It gets worse: When accounting for the strong and powerful gusts, it felt more like 86 degrees below zero, they said.

According to staff at the New Hampshire mountain’s observatory , the temperature plummeted to a “bone-chilling” minus-35 degrees around 6:30 a.m., as winds whipped around at 75 miles per hour.

If you thought it was cold walking the short distance from the train station to the front door of your office Friday, imagine how employees working atop Mount Washington must have felt.

It’s not quite Pluto temperatures — it’s around 400 degrees below zero way out there in space — but it’s probably not far off from Hoth, the icy planet Luke Skywalker explores while riding a fur-covered Tauntaun in the “Star Wars” saga.


“It’s very cold,” said Adam Gill, 24, a weather observer and IT specialist on the summit. “Your first breath outside is tough. Even with all the layers on.”

Gill said the minus-86 degree weather this week was the “theoretical temperature,” meaning that’s what it would feel like to the human skin if it were exposed to the wind.

“As long as you cover up and make sure all your skin is covered it will just feel like -35,” Gill said in a telephone interview.

But that’s still a far cry from the cold downtown. For comparison’s sake, it dropped to 4 degrees in Boston Friday morning. And here’s some salt in the wound — at the exact same time, it was warmer in Alaska, a balmy 20 degrees in Anchorage.

In a Facebook post around midnight, staff at the observatory said the temperatures were dropping at a staggering 3 degrees per hour, while wind gusts were reaching 95 miles per hour.

When it became 35 degrees below zero, it marked the coldest temperature recorded this early in the season at the summit of Mount Washington since 1993. On Dec. 27 of that year, weather observers said, temperatures dipped to minus-36 degrees.


Gill said despite the windy, frigid weather, workers still need to step outside onto the deck every hour to do their jobs, and observe the weather. In fact, the only time they don’t go outside is during thunderstorms, he said, because lightning has been known to strike the summit.

When they leave shelter and walk onto the deck, workers wear multiple layers to make sure no skin is exposed — or else they risk frostbite.

That means Gill wears two pairs of gloves, most days. And then several layers of shirts and jackets; long underwear and winter pants; a face guard (sometimes two if it’s particularly biting); and goggles to keep his eyes safe.

“It’s about a five-minute ordeal to get everything on,” he said, adding that the staff limits the time they spend outside to only a few minutes.

“If you do have anything exposed, even for a couple minutes, you can start to get frostbite,” Gill said. “And lose fingers in as little as five minutes.”

As for staying warm indoors, the portion of the Sherman Adams building where the staff stays has 2-foot-thick, steel-reinforced walls, keeping the “winter weather at bay.” The tall, bulletproof windows in the office are tough enough to withstand the wind.

Gill, who went to school for atmospheric science, said radiators keep them somewhat toasty, although it still sometimes gets drafty. In the sleeping quarters, which are downstairs from the office, it’s insulated, so it often stays at a snug 70 degrees.


Besides the chill, it’s also been a snowy month on the mountaintop. As of Dec. 13, 47.9 inches of snow had fallen on the summit, according to weather officials. December normally averages 45.5 inches, they said in a recent Facebook post. The totals are nowhere near the December 1968 record of 103.7 inches, however.

Observatory staff are no strangers to wild weather conditions. In May, employees posted a video online of themselves walking on the deck, head-on into wind gusts that reached 102 miles per hour. At the time, they told the Globe that it felt like “a football player ... pushing you as hard as they can.”

However, it was much “warmer,” so to speak, when they performed the outdoor stunt. Temperatures were between 12 and 13 degrees that day, with a wind chill of minus-19.

Even after more than a year on the job, Gill is still getting used to the climate.

“I’m learning to master it,” he said. “But a lot you learn from experience.”

Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.