Clingman’s dome has always been a stop that I go to every time I visit. I once was able to see the Milky Way from here in the summertime about 20 years ago. I tried to recreate that this trip But instead ran into a phenomenon that I had completely forgot about. Some mountains are high enough to create their own weather patterns and these aren’t on any weather map, nor can they be predicted. So when we showed up that evening to get ready to take Milky Way pictures followed by sunrise pictures, There was a major storm hitting the mountain with hurricane force winds. I parked on the inside parking spots close to the wall of the mountain so as not to be blown off the side, but even then you could still hear the brakes squeaking. Within an hour of arriving, the temperature had dropped 10′ and it started sleeting. It was a 4am that I decided to drive the car down the road because the sleet had started to stick to the road and I didn’t want to get stuck on top with an icy parking lot. Only drove a couple minutes down the mountain but it was enough to put us in the lee side where it was no longer raining and the temp rose by 5′. We stuck it out there till 7am. When we woke up at 7 and saw the clouds had started breaking up, we head back up top to get the sunrise pictures. The picture below is one of those pictures. The wind was still blowing hard and cold but these pictures were so worth it! We did go back 5 days later to get more pictures with the actual lookout and pictures without sleet. The weather had warmed up 40′ by then and was wonderful!