8-Yr. Old Wins Grandfather Contest

In the irony that can only be meteorology, an 8-year-old boy won the Grandfather Mountain, NC [JessePedia] Forecast Contest for Winter 2006-2007, beating 100 other (probably adult) contestants. Actually the article says that it was his whole family that chose the correct answers, one of which was "9 inches" for the largest 2-day snowfall this winter. That occurred, quite ironically, in April during that last cold spell.

And in other Grandfather news, if you wondered as I did, what wind gust they had on April 15th (when Mount Washington [JessePedia] had 156 mph), we'll never know. The new all-season anemometer (wind instrument) that had been installed there was still in "beta" mode and wasn't recording that day. Even though trees were downed all over the mountain, officials there doubt that it got close to the 200 mph wind record I blogged about last year because the damage was less than that done on 01/25/06. See this article for more information. The Mount Mitchell, NC anemometer has been down all winter so we don't know what they got there either.