I've always thought that New England was just about the most beautiful part of our country.

We're blessed with the distinctive seacoast, diverse woodlands, and some pretty good mountains.

This morning, I'm standing at the foot of one of those mountains, Mount Washington, and it's a little more pretty good than any other.

It rises 6288ft above sea level, and because it sticks up above the surrounding mountains, it takes the brunt of all the weather systems that come through here.

But it's not just windy up there.

It's really cold.

And this time of year, late January is the coldest time of all.

What better time to go up the mountain and spend a night at the summit?

So stick around, because the next half hour is one you are not going to want to miss.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange, and at the moment of about 1000ft above Pinkham Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

I'm climbing up the side of an old friend, Mount Washington.

Washington and I go back quite a few of years.

I first climbed it on a beautiful September afternoon in 1955, and I remember being impressed at the time how even though it was a beautiful, warm day, all the boulders had ice blooms on them from a storm the day before.

Now, that's probably the main feature of Mount Washington weather, changeability, and it's probably the reason that over 130 climbers have died up here over the years.

They set out, you know, equipped for the conditions that they anticipate.

The conditions change.

They decide to go for it anyway.

Well, whenever I hike up here, I keep one eye on the sky and I keep asking my question, what if.

What if the weather were to change right now?

How far is it to the nearest shelter and traveling at the speed I do, how long is it likely to take me to get there?

Well, we're not going to do that today.

We're riding up the auto road in a snowcat operated by the Mount Washington Weather Observatory.

You've probably heard their weather forecast on the radio.

They've been up there since 1932, and in recent years, they've begun to make it possible for folks who want to spend the night on the summit to do just that.

Of course they do ask a few questions, like, in the event of equipment malfunction, can you hike up to eight miles to get back out?

And they do mention that if the weather should happen to change for the worse, you might not be coming down the mountain quite when you thought you were.

Sounds good to me.

Here we go.

♪ When we were getting ready to ride up in the snowcat, I got to thinking.

This thing is awfully wide.

And that road up there is awfully narrow.

So I made sure to get on the right hand side of the cab, so I'd be on the side of the cliff instead of the drop off when we got to that narrow spot.

Well, if they do go over the edge, at least I'll have a couple seconds extra to worry about it.

But no problem.

The thing clings to that road just like a spider.

♪ Now, the guy who makes the decision about whether to go up or not is Gus, the driver.

He's the last word.

If he thinks the wind is too high or the road is too dangerous, you just don't go.

And you never know in marginal conditions until you get there whether you are going to go or not.

But this day, it was okay.

♪ When we got to the top, Gus backed that great big machine right up to the entrance to the Sherman Adams building, which has kind of a semi enclosed door there because he wanted to get unloaded as fast as he could and get out of there in case the winds picked up anymore.

And he be up there for the night.

We figure it took about an hour or so to get up there, but I was having so much fun I didn't check it out.

It was impossible not to notice as soon as you stepped out of that snowcat, that it was really windy and it was really cold, the temperature was 22 below zero, and the wind was blowing between 60 and 80 miles an hour.

I thought I would just stick my nose out there and see how tough it was, and how tough I was in the wind, blowing that hard.

And the temperature that low.

Well, let me tell you, with the wool balaclava pulled down over my face, I could last about 10 or 15 seconds before I felt my nose literally turning to ice.

It was that cold and when you just couldn't stand there, had to get out of the wind.

It was pretty impressive up there.

(Howling wind) It's kind of like wading in a river, a very cold river up over your head.

♪ Well, as you can see, we've made it to the summit.

I'm now having lunch in the subterranean dining room on the peak.

And it's nice and warm in here.

Unlike about 20ft above us, where it's howling wind.

And God knows how cold.

I'm sitting here with Peter Crane, who was for years a staffer here at the at the summit and is now in charge of the program at the foot of the mountain.

And his wife, Holly Crane, a volunteer here this weekend.

And this is great.

And the nicest thing about it is I get to dip my toasted cheese sandwich in my soup without being hollered at.

