Mount Washington, New Hampshire is known to be one of the windiest places on earth.
The mountain holds the highest wind speed ever recorded when a 231mph gust was documented on April 12th, 1934.
A brutally cold arctic front is sweeping across the northeast as we speak, and temps are expected to absolutely plummet at Mount Washington.
The Mount Washington Observatory (MWOBS) is forecasting air temps to reach -40 degrees Fahrenheit this evening with 80-100mph sustained winds bringing the wind chill to -100 degrees and colder…!
Here’s the full forecast MWOBS posted to Facebook last night:
“Weather Observers Francis Tarasiewicz and Alexis George are tracking an exceptionally cold air mass that is expected to impact the higher summits starting Thursday night and continuing through the day on Saturday.
Temperatures on Friday will start around 25F below, then fall throughout the day to around 40F below at sunset. Winds will start off in the 60-80 mph range on Friday, increase to 80-100 during the afternoon, elevate further Friday night, and peak early Saturday morning with gusts in the 130-140 mph range.
In these conditions, even a small mistake in the mountains could prove deadly. None of the buildings in the higher summits will be open to the public. It will be very difficult for rescue services to respond.“
The National Weather Service has created a chart showing how quickly exposed skin can develop frostbite depending on the temperature and wind speed.
The chart, embedded below, shows that frostbite can happen in less than 5 minutes at the temps expected on Mount Washington today.
In fact, the chart maxes out at 60mph. It’s safe to assume that with sustained winds hovering 100mph, frostbite would occur even quicker than 5 mins.
The webcams on Mount Washington are currently obstructed by dense clouds and lightly-falling snow.
With that said, the images captured this morning look like the surface of Antarctica, not New Hampshire.
Check out what we screenshotted around 8:45AM EST on 2/3/23:
To those brave souls living in the Mount Washington Observatory- please, for the love of god, stay inside!!!
Stay tuned here at Unofficial Networks for all news related to the record-cold at Mount Washington today.
We’ll update this post as more information is released.
All Images Credit: Mount Washington Observatory