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  1. #1

    Default A balmy day in the Whites

    3PM in the afternoon and wind chill on Mt Washington is minus 95 degrees with 122 MPH gusts with much lower wind chills predicted tomorrow AM. Exposed skin basically gets frostbite almost instantaneously. Even down at the base of the mountain the air temp is expected to be -25 F with wind chill of -45 tomorrow morning. The media has been warning folks big time so hopefully no one is out in this. By Sunday afternoon it is supposed to 30 degrees.

    Maine Appalachian Trail Club is having its annual training day for volunteers tomorrow, luckily its all indoors.

  2. #2

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    I've been glancing at the higher summits forecast occasionally over the last few days. It really is awe inspiring right now. I'm incredibly thankful to have experienced 'good' weather by the standards of the region when we did the winter traverse a few years ago. It was still intense with relatively favorable conditions.

  3. #3

    Default

    That is nuts. Let’s not go there!

  4. #4

    Default

    Is the past, the valleys nearby have gotten down to the 40 below and when I first moved up here in 1987 there would usually be two or three stretches of minus 30 down in the valleys.

    BTW the wind chill did hit minus 100 a few minutes ago at 5:30 PM.

  5. #5
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    Something I learned long ago... don't worry about the temperature but the WIND.

    I've climbed Mt Washington quite a few times in the winter and the determining factor has always been the wind. The very first time — sometime in the early '90s — it was -25°F when we departed Pinkham Notch and -17°F at Lion Head. The extremely unusual factor is that there was NO WIND. Almost never happens, but at Lion Head we took a snack break and when exhaling the vapors drifted straight up. Probably 1 day in a thousand up there, if not more. Even on top of Mt Washington the wind was about 5mph. We were dead center in a very high pressure dome and the visibility had to have been over 200 miles... I swear I could see the LL Bean store in Freeport.

    The last time I was up there we were within 0.3 mi of the summit but had to turn back. It was a 'balmy' 15°F but we were getting blown off our feet by 60-80mph gusts, enveloped in a near total ground blizzard, and it was time to go home.

    Mt_Wash_whiteout.jpg

  6. #6
    Registered User somers515's Avatar
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    Millstone Township, NJ
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    Default

    Thanks for posting peakbagger. Its reported that Mt. Washington tied or broke the wind chill record last night:
    "The wind chill — what the temperature feels like — on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, dropped to minus 108 F. That's likely the lowest wind chill ever recorded in the United States since meteorologists began calculating wind chills, said Brian Brettschneider, an Alaskan climate scientist. Reconstructing wind chill based on historic records at Mount Washington shows the wind chill also could have been at minus 108 F or below on Jan. 22, 1885. The low that day — which still stands as the record low— was minus 50 F and the 24-hour average wind speed was 89 mph, Brettschneider said. That combination would produce a wind chill below minus 108 F, he said.
    The temperature on Mount Washington dropped as low as minus 46 degrees F on Friday night, with 97 mph winds, the National Weather Service said."
    AT Flip Flop (HF to ME, HF to GA) Thru Hike 2023; LT End-to-Ender 2017; NH 48/48 2015-2021; 21 of 159usForests.com

  7. #7

    Default

    Forecasters say the coldest wind chill ever has been recorded in the continental US as an Arctic cold snap freezes a swathe of North America.
    The National Weather Service (NWS) said the icy gusts on Mount Washington in New Hampshire on Friday produced a wind chill of -108F (-77C).

  8. #8

    Default

    It got to minus 23 F at my house at 1400 feet about 7 miles north of Mt Washington, I have seen -35 F in the past but normally its far less windy. It was bit nippy driving over to Maine for the annual MATC training.

  9. #9

    Default

    Surprising how cold it got in Northwest CT, just about 20 below yesterday morning at about 1,200 feet. Though only lasting a day or so, if one was out in this with minimal provisions and gear they likely would not fare well. Be careful out there!

    IMG_3631.JPG

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