The meals up at the observatory are prepared by volunteers.

Usually a couple that comes up for a week on the snowcat spends a week cooking, doing minor housekeeping.

The cooks this time were an elderly couple called Charlie and Janine Kinney.

They were fantastic.

♪ Now, Peter, we're right here.

Right?

This is one of those you are here maps.

It is.

We're right here on the very summit of Mount Washington.

I'd say a stone's throw away from the summit, but the wind today would probably take that stone, and fling it far, far to the east.

But we're very close to the true geographical summit.

All right.

Okay.

Now, Peter, you've been here about 20 years.

Yes, I've worked for the observatory 20 years, you know, originally as a weather observer.

And now I serve as the curator of our library and historical collection.

Which is down below?

It's at our Weather Discovery Center in North Conway.

And you come up here with seminars and that sort of thing and sort them out.

Yes.

That's great.

And distinguished visitors as well.

Yes.

We'll let you know if we see any.

Now, I understand that this last week we had a real setback at the observatory.

I think you can say that.

For years, in fact, since 1932.

Yeah, we've held the title of having the world record wind, clocked here at Mount Washington was measured by observatory staff back in April of 1932.

You know, and sad to say last week, there was an official announcement from the World Meteorological Organization.

Now, previously, that world record was 231 miles an hour.

Not too shabby.

Which was a very, very strong, And just this last week, the announcement was made that in 1996, there was a storm, Typhoon Olivia, that hit Barrow Island, Australia.

Where's that?

Northwest off the northwest corner.

Yeah, if you will, of that, island continent.

And according to the instrument record, which was reviewed by other, meteorologists, August of 253 miles an hour took place in that storm.

It's amazing.

So, as you might guess, where somewhat disappointed, in part from our scientific curiosity, we're taking a close look at all the documentation related to that.

But, gosh, it's it's a shame to have an announcement like that made.

Well, it's a bit of a heartbreak.

It's all right.

We'll get it back.

We still consider ourselves the home of the world's worst weather, though.

And a day like today.

Yeah, it's a pretty fair title.

I think we're earning our earning our our title.

It's the temperature last I look was about 19 degrees below zero.

You know, winds gusting to about 80mph.

You know, visibility is limited in fog and blowing snow.

And I don't think they get weather like this on Barrow Island, Australia.

No, I doubt it.

Just the wind.

That's it.

♪ Now in 34, when this big wind occurred this was measured, I think you told me with a with, like a metronome.

Click click click.

We did have a custom built anemometer.

It was located on top of the observatory building as it was at the time.

However, the nature of the, the chart record from that anemometer is that it, gave several minutes of wind information and to get the individual gust we had one of our trained observers, Sal Palooka was his name.

And he was listening to the audible clicks that the anemometer mechanism gave off.

Yep.

And he used a Nardin chronometer, a stopwatch to measure those clicks, and he got three clicks in 1.17 seconds, and he pulled out his slide rule and got out his calibration curve and realized that that had been 231mph.

That's great.

Now, nowadays, I expect they do it what, by telemetry?

That, for instance, the Australian wind was at a unstaffed station using all of course, a typical three cup anemometer, but a lot of electronics involved in that.

Yeah.

Very different compared to what was here in the 1930s, but similar, somewhat similar to what we have here now, although because of the heavy icing that we have here, we do use what's called a pitot anemometer or a pitot static anemometer, which is similar to aviation equipment.

It's the one that sticks out from the front of the airplane.

Exactly.

And that is custom built for use here on the mountain.

It has heaters built in, so it keeps the ice from forming and, giving faulty readings in the anemometer.

That's great.

Well, today is pretty brisk.

What?

It is 80 miles an hour, 20 below.

Yeah, that's cold enough.

I will say, I will say.

We should go take a walk or something outside.

Or go for a walk inside.

We'll take the sandwiches and some hot chocolate.

Maybe we won't.

No day for a picnic today.

