The Mount Washington Observatory
Near Mount Washington Valley, New Hampshire
On the summit of Mount Washington sits one of the most extreme scientific outposts in the world, the Mount Washington Observatory. It was founded in nineteen thirty-two, when a small group determined to rebuild a year-round weather station reoccupied the summit that October. Among the founders were Joseph Dodge, Robert Monahan, and Salvatore Pagliuca and Alexander McKenzie, two of the same men who would soon witness the record wind of nineteen thirty-four.
Since that first winter, human observers have kept watch here continuously, building one of the longest high-altitude weather and climate records on the planet. The main summit building today, named for Sherman Adams, opened around nineteen eighty and was engineered to survive winds far beyond the record gust. That is not overcaution.
Because hurricane-force gusts strike about one hundred ten days a year, the smaller structures near the summit are physically chained to the bedrock to keep the wind from tearing them off the mountain. Those tie-down chains stretched over the rooftops are a long tradition on this summit. The observatory runs a museum for visitors, but its real work never stops.
Around the clock, in weather that would kill an unprepared person in minutes, someone is up here reading the instruments and stepping outside into the wind.
