World's Worst Weather? Really?

Mark S said:

In any event, people from the Northeast use Mount Washington in winter to help train for Denali in the summer. The idea that Mount Washington's weather compares to Denali's on any given day of the year is laughable.

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You have missed the entire point of this "worst weather" claim.
Go reread the posts and try to understand that the focus for "worst weather", according to the Mt Washington observers, is the "changeable climate" in short period. They addimantly claim Mt Wash does not have the coldest temps, or the snowiest precip.
Rather by example; Mt Washington can produce snow/ice, next to rain fog, extreme winds then back to a sunny day...in a single day. Many other places in the world can do the same, but MW Observers claim this location is the worst.
In effect, by making this claim, it can only be disproved by data from another location.
Still waiting for Nartrebs findings....

Weather 101

The weather on some threads starts off nice and sunny. Then the unstable hot air starts to rise, often pretty quickly, and cumulus cloud formation begins to block the sun. The friction within the cloud strips electrons from water molecules and the debate becomes charged. It is usually the negative build-up that takes over. Before you know it you can here the inevitable rumblings. Then a flame streaks across cyberspace blasting its way into the server and instantly gets dispersed to more than 2000 computer terminals. The fallout from the storm cloud dampens everyones enthusiasm and things get kinda chilly for a while. Even padlocked in some cases.

Then calm settles in, the weather clears, birds chirp, a red and green coloured rainbow probably occurs but is hidden behind the scenes. Then, on another front a new cell begins to form and the cycle repeats itself.

Jeff-B said:

Rather by example; Mt Washington can produce snow/ice, next to rain fog, extreme winds then back to a sunny day...in a single day. Many other places in the world can do the same, but MW Observers claim this location is the worst. In effect, by making this claim, it can only be disproved by data from another location.

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This is getting goofier and goofier. And since MW is with one of the few mountains with a weather observatory, disproving the claim based upon reams of data from other mountains/locations would be difficult. Disproving a negative has always been difficult, to say the least ...

The NW claim of variability as a major factor is an interesting one, but doesn't hold up. Climb a few of the mountain ranges bordering the Pacific if you want to see extremes in variability. Or hell, go to Ireland for that matter, and hang out in the Dingle which borders the Gulf Stream. Sometimes it rains then is sunny a dozen times in a morning ...

Sorta like arguing over who's the world's funniest comedian based upon the number of cracked ribs. Or the 100 best movies. Or the best hamburger joints ...

Kevin Rooney said:

This is getting goofier and goofier.
Sorta like arguing over who's the world's funniest comedian based upon the number of cracked ribs. Or the 100 best movies. Or the best hamburger joints ...

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DON'T SHOOT THE MESSANGER!

Go take it up with the WX observers on Mt Washington!

I remember the MW WX Observatory had once only laid claim to 'Worst Weather in America", which is actualy more believable.

What is becoming laughable to me is how this claim bothers so many folks

It's with a certain trepidation that I'm reviving this thread.

Here are some records that should be useful under several of the definitions of "worst weather" discussed. Just weather stations within the US (not even close to a sample of world-class peaks), but more detailed info (eg, extreme precipitation) than is easily available elsewhere.
I won't have a free minute to search the data myself for at least a few weeks, but thought some might want to take a look.

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/A-L_compare.html

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/M-N_compare.html

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/htmlfiles/O-Z_compare.html

PS anybody else seen the data from the unofficial weather station high on Denali? Can someone explain why the two anemometers usually disagree with each other by over 100mph?

nartreb said:

PS anybody else seen the raw data from the unofficial weather station high on Denali? Can someone explain why the two anemometers usually disagree with each other by over 100mph?

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Icing?

Doug

Wow those are awesome links, I was impressed with some of the averages. Its interesting that Jay Peak's average is much lower on there then what they say it is.. The amount of snow they have for Mount Washinton is wrong as well, it is far too windy up there for them to measure. I bet areas away from the summit above 5800 feet get a lot more. I would say 325+, its just not very easy to find out. Mount Washington is really an amazing place. -Mattl

measured

In one of his last books, Brad Washburn said that it was likely that Denali had higher winds on its summt than Washington, but Washington had the destinction of having the world's worst MEASURED weather.
Measure that.

Thought this was interesting since someone recently resurrected this thread..

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2909128

M

I think I've found the source of the "world's worst weather" claim. Not surprisingly, it comes from the Observatory itself:

The Worst Weather in the World,” by Charles F. Brooks, in Appalachia. December, 1940, pp. 194 ff.

Apparently, Brooks considered then-available data from Pike’s Peak, Mount Rose (central Sierra Nevada), Sonnblick Observatory (Austria) and Mount Nordenskjdld (Spitsbergen). I don't know what criteria he used, though.

Anybody know where to find a copy?

(Several people have attributed the "worst weather" claim to Washburn, but I've tracked down several versions of this claim and so far the original statement always contains a qualification such as "except for a few isolated Arctic and Antarctic peaks" or "in January when there's a blow on", and usually is merely an assertion of parity, not a claim of primacy: "as bad as", not "worst". The quote cited above by Grayjay comes closest to providing a basis for the "worst" claim, but it also makes clear that Washburn himself didn't believe Washington actually has the world's worst weather.)