If you slip, you could end up in North Conway, right?

But you probably wouldn't be very comfortable by the time you landed.

All right.

Thank you.

It's such a beautiful place to be.

♪ We're still in the weather room now.

And I'm talking with Brian Clark, who's from central Pennsylvania.

Brian, why in the world would you come here from central Pennsylvania?

The way I ended up here is pretty interesting, actually.

I came here to ski Tuckerman Ravine.

And I'd never been to New England before.

This was 2005, and I, I skied Tuckerman Ravine and just loved the place.

I mean, it's such a beautiful area and kind of fell in love with the area.

Ended up, becoming an intern here at the observatory.

That's how I ended up here.

Were you majoring in meteorology in college?

I was.

Oh, that'll do it.

Yes.

Sure.

All right, so you're here now.

What's your official position?

Well, I'm one of the weather observers.

My degree is in meteorology.

I specialize in, helping out with our educational mission.

So, I do tours, I talk to media, I also, I also help with our distance learning program, where we can connect with schools across the country or the world through the internet and video conferencing, which is pretty neat.

In addition to that, I'm also the shift leader on this shift, so I'm kind of in charge of the people on the mountain when I'm here.

So you're the outside guy this afternoon, right?

That's right.

Taking weather observations this afternoon.

You're going to go out in a few minutes and take a weather observation.

It's about that time of the day to to be, taking the weather or time of the hour, I should say, to take a weather observation.

And I think I may try to go with you.

Yeah, let's do it.

If you can discern at any point that I'm not up to it.

Just hit me beside the ear and I'll come back inside.

I think you can handle it.

Now, what are we going to observe out there once we get there?

Well, we go outside every hour of every day.

No matter what.

Some days in the summer, it can be 60 and sunny and calm.

Or, like, right now, it's 20 below zero and blowing 70 or 80.

But we do the same thing.

We go out and check things like visibility, temperature, cloud cover.

We see whether any precipitation is falling, and some other things as well.

(Wind blowing) We're on top of a mountain, which is not exactly where anybody else lives.

But why is what you're doing here important?

That's a great question.

We get it all the time.

Mount Washington is a very unique place.

Not just in our country, but in the world.

The weather that we see here isn't really found in many places across the world.

So first of all, we want to be here to document it.

We want to be here to see what the weather is doing.

Beyond that, we have a very consistent, very long term climate record.

And that's important in the study of how climate is changing.

On top of all that, our hourly weather observations are submitted to the National Weather Service and through them there, that data is fed into the forecasting models that meteorologists and weather forecasters use, across the country to forecast our weather.

And we're sort of like a weather balloon sitting at 6288ft, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, giving elevated, data in the atmosphere to those weather models.

Now I live west of here.

So what good does your observation do me?

I've already had it by the time the weather gets here, right?

Well, again, it's still it's still valuable because, the forecasters that forecast the weather for you west of here.

They use those weather models that use our data.

So, again, it all comes back to the fact that our observations are very important for those weather models.

But we're especially important because we're at that elevated state.

So the feed your data into a computer program which gives us some idea of what we're going to get.

You have to have good weather observations.

They have to have a starting point to be able to figure out what the weather was going to do in the future.

Well, it hasn't been so hot the last few days.

Quite cold, in fact.

Well, let's go look at it.

Yeah.

Let's go.

All right.

♪ Okay, now we got to get ready to do this.

My nose is sticking out I know, but if worst comes to worst I can do that, which is terrific, except that makes my glasses fog up and we'll zip this up and we're just about ready to go.

♪ What are you observing right here?

This guys a micrometer used to determine the amount of moisture in the air.

We only really do this when it's clear.

So it's kind of right on the border right now.

We would go out and stand in the shade and and twirl this around like this.

And while I'm doing that, water is evaporating off the wet wick and cooling that thermometer.

It will continue to cool until it's reached an equilibrium with the amount of moisture contained in the air.

And then you have a dry bulb and wet bulb temperature, and you can get a relative humidity and a dew point from that.

