Observatory crew back on Mount Washington

MOUNT WASHINGTON, N.H. – After a fire knocked out power, Derek Brown spent most of his first night back at the Mount Washington Observatory conducting weather readings by candlelight.

It got better by the end of his shift Monday; he got some electricity back.

“We still have to call our observations in to the National Weather Service on our cell phones,” Brown said, “but at least we have some electricity up here and things are slowly looking up. We hope to have phone and Internet back sometime soon.”

Brown was part of a four-person observatory crew that made an 8-mile snow tractor trek Monday to the tallest mountain in the Northeast, known for its brutal weather. A fire had forced them to evacuate Sunday, destroying the generator building and a smaller backup building.

The observatory said heat and some power were restored Monday afternoon, with the help of a portable generator. State officials planned to take a second backup generator up to the 6,288-foot summit on Tuesday.

“You couldn’t see. The wind was blowing about 50 mph and it was quite cold,” said Pete Poulsen, an investigator with the state fire marshal’s office. “We walked around and examined the buildings.”

The cause of the fire was not known.

Summit weather forecasts for the end of the week call for increasing winds and low temperatures and the observatory crew will be working with state officials on maintaining a stable power situation on the mountain to last through the rest of winter.

The temperature atop Mount Washington was 7 below zero Tuesday afternoon and the wind blew at 28 mph. That was up from 23 below with the wind blowing at 64 mph Tuesday morning.