Before heading to Everest, weather station was tested on Mt. Washington

If you’re going to test a weather station to make sure it’ll work on Mount Everest, where do you go? How about Mount Washington.

From an article (read it here) in AMC’s Outdoors magazine:

They spent several hours off the side of the auto road, just above treeline, setting up and testing a 7-foot-tall, 110-pound, specialized weather station. If the station could withstand Mount Washington’s winter fury, five stations like it would be installed on Everest, including one just below the mountain’s deadly summit.

As usual, Washington gave the visitors its worst. Keith Garrett, Mount Washington Observatory’s information systems administrator, says the original plan was to erect the test station at the summit, but blowing wind and harsh snow forced the scientists to move their experiment about 2,000 feet down the mountain. Even so, working in blizzardlike conditions of 0 degrees and 50- to 70-mile-per-hour winds while outfitted in mountaineering gear tough enough for the harshest cold, the team had to drill holes in ice-covered rocks and set up a series of guylines to brace against the wind.

The station was eventually installed at 27,657 feet, the highest elevation of any weather station on land.