you see a panorama of the Wildcat and Carter-Moriah Ranges. If you look carefully at the shadow of the mountain, you will once again see a glory around the tip:

This shot focuses more on the clouds over the Wildcats. This is very similar to a picture I captured a couple shifts ago:

I ran over to the south side of the mountain to check things out and actually see the sun set. Fellow observer Ryan (background) and intern Will (foreground) were there too:

The stratus clouds below us were some of the coolest I have ever seen in my time here:

Here I am, enjoying the incredible clouds:

Another shot of the clouds over the Wildcats as I head down the staircase to the lower parking lots:

And to wrap things up for this week, I figured I would include my first ever attempt at a night exposure. Now I realize that it isn't a terribly good shot, but I do think it is neat how the moon ended up looking like the sun:

I will have to keep trying to get better night shots, but I have a feeling that I am more limited by what my fairly basic camera can do than I am by my photography skills.

Well, I'm off tomorrow to my home state of Pennsylvania for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be heading back to State College too, my hometown and also home to headquarters of AccuWeather.com. Hopefully when I return next week, we'll actually have some snow and cold temperatures here on the mountain!

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If you live in the northeast, it is probably no news to you that November has been an unseasonably warm and dry month. That is especially true here on the summit of Mount Washington.

Some basic stats for this month, as of yesterday (the 21st), with departure from normal in parenthesis:

Average Monthly Temperature: 28.0 F (+7.4 F)
Total Liquid Precipitation: 3.78 inches (-6.71 inches)
Total Snowfall: 5.2 inches (-35.6 inches)

Now of course I realize that, counting today, there are still 9 days left in the month. However, that is not much time to bring these statistics significantly closer to their averages. Considering that there won't be a significant change in the weather pattern until late this week (more on that coming up), I am reasonably sure that November 2009 will go down in the record books as an extremely warm, dry, and snowless month.

That's the bad news. The good news is that a reversal in the pattern is looming on the horizon. After one more storm cuts up through the Great Lakes region in the middle part of this week, some of the cold air that has been bottled up in Canada and Alaska (see Jesse Ferrel's blog) will finally be unleashed on the eastern half of the country. At the same time, a storm is brewing in the models. Fellow AccuWeather.com blogger Henry Margusity has been talking about it for a few days, and now that we are less than a week away, this is certainly something to keep an eye on. After that potential storm, looking into the beginning of December, an Alberta Clipper system looks like it will move through the Mid-Atlantic, further reinforcing the cold air.

This is especially good news for the ski areas in New England. Many of them usually look to open right around Thanksgiving, but as of right now Sunday River is the only one open on the east coast.

On a different topic, I was able to take a bunch of really neat pictures over the last couple of days. Look for those to be posted on Tuesday in my now bi-weekly collection of pictures from the mountain!

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I had every intention of writing at least a couple entries during this past shift on the mountain. In the end those good intentions were overcome by the plethora of other tasks that I wanted to accomplish. Today was perhaps the busiest of all the busy days for me this week, but of course I wanted to make sure I take some time to post my bi-weekly set of pictures, even if it is at almost 9 at night after working for the better part of the last 14 hours!

There weren't nearly as many picture opportunities this week as there has been for my last two shifts. Also, a lot of the pictures that I did take did not turn out well for various reasons (wind, low light, etc.). Nevertheless, I was able to come up with a handful of pictures to post. I'm particularly happy to be able to finally post some panoramic shots. One of the reasons I bought the new camera I did a couple months ago was because of a panoramic picture feature it has. Basically I am able to take three pictures and the camera stitches them together right then and there. It's a neat feature, but I have found it difficult to get good results for a couple reasons. First, the variations in lighting over the span that is covered by the three photos, especially at sunrise and sunset, cause some of the colors not to 'pop' like they should. Also, with the kinds of wind speeds we see, it is very difficult to keep the camera steady, resulting in some poorly stitched panoramas.

Anyways, let's get to the photos. First up is a photo looking down the Mount Washington Auto Road near the 3 mile mark of the road. It was nice to see at least a dusting of light fluffy snow all the way down to the base of the mountain:

Next is the first of four panoramas that I am going to post. This was taken Thursday morning when we were going in and out of the clouds. It was nice to see the mountain coated in white again after leaving a mostly snowless summit the week before. Be sure to click on these panoramic shots to see the full size version:

While doing one of my observations Thursday morning, I noticed this faint sun dog (WIKI). Look to the right of the sun, just to the right of the center of the photo:

The clearing of the fog also showed some man made white in the valley below. Here you see a closeup of Bretton Wood's ski area and their first snowmaking efforts of the season. Also in this picture is the famous Mount Washington resort, in front of the ski area, with the big red roof:

This shot was taken at sunrise Saturday morning. I unintentionally left the flash on, which coupled with some bits of rime ice flying through the air, created a neat effect:

Although this next picture turned out pretty grainy because of the low light conditions, it does show the colors that were appearing on the horizon pretty well:

This panorama was taken looking north and captured the alpenglow (WIKI) just after sunrise pretty well:

Some crepuscular rays shining through the overcast on Saturday afternoon:

This next panorama was taken an hour or so after sunrise on Monday:

And this one was at the same time. I like the way the alto clouds turned out:

And wrapping things up for this week is a shot of the view out my office window this morning. Very pretty, but also depressing because of all the snow we lost with the warm temperatures the day before:

Talk to you all next week!

