What's with all the wind? These pros know
Apr. 5—In a world of wild and whipsawing weather, Francis Tarasiewicz is a professional wind watcher. It's an all-consuming passion on New Hampshire's tallest peak.
As a weather observer and educator at Mount Washington Observatory, Tarasiewicz uses an array of instruments and all his senses to test, tally and track gusts, lulls, updrafts and downdrafts, and hurricane-force blows.
He is one of a battalion of meteorologists and atmospheric scientists stationed at strategically plotted locations who keep a lookout for imminent changes and spot emerging trends. Wind is part of the puzzle.
With potential symptoms of climate change surrounding us, casual observers at ground level wonder, "What's up with all the wind?"
It's one of the first things that Mount Washington's visitors notice.
On the summit at 6,288 feet, high winds roar like a freight train or a roller coaster. They moan or scream as they pass through a sequence of towers on their path to the lonely summit, the most topographically prominent peak east of the Mississippi River.
Tarasiewicz likens the wind's music to a horror movie soundtrack.
"I like to make a personal comparison to 'The Shining.' It commands all your attention, all of your senses. In these high-wind events, my ears pop with every gust that passes by. It can scare you out of your chair."
At Mount Washington, "Home of the World's Wildest Weather," extremes are expected, and the unexpected comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than a day there.
Researchers marvel at its rapidly changing conditions and record-defying winds.
"When we have a lull we get nervous and say, 'OK, what's coming?'" said Jay Broccolo, the observatory's weather operations director.
Atmospheric scientists call this place "Little Antarctica" — and not just for its plunging temperatures, which can rival the Canadian Arctic. They are wowed by the speed of the wind — a product of Mount Washington's unique position on the continent with the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Great Plains and Canada to the west and north.
"Sometimes we're the only visible summit for a hundred miles," Tarasiewicz said.
At roughly one-fifth the height of Mount Everest, and a third of the size of the tallest of the Rocky Mountains, Mount Washington is hardly a king of altitude. But it is a king of attitude.
In Antarctica, considered the windiest place on earth, speeds of 150 mph occur regularly. At Mount Washington during the winter, gusts of 100 mph or higher happen every four days or so, Tarasiewicz said.
During high-speed howlers, the observatory's steel-reinforced walls — up to 2 feet thick — pop and creak, and the ceiling tiles shudder.
Annals of air
One day looms large in Mount Washington's annals of air: April 12, 1934, known as the Big Wind, when the summit experienced its strongest gust on record: 231 mph. Friday is the Big Wind's 90th anniversary.
Why all the bluster?
"The location of Mount Washington and the specific geological formation make it an epicenter for wind events," said Rachel Slade, a Boston-based author who writes about the earth's patterns and idiosyncrasies, including the Big Wind. "I think it was one of those perfect-storm situations."
According to the observatory's records, low pressure from the southwest clashed with high pressure to the northeast, and the stark difference in pressure created the intense wind.
"You've got an upper atmosphere limit, almost a ceiling. When the winds hit Mount Washington then run up, there's a compression moment. That's what makes this incredible wind," Slade said. "It's an intense environment. It's like a slice of Antarctica at our doorstep."
Wind has fascinated humans and propelled their activities since the dawn of civilization. With shifting weather patterns around the globe, it's part of what we instantly notice, more so than subtle changes in air and ocean temperatures or the amount and timing of precipitation.
"Consistently, most people overestimate the wind," said Broccolo, an atmospheric scientist by training.
Wind vs. Rockpile
On Mount Washington, high speeds have always been high-profile. On a recent day, the summit wind speed hovered at 68 mph, gusting to 80, with peaks predicted to reach 110 mph after dark.
Think of those winds as a bowling ball hurtling down a lane that is hundreds of miles long, unimpeded, gaining force, before banging into Mount Washington.
Tarasiewicz's job includes forecasting weather conditions for New Hampshire's altitudes above 4,000 feet. Keeping the outside instruments — including three anemometers mounted on a tower — ice-free and functioning in the observatory's extreme environment is a critical mission.