You don't see it used very often anymore, but we've been using this in one device in one way or another for the last 78 years.

Almost.

We're kind of going in and out of the clouds a little bit.

I want to, you know, get a good look around the horizon to see what's going on.

So, I mean, I guess I'll go take care of that now.

Safe for me out there you think?

I doubt it.

It's up to you.

You can watch how it affects me as I go across and see what you think.

(Wind howling) ♪ That's a stiff breeze.

What did you find?

That we're going in and out.

Tough observation to do with this kind of stuff.

Because it's kind of changing so fast.

Just got to pick a point when you take your observation and have that be it.

(Wind blowing) ♪ The Observatory, of course, sends down daily weather reports from the top of the mountain.

We all hear them on the radio from time to time.

They originate up there.

They're recorded up there, and they usually foretell pretty well the weather that's coming down below.

It's a little bit cold, a little bit windy, but, a little warmer than yesterday.

You know, right now we've warmed up to about ten below.

It was 20 below yesterday.

We'll see a slight warming trend, but still hovering around zero for most of the time.

If not below zero, winds will be decreasing a little bit, you know, down to 40 to 50 today and then decreasing further to 25 to 35mph.

But still, wind chills are going to be pretty cold.

There's a wind chill warning in effect until noon today.

And then they'll turn into an advisory, for tomorrow.

♪ This room is famous.

It's the one we see on TV all the time The history of observing weather, formal observations actually goes back to 1870 and 71, when there was a private expedition here, you know, led by Joshua Huntington and Charles Hitchcock.

Huntington Ravine.

Exactly.

And there's also Mount Hitchcock and they were assisted by the U.S. Army Signal Service, which in 1871 picked up the baton and had weather observations on Mount Washington until 1892.

There was a gap.

And then in 1932, Joe Dodge and several others started today's Mount Washington Observatory.

And we were in some different buildings over the years, we came to this building, which is actually a building that's owned by Mount Washington State Park.

We've been here since 1980.

We leased space from our partners at the state park.

And this is where we have our base for weather observations, for other scientific work.

Air quality monitoring, and educational activities.

(Wind blowing) Peter Crane and Steve, the videographer, went out out on the veranda, you might call it, to film the sunset.

It was incredible.

A beautiful, blazing red ball.

You wouldn't get a better sunset in Arizona.

Just gorgeous.

Except that it was really cold.

Steve had to hide behind the Yankee building to get out of the wind.

Otherwise you would have been blown off the mountain.

But we got a beautiful sunset out of it.

♪ After nightfall, everybody sat down around the table just off the kitchen for a big meal.

And we went to sleep later with the winds howling around the building.

You can't really hear them as loud as they are, because the bunk room and the kitchen are sort of semi subterranean.

You're down inside the mountain, but if you listen carefully, you can hear that wind moaning around the building all night long.

And you remember that one of those guys up in the observatory has to go outside every hour to get a visual of the weather conditions, and it's really cold and windy out there when he goes out.

There's always a weather observer on duty 24 hours a day up there.

♪ Next morning, the sunrise was just about as spectacular as a sunset.

We were up in the clouds sort of and the sun was trying to peek through them from the east.

It was sort of another big red ball just coming through the clouds and way off yonder you could see sort of a pewter shimmer with the Atlantic Ocean.

Spectacular view.

And every morning, of course, the observers have to clear away the snow that blew into the doorway during the night.

♪ Well I won't need that today, I hope.

I'm just packing up to go back down the mountain.

When the snow cat gets here in a little while, we'll be off back down the auto road to civilization and be leaving this place here at the top of Mount Washington.

Now yesterday, defined for me the meaning of cold weather.

It was about 40 below up here and blowing about 50, 60 miles an hour.

That was pretty brisk.

Whereas this morning it's only about ten below and blowing about 40, 50.

Practically swimming weather isn't it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed your visit to the roof in New Hampshire as much as I have.

I'm Willem Lange, and I'll see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