Advertisement

WATCH: Weather observers battle 175 km/h wind gusts on top of Mount Washington

Click to play video: '100+ MPH winds nearly blow man over atop Mount Washington observatory'
100+ MPH winds nearly blow man over atop Mount Washington observatory
100+ MPH winds nearly blow man over atop Mount Washington observatory – May 18, 2016

Weather observers stationed at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire took a “brief break” earlier this week to “enjoy” wintry conditions that saw winds top out at 175 kilometres an hour.

The observatory released a video Monday showing weather observers Mike Dorfman and Tom Padham battling insane winds that nearly lifted them off their feet.

The video shows Dorfman on the snow-covered summit being lifted by the wind and blown backwards, sending the man rolling on the ground.

“Wind on the summit is an experience that you can’t just describe to understand,” Dorfman said in a blog post accompanying the video. “It makes you fully appreciate that air is in fact a fluid and not empty space.

“It is really impossible to safely face down hundred-mile-per-hour winds almost anywhere else; you’d either be risking your life trying to hike into them (I was exhausted after several minutes of playing in the wind) or risking your life in a hurricane, where flying debris and shrapnel poses a huge threat,” Dorfman wrote.

Story continues below advertisement

Mount Washington is the highest point in the northeastern United States, topping out at 6,288 feet above sea level. The weather station is operated by two rotating crews who live on the summit a week at a time taking hourly weather observations.

Sponsored content

AdChoices