We’ve been watching Lucania’s mountain weather for over 2 months now – it’s important to have some history on wind direction & speeds, duration of storms, precipitation and temperatures.
The key variables are wind speed and precipitation - mainly what affects visibility. We can't make forward progress in a whiteout.
Our original plan was to fly in on Jan 12th... until we saw this forecast. Look at those wind speeds and total snowfall! This is summit data, but even down low on the glacier, we would be grounded for a few days.
We decided last night to delay our fly-in until after this storm event. Such a decision is never easy and never black & white - even after years of experience.
We remain optimistic that we'll get a window and that having patience is worth it... we feel we have a good chance at this summit so why start by being storm-bound for a few days.
Follow along, we use Mountain Forecast.com, type in Mount Lucania and you can see forecast at various elevations on the mountain.