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Boston’s wind chill is no match for Mount Washington
The summit’s wind chill reached 49 degrees below zero this week with over 100 mile-per-hour winds.
Most Bostonians dread hearing the words “wind chill” on their morning weather report, especially with the already freezing January temperatures. At the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, however, even the windiest Boston streets feel warm by comparison.
Even for the summit of New England’s tallest mountain, temperatures earlier this week were frigid: The wind chill peaked at 49 degrees below zero Wednesday afternoon at around 4 p.m., according to data from the National Weather Service. Temperatures have steadily risen again since the earlier hours of Thursday morning. By Friday at 11 a.m., the wind chill was back to zero degrees, with an air temperature of 21.2 degrees.
“Wind chill” is defined as “what the air temperature feels like to the human skin due to the combination of cold temperatures and winds blowing on exposed skin,” according to the National Weather Service.
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Sunday was the summit’s coldest day so far this year, when the temperature was 14 degrees below zero, according to the observatory. Even so, wind chill has made the temperatures feel significantly colder. Wind gusts on the summit this week have also reached over 100 miles per hour, reaching 102 miles per hour at about 6 a.m. on Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
Staff at the Mount Washington Observatory keep all areas of their skin covered in insulating and shell layers to stay safe when the wind chill dips, Jay Broccolo, the observatory’s director of weather of operations, said in an interview with The Boston Globe.
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Though the temperatures in Boston don’t present the same dangers as those at the Mount Washington Observatory, they are still well below freezing. With the wind chill included, temperatures have dipped into the single digits, particularly in the early hours of the morning Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
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