When writing about bad weather in New England, my colleague Jess Bidgood and I — who both work in The Times’s Boston bureau — routinely check in with the meteorologists at the observatory atop Mount Washington, the highest point in the Northeast, known chiefly for bad weather in extremis.
But even our eyes popped on Thursday night when we learned the weekend forecast for the peak, part of the White Mountains in New Hampshire: wind chill from minus 90 to minus 100 (that’s not a typo).
With wind chill so astonishingly low, at a time when half the country was locked in a deep arctic freeze, Mount Washington was likely to be the coldest place in the lower 48.
We sent word to our editors in New York, who instantly decided they wanted us to head for the summit and tell them what minus 100 degrees actually feels like. As Marc Lacey, the national editor, described the assignment: “Make me shiver.”
By dawn, we had rented a Ford Expedition, our own cars having been snowed in. We stocked it with granola bars, water, tissues, Vaseline (to prevent chapped lips) and pencils (pens don’t work in the cold), and headed north.
Continue reading the main storyFriends who knew of our plans thought we were nuts. “This sounds like a parody of a newspaper assignment,” said one. “Can’t you write this from the basement in your pajamas?” texted another.
If only.
We were both outfitted in the standard winter garb of New Englanders: multiple layers, boots, ski pants, mittens (warmer than gloves), neck warmers and puffy coats with windproof hoods. Winter sports enthusiasts will note one item missing, which we did not fully appreciate until it was too late. (More on that in a minute.)
The drive took more than four hours, with visibility decreasing as we inched our way over freshly snow-covered roads through the White Mountain National Forest. In the wind-whipped snow and fog, it was impossible to make out the gargantuan rock faces that we knew from previous trips were right in front of us.
By noon, we had not yet arrived, but our editors wanted a feed — live material from our reporting trip that they could put online right away. So we called up Mike Carmon, senior meteorologist at the mountaintop observatory, and interviewed him over the car’s Bluetooth as I drove and Jess took notes on her laptop.
A bigger task was preparing the editors for the fact that we would not be able to summit Mount Washington, 6,288 treacherous feet above sea level. The only people who get up there after the road closes in October, we learned, are those who, like Mr. Carmon, work at the observatory, and they don’t exactly commute. Transported in a specialized vehicle that looks like a big tank, they stay an entire week before being rotated out for another hardy crew.
But a SnowCoach for tourists does make the trip, at least partway, weather permitting. We were thrilled to hear that — even with winds gusting to 122 miles per hour, beyond hurricane force — the SnowCoach, a spider-like vehicle with triangular treads instead of tires, would be operating.
On this trip, the SnowCoach would reach 3,900 feet. The driver, Dexter Rust, who has been trekking up Mount Washington for almost two decades, said that “howling winds, drifting snow and lack of visibility” would prevent us from going higher.
It was high enough.
We felt the extreme weather the minute we tried opening the doors of the SnowCoach. The wind almost smacked them shut, forcing us to act like football players, leaning in to push them open with our shoulders. Breathing felt dangerous.
Nothing could have prepared us for what lay outside the cozy van: Imagine plunging into a cold lake, then lifting your head out of the water only to have your eyes pelted by a continuous hail of tiny needles. Any moisture on your face freezes almost instantly, coating your eyeballs with a layer of ice that prevents you from blinking. Your eyelashes stick together.
(Note to self: Next time, bring that all-important item we forgot — goggles.)
Communicating was a challenge, too, beyond the occasional “Oh my GOD!” You have to shout to be heard above the wind, but you have nothing intelligent to say. Going through my mind was a recent National Geographic article quoting a doctor who noted that bitterly frigid temperatures can cause mental confusion. Hence the saying, “Cold makes you dumb.”
At that moment, the editors sitting in their warm offices sent a text. They needed another feed.
I lurched like the Michelin Man back into the SnowCoach and dictated some observations over my cellphone to Jack Healy, The Times’s Denver bureau chief. He would spin my utterances into a coherent narrative that could go up online right away, with added reporting by Alan Blinder in Atlanta and John Schwartz in New York.
Meanwhile, Jess continued to experience the joys of icy air blasting her face, which was not entirely wrapped up. She struggled to take notes while wearing mittens, scrawling absurd phrases with barely legible words like “eyes,” “ache,” “legs” and “ice.”
Finally, she slipped off one mitten to take an eight-second video and a selfie. Her fingertips went numb almost immediately. She replaced the mitten, but by then the cold had penetrated her boots and two pairs of socks, leaving her toes numb.
We closed out our adventure wondering if we had really been at the coldest place in the continental United States.
Dan Petersen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, told us on Saturday that, in terms of actual mercury readings, two towns in Minnesota — Cotton and the interestingly named Embarrass — had had readings of minus 39 degrees; Mount Washington’s lowest temperature had been minus 36.
We felt deflated — until he added that, when the wind was factored in, Mount Washington had been colder by far than anywhere else. With sustained winds above 70 miles per hour, the temperature on Mount Washington had plunged to an almost unfathomable minus 92 degrees, just as forecast.
“Chilly willy,” the meteorologist deadpanned.
Aware of a certain regional rivalry when it comes to which part of the country can better withstand hardship, we checked in with folks in Embarrass to see what they thought of the deep chill we had experienced on Mount Washington.
“That’s impressive for that area,” allowed Brielle Wills, a cashier at the Trapline Liquor shop.
“But around here it’s pretty common,” she added. “That would probably be a nice day around here.”
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