Mount Washington Helps Create Spectacular "Mothership" Cloud

Colby Morris took this photo of a spectacular lenticular
cloud over Mount Washington, New Hampshire Tuesday.

There's a photo floating around social media these days of what looks like a mothership about to grab New Hampshire's Mount Washington and take it to, I don't know, it's home planet light years away. 

For once, the photo is not AI. It's the real deal, showing a spectacular lenticular cloud over New England's highest peak.  You can see the photo in this post. 

Feel free to click on it to make it bigger and easier to see. 

The photo was taken by Colby Morris, a Mesonet and Information Systems Technician, who spotted the cloud at around 8 a.m. Tuesday while he was on his way to Crawford Notch. The observatory posted the photo on their Facebook page. 

Many people who saw the photo on Facebook had the same reaction I did. Here are some of the comments:

"Show us on the doll where the aliens touched you."

"That's clearly a cloud obstructing an alien landing on the summit. We saw the exact same thing in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'

"Beam me up, Scotty."

"Is this the portal back to reality? You know the dimension where humans actually act like human beings? Pretty please??!"

Unfortunately, the cloud is not that portal back to reality. We're stuck in our Earthly madness. 

Mount Washington Observatory photographed the 
same cloud a bit earlier than Morris did, at sunrise
yesterday The bottom of that lenticular cloud is
on the left with the sun illuminating a ring at 
the bottom of the cloud. 

What hovered over Mount Washington is a lenticular cloud, which are actually kind of common near mountains. This one was just  much larger, uniquely shaped and more spectacular than most.  

 As the Mount Washington Observatory explains:

"They usually form when a relatively strong flow of stable air flows into a barrier, most commonly a mountain range, and is forced upward. As the air ascents, it expands and cools. If the air has sufficient moisture, this cooling may be enough to cause condensation to occur, and therefore generate clouds. 

Because the air is stable, however, it will resist this vertical motion and seek to descent to its former level. As it descends, it will contract and warm, causing the newly formed cloud to evaporate. What is unique about these clouds is that they are very dynamic, and while each individual air parcel is undergoing the cycle of cooling and condensing and warming and evaporating, visually, the cloud appears to be standing still."

The edges of the clouds look smooth because the strong winds associated with them sculpt the cloud. That smooth appearance is why the clouds have that "lenticular" name. 

This type of cloud appears here in Vermont and elsewhere in northern New England a few times a year. They can form any time there is some sort of mountain range in the vicinity and the atmospheric conditions are right. 

The atmosphere around Mount Washington Tuesday was conducive to a particularly wild standing wave cloud.  

Lenticular clouds are not dangerous to those of us on the ground. We're not going to be sucked up into an alien spaceship. But they are dangerous to aircraft. They're a sign of severe, risky turbulence. When pilots seen these clouds, they try to avoid the area.  

Incredible Arctic Blast Blessedly Almost Over In Vermont

One of many large steam devils on Lake Champlain
Friday amid subzero, windy, awful conditions.

 This has easily been one of the coldest 24-hour periods in a long time. Especially yesterday afternoon and evening. t 

Thank goodness it's almost over. 

The most remarkable part of this was how cold it was during the afternoon and evening yesterday.  In the late afternoon, when temperatures should be peaking for the day, actual temperatures were in the teens to low 20s below across much of Vermont. 

Wind chills were in the 30s and 40s below region wide, with a few spots in the low 50s below.

After spending a short time freezing my fingers with video shots of the terrible conditions out there, I spend the afternoon in my St. Albans, Vermont home office, space heater switched on to max. (Resulting video from when I almost froze my fingers is at the bottom of this post)

From my perch in the office, I watched an endless parade of steam devils on Lake Champlain in the distance.  Until almost dusk, that is, when it appeared the northern end of the lake was rapidly freezing over. 

I noticed the national media had its attention on Vermont yesterday. WCAX-TV reporter Melissa Cooney provided updates to CNN Friday morning from Burlington's icy waterfront. She seemed in remarkably good cheer, given the conditions out there.  

In the weather set up we've had, with strong blasts of northwest winds, the mountain tops tend to be coldest. And windiest. The summit of Mount Mansfield has spent several hours at least in the minus 30s. It looks like the wind gauge isn't working up there, though. 

On top of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, it was unimaginably brutal. At one point last night, the actual temperature up there was 46 below, with a wind of 96 mph gusting to 127 mph. That created a wind chill of 108 below!

That 108 below is believed to be the lowest wind chill on record for anywhere in the United States. 

Back down here in the low lands, the temperature only cooled off a few more degrees from last evening. That's because the core of the cold air - the Polar Vortex - was already starting to head off to the north and east before dawn today.

That's not to say it wasn't gawd awful bad out there this morning. Everyone in the valleys was in the mid teens to mid 20s below zero, in line with forecasts that been in place for days. It felt much better than yesterday, though, when I headed out, because the wind wasn't blowing so much. 

