Record winds on Grandfather Mountain

[Tstormwatcher]

Here is the story:http://www.wxii12.com/news/6439414/detail.html

[Lowpressure]

Local news here said the gust would not be official due to not using NOAA/NWS approved equipment and the instrument being mounted on the roof. Impressive none the less.

[Extremeweatherguy]

Yeah..we are talking about a Cat. 4/5 strength gust even if it was not 200mph. That is definately crazy stuff! It seems like the whole place up there is completely destroyed...good thing no one lives there...I mean imagine how scary that would be. There would be little to no warning and then all of the sudden...wooosh! a 150-200mph gust!

[VoodooCadillac]

I live about 50 miles from Grandfather.

There's a story that circulates around here that during the 1993 Blizzard - the anemometer was literally blown away (as in "never found again"). Some pretty knowledgable local weather people speculate that Mount Washington's all-time land based wind speed record was probably broken during that storm, but we'll never know.

For those interested in weather in that area - try this:

http://www.raysweather.com

Ray frequently has pictures from Grandfather / Mitchell / Snake / Roan Mountains. In fact, about a month ago he had a picture of a Mountain Lion in a tree somewhere on Grandfather. Neat stuff. Also, on a crystal clear day (maybe 4 or 5 times a year with all the polution and moisture normally in the southeast air) you can see the Charlotte skyline from the top of Grandfather.

[Weatherfreak14]

I was up near there in ski Beach mountain to go skiing and I remeber driving past grandfather. Can't even imagine those wind speeds.

[Extremeweatherguy]

wish we could see some of the damage pics from the wind.

[azskyman]

The location of Grandfather Mountain surely does cause some very impressive gusts. It must also be a beautiful location from which to observe the sky and weather.

However, the National Weather Service pulled their official instrumentation from there about 8 years ago, and the management purchased their own. On this particular day, most other stations nearby had gusts of less than 90 mph, and the 850mb winds were only 115, so the 200+ calculation is suspect...at least from an official standpoint.

Nevertheless, if you were standing in the right place at the right time, you may not have doubted you were experiencing a pretty hefty event!!!

[Stephanie]

Wow! I know that Mt. Washington has it's own legacy, but I've never heard about Granddfather before.

What amazes me about these mountains is that they are between a quarter or a third of the height of the Rockies and they have winds like these. Incredible!

[Wacahootaman]

Those winds can be fierce in the Smokies in the winter. I built a house once near Mt Mitchel at the high end of a north facing valley that acted like a wind tunnel when the fronts came through.

Had an annenometer on the roof and many times got gusts to hurricane force. Highest gust I recorded was 97 mph.

After we got the roof almost finished we went up to Boone near Grandfather mountain to celebrate and it was a super windy day. When we came back the wind had rolled up all the cedar shakes and tar paper that we had stapled to the roof into a giant roll and rolled it off the back end of the roof!

Another house in the area on an higher exposed ridge had its metal, chain link fence blown flat by the wind.

This was in April of 75 if memory serves me correctly.