- Mount Washington reached -46 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday with a windchill of -108 degrees.
- The New Hampshire peak may have broken a record for the coldest windchill ever recorded in the US.
Mount Washington, the tallest peak of New Hampshire's White Mountains, could reach its coldest recorded temperature in 138 years on Friday night, according to projections by the National Weather Service.
The 6,288-foot peak had reached 46 degrees Fahrenheit below zero as of 8 p.m. local time on Friday, the NWS Eastern Region said. The winds were at 96 mph with gusts as high as 127 mph, resulting in a triple-digits below zero wind chill of -108 degrees.
According to Weather Underground, before Friday there had only been three times a windchill recorded in the US reached -100 degrees, meaning the weather on Mount Washington may have already surpassed that record.
—NWS Cleveland (@NWSCLE) February 3, 2023
The coldest temperature ever recorded at the station was -47 degrees in 1934, with records from the Mount Washington Observatory going back to 1933.
But the all-time record from Mount Washington, a peak known for its bad weather, was recorded in 1885, according to Justin Arnott, a meteorologist with the weather service office in Maine. Arnott told MassLive there are handwritten records that go back even further than 1933.
"The all-time record – the state record – was 50 below zero (on Jan. 22) 1885," he told the outlet.
The summit, which was experiencing whiteout conditions throughout the day on Friday, could see its coldest temperatures at around midnight, he added.