It might have the world’s worst weather but Mount Washington now has some of the best observed, with five new remote weather monitoring stations going online along the Cog Railway and many more to come.

The new stations on the mountain’s west side that were turned on Thursday, join stations that have long operated on the east side near the Mount Washington Auto Road. They are the start of an expansion of the Mount Washington Regional Mesonet, a network of interlinked weather-monitoring stations that track what’s happening in the air – temperature, moisture, sunlight, wind speed – as well as in the soil.

Each unit is basically a tripod with a battery and solar panels to keep the instruments running that can be moved as needed. Their data is sent to mountwashington.org via radio links and now available live on the website’s Current Summit Conditions page, a go-to resource for hikers and other people heading into the mountains.

The 11 original stations in the Mesonet will be modernized along with two dozen new ones to be installed, with future plans to create a statewide monitoring network.

The expansion will not only give a minute-by-minute picture of what’s happening on each side of Mount Washington – the weather can be quite different on the windward vs. leeward side of the region’s highest peak – but allow better understanding of the flow of weather systems through the mountain’s complex terrain, providing increased resolution and coverage across the entire mountain.

Jay Broccolo, Mount Washington Observatory Director of Weather Operations, said the project could have application to other mountain ranges in the Northeast: “The data would be useful from an elevation standpoint to have direct measurements of atmospheric conditions within storms and to get a vertical understanding rather than a horizontal, map view perspective.”  

The work is funded by the Northern Border Regional Commission, the Cog Railway, and support from New Hampshire’s congressional delegation, and the New Hampshire Department of  Business and Economic Affairs.