New Mesonet Weather Sites on West Side of Washington

[NHChris]

Five new wx data sites along the Cog tracks coming online for the Winter.

 

[sierra]

It seems odd this is just happening. Why just monitor the east side? everyone knows the weather comes from the west.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

It seems odd this is just happening. Why just monitor the east side? everyone knows the weather comes from the west.

The east side Mesonet stations are along the Auto Road that the MWO uses weekly year-round for accessing the summit. The stations are expensive, and only recently has the MWO been obtaining better financial support than jn the past.

Will be very interesting to compare the two Mesonet datasets between east and west, as you note.

 

[DayTrip]

What are all the instruments near Lakes Of The Clouds? That stuff has been there for quite awhile. Will this become one of the stations? Be a good spot to have info.

 

[sierra]

The east side Mesonet stations are along the Auto Road that the MWO uses weekly year-round for accessing the summit. The stations are expensive, and only recently has the MWO been obtaining better financial support than jn the past.

Will be very interesting to compare the two Mesonet datasets between east and west, as you note.

That is a very good point about that being their approach. Still, having sites on the west side should really improve the forecast models.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

What are all the instruments near Lakes Of The Clouds? That stuff has been there for quite awhile. Will this become one of the stations? Be a good spot to have info.

There are lots of cool innovative, hand-made instruments on the bump north of LOC hut, including a cloud water collector, which provided cutting-edge data in 2023 on particulate matter from the Canadian wildfires. There is also an instrument with a glass cover for measuring CO2 created by plant respiration. A longterm project based on measurements at LOC addresses alpine plant phenology, that is when the plants first bloom in the spring and go into senescence in the fall, or changes in the length of plant growing seasons.

These projects at LOC and other huts are managed by the research director at Pinkham, the naturalists on each hut croo, and student interns. Good scientific research on fairly cheap money.

Agreed, LOC hut might be a good place for a Mesonet site, although it would likely be redundant with a site at about the same elevation along the Cog tracks.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

The Mount Washington Observatory’s Current Weather webpage is now flipping back and forth between the Auto Road vertical elevation mesonet (6 stations) and the Cog Railroad mesonet (4 sites). Not the exact same elevations between the two mesonets other than the shared summit station, but some interesting temperature differences when interpolating between the two sets of elevations.