Extreme Weather Brought to Mount Washington Museum

Driving rain, freezing temperatures and bone chilling wind. That's the sort of extreme weather you'll find inside Mount Washington Observatory's interactive museum.

The museum, which opened June 13 in North Conway, features exhibits designed to essentially drop you on top of Mount Washington. Visitors experience the hurricane winds, icy spikes, and thick fog of the 6,288-foot-high summit in an interactive way. They can even operate a Sno-Cat simulator, learn about frostbite, and see taxidermy specimens of the species that manage to survive such harsh conditions.

"Extreme Mount Washington will give summer visitors a taste of what we experience in winter," Scot Henley, Executive Director of Mount Washington Observatory, said in a past press release. "Mount Washington is known around the world for being one of the planet's most severe places, and this new museum experience will take a good look at the science behind the extremes."

According to The Boston Globe, the mountain's 300,000 annual summer visitors are usually disappointed at the lack of extreme weather they experience, not to mention that their views are typically blanketed by fog.

Designed by Jeff Kennedy Associates Inc. of Somerville, Mass., with exhibits developed and constructed by Mystic Scenic Studios of Norwood, Mass., the exhibit trades this "passive walkthrough experience" for a fun, interactive one.

As Mike Carmon, the observatory's meteorologist eloquently puts it, "It's cool because it's dangerous, and it's dangerous because it's cool."

The observatory also captures the difficult day-to-day duties of the weather observers who live at the summit year-round. Tasks include climbing the instrument tower to chip away accumulating ice and conducting precipitation measures with high winds (wind speeds reached a record 231 mph back in 1934).

Even in warm months, visitors have to be aware that the weather can change at any moment. That may be one reason why since 1849, 140 people have died there. Extreme Mount Washington even features testimonies of rescuers who responded to accidents.

"We do try to treat it with respect," Henley noted. "We're not making a circus out of it. We're trying to show how brutal it is."

The observatory is a private nonprofit, and the $1 million it raised for Extreme Mount Washington came from private sources, Henley said.