Winter announced itself on Mount Washington overnight, with the season's first snowflakes dusting roads and rocks along the mountain's famous Auto Road. Despite the wintry preview, the historic route remained open to cars through Treeline on Tuesday, though motorcycle access was put on hold.
“Welcome, winter! The first snowflakes of the season fell overnight,” the Mt. Washington Auto Road announced, according to Boston 25 News. The Auto Road shared photos of snow-covered roads and rocks, inviting visitors to come see the first signs of the colder months ahead. The road, located in Green's Grant, New Hampshire, confirmed it remained open to cars for the day.
As of Tuesday, October 6, the road was open to Treeline for cars and on hold for motorcycles, according to mt-washington.com. The route has a winter cutoff point of 4,200 feet, which lines up with the elevation where the mountain's SnowCoach tours also transport guests to treeline once deeper snow sets in. Those tours can be delayed or canceled altogether when mountain weather turns uncooperative, the site notes.
A 7.6-Mile Climb Into the Clouds
The Auto Road climbs 7.6 miles from Route 16 in Pinkham Notch, gaining more than 4,000 feet in elevation as it winds toward Mount Washington's 6,288-foot summit, the highest peak in the Northeast, according to mountwashington.org. First opened in 1861, it's billed as America's oldest man-made tourist attraction, and it remains the primary way most visitors reach the top of a mountain tucked deep in New Hampshire's White Mountains.
Earlier Than Average, But Not Unprecedented
Mount Washington has typically recorded its first measurable snowfall in September, according to wbur.org. Even so, mountwashington.org notes there's technically no set month for the summit's first snow once trace amounts are factored in, since some flurries have touched the peak in every month of the year.
Past seasons offer some context for how this storm compares. In 2015, the summit's first snow of that season came October 10 with a half-inch of accumulation, per mountwashington.org. In 2023, the first measurable snow landed October 8 with just 0.3 inches, as reported by wbur.org. Another season saw its first one-inch snowfall arrive late on a Monday night, with observers measuring 1.2 inches at 6,288 feet the following morning, according to wmur.com.
A Mountain Known for Snow — and a Shifting Climate
Mount Washington averages roughly 19 inches of snow each October and a staggering 281.2 inches, or more than 23 feet, across a full year, per wmur.com and mountwashington.org respectively. The mountain's all-time snowiest season came in 1968-1969, when the summit piled up 566.4 inches total, including 172.8 inches in February 1969 alone and a single 24-hour burst of 49.3 inches, according to mountwashington.org.
Still, a changing climate has pushed the start of winter conditions on the mountain later in recent years, wbur.org reports. A Mount Washington Observatory weather observer said in 2023 that winters have been “starting later and ending earlier” as a result of a warming climate, a trend that frames this week's flurries as a modest, if welcome, return to form for a peak famous for its brutal weather extremes.
