New Hampshire’s Mount Washington recorded its most powerful wind gust yet this winter, clocking in at 150 miles per hour at the summit.
The whipping winds and drifting snow increased during the day Tuesday, “reaching a crescendo shortly before 7 p.m. with winds becoming sustained in the mid-120s with gusts up to 150 mph,” the Mount Washington Observatory posted Tuesday night on social media.
Tricia Hutton, an intern at the observatory, captured some of the wild weather on video, including the “river of the blowing snow” passing between the tower and Tip-Top House atop the mountain as well as the freezing fog streaming overhead.
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At one point, one of the observatory’s staffers, Karl Philippoff, can be seen retrieving a weather gauge.
Jay Broccolo, the observatory’s director of weather operations, said it was Philipoff’s first time experiencing 150 mph winds.
“It was great to watch that excitement in someone after being in it yourself,” Broccolo said Wednesday. “When it gets dark, your adrenaline starts to pump.”
As the wind started picking up, windows and doors at the observatory began to whistle, the pressure changed drastically, water in the toilets began to slosh around, and the cold building creaked with each expansion and contraction, Broccolo said.
“Every time, it’s the true definition of humbling,” he said. “It’s how powerless you are in those elements. If not for the safeguards we have, conducting these types of operations would be difficult.”
Three staff members, one intern, two volunteers, and one person from the state park were inside the station at the time of the storm. Despite heating the instruments up to 3,000 watts, staff had to intervene to get rid of the ice.
The Northeast’s highest peak, Mount Washington is home to some of the fiercest weather on the planet. The peak wind gust ever reached at the summit was 231 miles an hour on April 12, 1934.
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LIVE: The Mount Washington Observatory deck webcam offers a view of the current conditions atop the mountain:
Marianne Mizera can be reached at marianne.mizera@globe.com. Follow her @MareMizera. Carlos Muñoz can be reached at carlos.munoz@globe.com. Follow him @ReadCarlos and on Instagram @Carlosbrknews.