PS one of my sources says that Brooks "re-established" the Mt W. observatory around 1932. Anybody know anything about the implied hiatus?

Bring on the tourists...

I think "Home to the World's Worst Weather" is a pretty good slogan... New Hampshire needs the tourists.

It's better than "Home to A Lot of Fog."

Today I finally got my mitts on Brooks' 1940 article "The Worst Weather in the World". Despite the provocative title, the overall conclusions are well summarized in the last sentence of the first paragraph:

"I am afraid that even local pride will not make it possible for us to say that Mount Washington has the worst climate in the world; but comparisons are of interest."

Also of interest for purposes of this thread is Brook's definition of severe weather:

"The severity of cold climate is described in terms of (1) the penetrating qualities of the wind, (2) the lowness of temperature, (3) the amount of snow, and (4) the occurrence of freezing fog."

Brooks seems most interested in the combined cooling power of these attributes, even calculating cooling rates (in millicalories) based on temperature, wind, and moisture (after correcting for atmospheric density at elevation). He also seems more interested in comparing historic record extremes than averages or typical extremes, though he does some of each.

The article is in the public domain, so I will transcribe the whole thing onto my personal website when I get a chance (estimate: three weeks).

This sounds pretty neat. I am extremely interested in this publication.

nartreb said:

"I am afraid that even local pride will not make it possible for us to say that Mount Washington has the worst climate in the world; but comparisons are of interest."

A

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Though I don't disagree with the statement, I'm not sure if it is necessary herebecause I thought we were arguing worst weather in the world, not climate.

Climate is the average weather over a period of years....the more the better.
Weather is what is currently going on.

So its definitely obvious that MWN doesn't have the worst climate in the world. You can do that by looking at the averages. But we're talking weather here.

While most of New England was flooded out and damaged by heavy rain and wind this week, Mount Washington gusted to 156 mph, had days of heavy snow and then days of heavy freezing rain and rime ice which coated onto things at the rate of several inches per hour and pretty much shut the weather station down. Tonight was the first night I saw actual obs coming from the summit, which is a good thing. We'll never know how much precip fell up there because the precip can was completely buried and damaged. Hermit Lakes picked up over 7 inches of liquid equivalent (3 feet of that was snow!) so one could easily assume that the summit totals approached 10 inches of liquid equiv or more.

So the summit has definitely lived up to its reputation this past week. I can tell you if any other habitable place with a large population had weather like that there would be some serious deaths. I hope the meteorologist from MWN posts on the board so I can hear what it was really like up there this week. I'm very curious.

grouseking

check it out

http://www.mountwashington.org/forums/showthread.php?t=906
they run a forum too...

http://www.mountwashington.org/foru...hread.php?t=906

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Sounds like a slow day on the Rock Pile

Kevin Rooney said:

Sounds like a slow day on the Rock Pile

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And a slow 6 or so months here...

Doug

Yeah they've had an easy week

http://mountwashington.org/weather/comments/2007/ShiftChange41807c.jpg
http://mountwashington.org/weather/comments/2007/ShiftChange41807h.jpg
http://mountwashington.org/weather/comments/2007/ShiftChange41807m.jpg
http://mountwashington.org/weather/comments/2007/ShiftChange41807o.jpg


More interesting photos and the story now posted on their website.


grouseking

This is a bit tangential to this thread, but I'd like to point out that many places in the country (and the world) frequently have hurricane-force winds, assuming the threshold for hurricane-force is 72mph. For example - the building code requirement where I live now in the Eastern Sierra of California is 80mph (the shingles on mine are rated at 90). If there's a high pressure center over Utah with its western edge bumping against the Sierra Nevada mountain range, you can expect some exceptionally windy weather over many parts of the southwest. Just last week we had an windy few days, and highways had to be closed for a few hours. My neighbor had a scary moment when driving south toward LA and had a freeway sign narrowly miss his windshield. An hour or so later the CHP had to shutdown some major highways for a few hours. Does that happen a 100 times a year? No, but it's not rare either.

In the interests of accuracy, in no way does the number of "days hurricane-force winds" compare with the summit of Mt. Washington. However, thousands, if not millions, of people of people live where wind gusts exceeding 72mph are an occasional occurrence.

Personally, I think promoting the summit of Mt Washington as the 'site of the world's worst weather' should be left to promotional types at the tourist bureaus, not the scientific staff on the summit. Once that staff starts promoting the hype their credibility suffers.

I thought we were arguing worst weather in the world, not climate

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You'll be able to read it for yourself soon enough, but I don't see that Brooks made any distinction between "weather" and "climate" in the article. He seems to me to use them interchangeably. Even if you insist on a distinction, I personally fail to see how it would be possible to have the worst weather in the world without also having the worst climate, but I guess it's academic.

many people climb mt washington and other NH peaks to in the winter to mimic peaks in other ranges in the summer.

I think that sums it up