In one of the coldest and windiest places in the United States, a cat dozed through a historic storm Friday, with winds whipping up to 120 mph and the thermometer dropping far below -32 Fahrenheit.
Nimbus, the cat who lives 6,288 feet above sea level at Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire's White Mountains, was nice and warm while the scientists living with him dealt with the brutal weather conditions outside.
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"He is actually sleeping through most of this event," meteorologist Francis Tarasiewciz said Friday, one of the weather observers whose job is to get hourly readings in the extreme cold.
Outside the thick walls of the observatory, the temperature broke the previous record for Feb. 3, of -32 degrees, long before the sun set. The deep chill threatened to break the all-time record of -47 degrees. That's below zero.
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Nimbus, a rescue cat, was actually in a bit of a mood, Tarasiewciz said, but not because of the weather.
"He is cozy, did his monthly flea medication so he is a little grumpy," Tarasiewcz said. "Otherwise, he is enjoying the storm just as much as us."
Life is a bit harder for Tarasiewcz and the other observers, who spend a week at a time at the 91-year-old mountaintop observatory that, in 1934, recorded awind gust of 231 mph, which as a world record for decades.
On Friday, a strong wind gust knocked an outside door at the observatory off its hinges, and it took a team effort to get it fixed.
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"There is half of me that loves what is going on right now, and the other half of me is pretty terrified, especially when the door fails," Tarasiewcz said.
Winds were expected to hit 120-140 mph overnight, with temperatures to get colder, too. You can keeps tabs on the nonprofit's cold, windy Saturday to come with the observatory livestreams here.
