Scott McKim explains why gasses — such as methane and carbon dioxide — are monitored as part of the center's research on Thursday, Dec. 19.

WILMINGTON — When it comes to winter weather, Scott McKim has just about seen it all.

“Last year, we got down to minus 40 just straight temperature, no wind chill,” he said. “We also had a 120 mph wind gust. It was screaming, just unbelievable stuff.”

McKim is the science manager at the University at Albany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center’s Whiteface Mountain Field Station. Such extreme parameters can be attributed to the fact that one of the two field station’s observation areas is located at the mountain’s 4,867-foot summit. McKim has been with the ASRC since 2015, and worked in Alaska before moving to the Olympic Region.

The other observation area is located at about 2,000 feet, at the former Marble Mountain ski area site — before the Whiteface Mountain Ski area was moved to where it exists today.

“The real value of what we do here is collect a bunch of data here – at 2000 feet – and then the same exact data points up at the summit, at 4,867 feet,” he said. The same types of observations collected at the same time and two different elevations provide scientists with important information on how the atmosphere is behaving at different levels.

Scott McKim next to some of the instruments used as part of the New York State Mesonet's Whiteface Mountain base site, located at 2,016 feet near Wilmington on Thursday, Dec. 19. Staff Photo: Chris Gaige

McKim’s job requires him to attend to both observation points to, among other tasks, make sure the observation equipment is properly calibrated. He said that needs to be done weekly.

Suffice to say, his commute is not typical.

“In the winter, I usually ski up (the Whiteface Mountain Veteran’s Highway),” he said. “It takes about an hour, then I work for four or five hours (at the summit), then I ski back down. In the summer, I bike or hike up.

McKim said he loves to exercise and traversing between the two stations is actually one of his favorite aspects of the job.

“The whole reason I got into weather is that I like to spend so much time outside,” he said. “It’s being outside — my skis up to the summit, skiing down, biking, hiking — all of that stuff. You spend so much of the day kind of buried in the instrumentation, but then being able to get outside and actually enjoy it, it’s really nice.”

The Atmospheric Sciences Research Center's Marble Mountain Field Station office is seen near Wilmington on Thursday, Dec. 19.

Hailing from New Jersey, McKim said he has been interested in the weather since he was a little kid. Along with spending so much time outside, McKim said he experienced several impactful storms growing up that piqued his interest in meteorology.

“It kind of occurred to me as a kid that ‘Gee, it’d be helpful if I knew something about all this weather going on around me since it impacts just about every outdoor activity.'”

McKim studied meteorology in college and hydrometeorology in graduate school. McKim wears two hats. In addition to managing the stations at Whiteface, he is also responsible for monitoring all of the Mesonet — a network of weather-monitoring stations across the state — sites in northern New York.

“I am kind of a player-coach,” he said. “I’m the science manager here but I maintain all 40 sites in northern New York. I’m probably here at Whiteface three and a half days a week and on the road a day and a half.”

Consistency is key, McKim said. All of the Mesonet sites look the same: they have a 10-meter tower and equipment that measures snow depth, air pressure, precipitation, soil temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity and solar radiation. McKim said that depending on how they are counted, there are 212 stations across New York, each no more than 19 miles apart from the nearest.

McKim said the Whiteface Mountain base station was somewhat unique.

“This site is kind of on steroids in the sense that it’s one of the only sites in the network that’s on line power,” he said. “Everything else is (powered by a) solar panel and a battery bank. Typically, this type of weather data is most valuable during an emergency when you could lose power. We have a backup array of batteries so that when the power does go out, those kick in so we don’t lose any data.”

The New York state Mesonet is a fairly new investment designed to have a real-time network of weather conditions across the state. It was spurred by the desire for better data to, in turn, develop better forecasts and responses to severe weather events.

“Tropical Storm Lee and Irene were kind of the two big catalysts,” he said. “There was (Federal Emergency Management Agency) money that got funneled to the governor’s office, then the state University at Albany.”

Since it launched in 2014, McKim said forecasts for New York have become much more accurate, and other states have made similar investments. He said 42 of the 50 states now have weather monitoring networks similar to New York’s Mesonet, which was pioneered by Oklahoma, due to the frequent tornado outbursts that the state experiences.

McKim said that today, New York’s Mesonet system is seen as the gold standard for accuracy and coverage depth. He said he has consulted with his peers in other states as they try to expand their equivalent networks.

To view real-time Mesonet data, visit nysmesonet.org.

While the Mesonet is a large part of the field station’s role today, McKim said that historically, it Whiteface Mountain has been used by scientists to monitor air quality. While many climate trends today are worrisome for scientists, McKim said that air quality, at least in the Adirondacks and Northeast is a “huge success story.”

He said the area has come a long way from the 1970s and early 1980s when atmospheric pollutants resulted in acid rain potent enough to destroy forests and aquatic ecosystems in the park. McKim said that while it is often difficult to point to a singular action or piece of legislation making a difference, he said in this case, it was pretty clear to him that the Clean Air Act put standards in place that allowed for the success story.

“We don’t often pitch a piece of legislation as having such a real-world result,” he said. “I’m not a political person, but it’s very, very clear based on the data gathered over the years.”

McKim said that cleaner air, while a success story, has forced the Whiteface Mountain Field Station to retool the type of data they collect in order to remain scientifically impactful.

“Don’t get me wrong, there is real value in collecting zeros in the data for these acid rain precursors, but lately we’ve been shifting into aerosols, microplastics and PFAs — forever chemicals.”

He said some of the air monitoring equipment costs as much as a “brand-new high-end SUV,” along with all of the work that is done on the “back end,” such as computer programming, data logging and data visualization.

McKim said that the Whiteface Mountain Field Station works closely with their counterparts on Mount Mansfield and Mount Washington, the highest peaks in Vermont and New Hampshire, respectively. He said they meet once a month to share best practices.

McKim said each mountain’s observatory program — while overlapping to a certain degree — has its own niche: Whiteface focuses on air quality, Mount Mansfield focuses on ecological trends – such as the health and composition of tree species at different elevations — and Mount Washington, the highest of the three peaks at 6,288 feet, focuses on severe weather.

McKim said that in addition to collaborating with those two observatories, they are building a partnership with ADK avy to create an avalanche forecast center for the Adirondack backcountry, where avalanches can occur.

Looking to the future, McKim said he has seen extreme weather become more common in his observations at Whiteface. He said that while a general warming trend in temperatures has been observed, it’s not the movement of the overall average that he finds most striking.

“Normals aren’t changing hugely, but what normals are now is mostly a statistical average of the extremes, where we’re now spending most of our time,” he said. “We’re either super cold, super warm, super dry, or super wet, and then things flip. We spend very little time at or near our averages.”

“I think anecdotally, a lot of people are seeing that and saying that, but we definitely see it in the data too.”