Tarasiewicz climbs a ladder in high winds. Sometimes, when he walks across the summit deck, the gusts will blow his closed eyelids open. When the wind inflates the hood on his jacket, "it feels like a miniature sail," he said.
At such times, "The passion for the conditions you're in overrides everything else," including any latent fear of heights. "Sometimes it's the calmer days that get me more, when you're thinking about how high up you are."
Inside, four monitors on his desk display radar and satellite images and computer models that Tarasiewicz uses to make predictions for New Hampshire's highest mountains, providing critical information for tourists, skiers, hikers and small planes.
"Sometimes the isolation can be a little like space, I imagine. For me, it feels like an island at the summit in a sea of clouds above and beneath."
Tarasiewicz spends six days at home in Manchester, followed by eight days on the mountain.
Meteorological mothership
For connoisseurs of wind and extreme weather, Mount Washington is the meteorological mothership and window on the world above.
"We're at the layer where air masses are moving on their own," Tarasiewicz said. The summit sits above an atmospheric boundary, where air masses are coming from all over the world. "You can think of us as a weather balloon that's floating in place, 24/7, 365. Our observatory tells the story of New England's weather from a different perspective."
December and January usually produce the highest average winds. But March and April are "our worst months" when seasonal storms deliver a triple whammy of high precipitation, high winds and ice formation, said Broccolo, the weather operations director. When it's spring and mud season at ground level, "it's definitely still winter up there."
February, March and April tend to be the windiest months across the U.S., including in northern New England, according to the National Weather Service.
On Mount Washington, high gusts come in pulses, and some of the strongest "big bangers" arrive in March.
So far this year, the top of Mount Washington clocked 147 mph on Feb. 29 and 150 mph on March 11.
During a snowstorm on March 23, winds between 45 and 70 mph gusted above 80 mph, and 8 inches of snow fell in six hours, Tarasiewcz said.
On March 19, a gust blew over a small plane at Portland Jetport in Maine. There, the day's highest wind speed measured 35 mph, according to the weather service.
Days of wind and rises
"People will say it seems windier" these days, said Chris Legro, a weather service forecaster based in Gray, Maine, but, "This also happens to be the windiest time of year."
In New England in spring, cold air originating in Canada and polar regions bumps into warm air coming up from the equator and states to our south.
The sun is getting stronger, Legro said, heating the ground and the air, while cold air left over from winter is parked or moving at upper levels. As the warm air rises, the colder air drops, bringing winds to the surface.
And this time of year, trees are barren of leaves, which means less friction to slow the wind.
Strong winds occur when there's a steep difference between low and high pressure systems that are close together, and the resulting speeds can be striking.
Concord recorded 72 mph in November 1950. Manchester registered 73 mph in December 2020.
"Cold fronts coming through lead to the breezy, westerly wind gust days that we see more of," Legro said.
He said the weather service has not observed long-term changes in average wind speed, though some years have peak gusts that poke through the lines on a forecaster's chart. Seasonal patterns for average wind speed, however, tend to be long-standing.
In Concord, with some of the state's longest-compiled records, the average wind speed in March is 8 mph — compared to about 5 mph in August, the least-windy month across the U.S.
Portsmouth, buffeted by ocean breezes and storm fronts, has average speeds of 9.1 mph in March compared to 6.1 mph in August, according to weather service data.
Amid rain, sleet, hail, unseasonable temperatures and humidity that feels like a steam bath in summer, why should ground dwellers pay attention to the wind?
Wind can be a sign of changing weather and strong storms approaching, Tarasiewicz said.
"Wind can be damaging. That's the long and short of it. For every doubling of wind speed, the force of it increases by four times" on objects like buildings and trees.
For those times when it's tame on top of Mount Washington, observatory meteorologists have a fleet of kites.
"I haven't flown one myself, but a solid 20 mph wind would be perfect," Tarasiewicz said.