  We probably won't set any record lows in Vermont, though. The record low in Burlington today is 26 below, and the temperature had been hovering at 15 below for a few hours there as of 6 a.m.  Montpelier's record low today is 21 below, and they were around 13 below early this morning. And St. Johnsbury? Fughettabout! Their  record low on today's date is 32 below, and they were at least ten degrees warmer than that just before dawn today. 

However, record lows were set in southern New England, including at Boston, Providence and Worcester. Boston's low of 10 below is the coldest that city has experienced since 1957.

The fact  that our Polar Vortex is on its way out means - onward and upward!!

Temperatures got to work rising soon after the sun came up.  The wind is still stiff, but lighter than it was yesterday. The wind will continue to diminish. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington will very likely allow the wind chill warning to expire at 1 p.m. today.

By mid to late afternoon, almost everybody in Vermont will see temperatures above zero. Barely above, but above nonetheless.

Overnight tonight, temperatures will actually rise, not fall, and should be in the upper single numbers and teens above zero by dawn.  However, especially in the Champlain Valley, it will "warm up cold" as strong south winds add a wind chill bite to the air during the morning. 

However, by mid to late afternoon, many of us will hear the drip, drip, drip of water from the icicles hanging from the eaves of our houses. Yes, most of the warmer valleys will actually above freezing.

The Great, Brief Cold Shot of '23 will be over.

Video. Scenes of the Friday's insane chill around Burlington and South Burlington. Mostly of the steaming Lake Champlain, but other shots of people who did not look happy with the chill

Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, you can click on that to watch as well:

Cold Snap Is Here, Thankfully Summer Returns In Just A Few Days

Photo from New Hampshire's Mount Washington 
Observatory shows rime ice forming this morning atop
the mountain, where it was 28 degrees at dawn. 

The last and strongest of series of cold fronts blasted through Vermont overnight with a gush of strong north winds and ever so brief downpours. Welcome now to October in June.  

Or maybe January if you're way up high.  When you get these weird bowling balls of chilly air coming down from the North Pole this time of year, it tends to stay warmish in the valleys, but the mountains cool off fast. 

And they did.

What a lovely morning to report from atop Mount Washington. As of early this morning, the temperature there was 28 degrees with dense fog as they're in the clouds. Rime ice is forming up there.  The wind on Mount Washington was northwest at 62 mph, yielding a wind chill of 8 above.

I looked at the Whiteface Mountain, New York webcam   at an elevation of about 4,800 feet and of course all I could see was dense fog. They're in the clouds. I couldn't tell if that was ice or water on the camera lens. 

It wasn't quite so bad atop Vermont's Mount Mansfield, and so far at least, it appears to be too warm for snow up there.   At last check this morning, it was 39 degrees up there with a northwest wind gusting to 55 mph. 

As advertised, today is not a great day for a hike.'

Even in the lowlands. We're starting the day with temperatures that actually aren't that unusual for this time of year. Most of us were in the upper 40s to low 50s as dawn broke.

Trouble is, temperatures just won't rise much by afternoon. Especially in northern Vermont, which has a higher chance of rain today.

Most of the area north of Route 2 will rain lightly most of the day, with a stiff northwest wind holding temperatures in the low 50s..We're still actually looking at "high" temperatures in the 40s in parts of the Northeast Kingdom.

With such low temperatures today, we're lucky skies will remain partly to mostly cloudy tonight and a breeze will continue. That will prevent anyone from getting a late season frost.

We in northern New England can consider ourselves the odd man out, given how many places are having record breaking heat waves.

France, Germany and other western European nations are expecting the hottest temperatures for so early in the season over this weekend.  France already logged temperatures as high as 104 degrees Friday, which for them is the earliest recorded.

The hot dry weather has already helped set forests ablaze in Spain and Germany.

Heat is also building once again in the middle of the United States. Head advisories and warnings are in effect for places as far north as the Canadian border in North Dakota. 

Even the normally sultry South is expecting worse heat than normal, with heat advisories from Louisiana to Florida. Orlando, Florida could hit 100 degrees for the first time in several years today.  It's as bad a day to visit Disney as it is for a hike in Vermont.

Places like Mississippi and Alabama are expecting highs in the 95 to 100 degree range daily for at least a week.

That heat dome in the middle of the nation will actually help free us from the current autumn in summer weekend.  It'll wobble a little east, and the overall jet stream pattern will flatten.  That will allow warmer air to sneak in from the west as the week goes on.

Thankfully, the bulk of the heat will stay well to our west. It'll gradually warm up, and from Wednesday onward into next weekend, we should see highs temperatures in the low 80s, which would actually be a wee bit warmer than normal for late June. Won't that be nice?