Climate and Weather
Dolly Sods is well known for its often extreme and mercurial climate. Sun, rain, snow, and fog are all possible within an hour. Cool, wet weather prevails throughout the year. Although summer temperatures can reach the 80s or higher, frost is possible at any time of the year in higher elevations (above 4,000 feet) and winter temperatures can dip below zero. Yearly precipitation is more than 55 inches. Precipitation is heavy because rising air masses cool as they hit the higher mountains and deposit moisture. Snowfall is impressive and may reach 150 inches in a year. This heavy snow breaks down trees and shrubs. Heavy glazes of ice and deposits of rime frost also break down trees and shrubs, giving them their characteristic forms and gnarled appearance. Prevailing winds are from the west and blow almost constantly. The effect of these winds can be seen in the flag-form red spruce trees; their branches grow on one side, away from the wind. Frost and snow effects also contribute to the flag-form shape of the trees. Because of the drying influence of the wind, no branches are produced on the west side of the tree above the protective shrub layer. Stunted branches on the east side give the trees a twisted appearance. Where spruce are protected by a shrub layer, luxuriant webs of branches extend for a radius of a dozen feet, giving a mat-like look to vegetation.
The explosive collision of air masses attendant upon the Allegheny Front dumps many tons of snow on Dolly Sods each winter. During the winter of 2003, 290 inches (7.3 m) of snow fell in the area. Humid and warmer air from the Potomac River Valley to the east and south meets colder Canadian air blowing off the Great Lakes. This churns and produces the locally severe weather that can sometimes rival that of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
This section of the Allegheny Front is one of the windiest spots east of the Mississippi, a fact responsible for the wind farming that is now so highly visible just north of Bear Rocks. Wind recorders in the Wilderness have been known to blow away in the gusts that can exceed 100 miles per hour. Just to the west in Canaan Valley, temperatures of 40° F below zero have been recorded.
Read more about this topic: Dolly Sods Wilderness
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or weather:
“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)