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Well, it's Tuesday which of course is the end of my latest shift and also means it is time to post pictures I have taken over the last week. I have lots of good ones this week, as well as a couple videos as a bonus. It was a much less wintry shift than my last one, in fact most of the snow that came during my last shift is now gone. More rain than snow fell, but we still saw some rime ice forming at times.

I have a total of 17 pictures (narrowed down from over 100) and 2 videos to share. That's an awful lot for one post, but I didn't like how doing two parts turned out last week. This is supposed to be a sort of photo journal of my shift on the mountain, and I feel like splitting the week's photos in two makes them lose that purpose. Leave a comment if you have any feelings one way or the other. But enough chit chat. Let's get to the good stuff!

On the way up to start my shift last Wednesday, we stopped just above the halfway point of the Mount Washington Auto Road to put chains on our four-wheel drive truck and van. When we stopped, we had a fantastic view of these lenticular clouds to the east, over the Carter-Moriah range:

And here's a picture of the chains being put on the truck and van, with clouds draped over the Northern Presidentials in the background”

Sunrise Friday morning was a great one. Some nice mid and high level clouds above us, and some stratus below us as well:

This next picture was taken just a couple hours after the previous one. This time of year is a great one for being able to very distinctly see the ocean, because the sun rises in just the right place to shine on the water and bring definition to the coastline. In the back of this picture, you are seeing the ocean off the coast of Portland, Maine. Right in front of that, you are seeing Lake Sebago, Maine. Being able to view the ocean from 65 miles away and almost 6300 feet up is always an impressive sight, but it was particularly impressive on this day:

Later that day, winds decreased significantly, making for a perfect opportunity for Marty, our cat, to get outside for some fresh air. Here he is contemplating whether it is safe to go out or not:

And here he is enjoying the sunshine on the observation deck:

Sunset Sunday evening was not all that spectacular by my standards but, visibility was very good. In this photo, visibility is at about 130 miles, so you are actually seeing some of the Adirondacks in New York State, including Mount Whiteface:

The best picture opportunities actually came today. Sunrise this morning was nothing short of spectacular. In fact, it was one of the best, if not the best, that I have seen in over 2 years here. Here is what I saw when I walked out the door this morning to take my first observation (fellow observers Ryan and Mike are the people in the picture):

And here's a shot looking over the Carter-Moriah and Wildcat ranges:

The lighting on the altocumulus clouds was amazing:

This one was just after the sun actually rose above the horizon:

And here is a closeup of the altocumulus from the previous picture:

Just a few minutes later, the stratus clouds below the summit began to flow over the Wildcat range:

A closeup of the clouds flowing over the mountains:

Some really nice colors even showed up to the west:

I also took a time-lapse video of the cloud movement that I already mentioned. I posted it to the Obsevatory's YouTube site today:

An amazing sunrise like that is a great way to start a day and I would have been more than content if those were the only pictures I got to take all day. However a surprise photo opportunity presented itself in the afternoon when some incredible wave type clouds began to move toward the summit:

A few minutes later, here's what it looked like the opposite direction:

None of the pictures I took really do this event justice to be honest, which is really too bad. I did take another video though, and turned it into another time-lapse that I posted to our YouTube site:

So that wraps things up for this shift. I'll be back next week!

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As of 12Z this morning, the latest storm total was 8.0 inches of snowfall. This exceeded my forecasted 3-6 inches, but to be fair, about half of that 8 inches fell as upslope snow showers and after the synoptic scale precipitation moved out. It's very difficult to forecast exactly how much snow will fall from upslope flow.

Anyways, time for part two of the pictures that I took during my last shift on the mountain.

After spending the better part of the first 4 days of our shift in the fog, we cleared very suddenly on Sunday, October 11th. The lighting was very intersting and the foliage in the valleys below was clearly peaking, giving a very nice contrast to the white on the higher summits. This photo looks northeast:

Because of the clearing, the Auto Road's Stage Vans were able to make it to the summit with chains on their tires:

Here is a shot looking south over the Southern Presidentials with Mount Monroe being the first peak. Some nice crepuscular rays were starting to show up:

This shot looks west-southwest:

This photo shows Mount Clay (left) and Mount Jefferson (right) of the Northern Presidentials:

I have very few pictures of myself on the mountain so when Intern Will offered to take a shot of me I took advantage:

Now a shot across the observation deck from sunset that evening:

Monday, October 13th started out foggy, but then that fog began to clear and revealed some nice cirrocumulus lenticulars:

Later on there were some other high alto cloud formations that I thought looked neat:

And generally speaking, it was a very nice day with the sun shining on all the white rime ice:

Sunset Monday evening produced some nice colors as the sun went behind the clouds on the horizon:

Then the first significant snow storm of the season moved in very early in the day Tuesday, October 13. Several inches fell during the morning and the first shoveling of the season was done by observer Mike Finnegan:

When we measure snowfall in our precipitation can, we take 10 measurements of different parts of the snow inside the can and average it. Here is Mike taking one of those measurements Tuesday morning:

Once the wind started kicking up later Tuesday morning, the snow started to form drifts as it always does on this mountain. Here is a nice drift that was forming right outside our door to the observation deck:

So that's it for this shift. Now it's time for me to enjoy my week off and I will be back next week. Hope you have enjoyed the photos!

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