Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 10, 1993 TAG: 9308100295
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LAUREL RIDGE LENGTH: Long
When the thunderheads boil up unexpectedly out of the summer steam, or the clouds ominously turn black as ink and start to tumble wildly in the sky, or the winds howl down the mountainsides - snapping tree trunks like toothpicks - sometimes not even the National Weather Service knows for sure what's happening.
But Linda Kuchenbuch does.
From her aerie on the ridgetop that divides Floyd County from Montgomery County, she often has a bird's-eye view of Roanoke's weather before it becomes Roanoke's weather.
So for the past six years or so, this Floyd County Christmas tree farmer has been one of the National Weather Service's prime eye-to-the-sky amateur weather spotters in Western Virginia.
Says Harry MacIntosh, who runs the weather service's Roanoke office: "I can see a thunderstorm over Floyd County on radar and I'll call Linda and say, `Hey, can you tell me how it's going? What's it look like?'"
Does it look like a bad one?
After all, the radar may show an electronic splotch of storm moving across the screen - like it did during the big June windstorm that wreaked havoc from here to Lynchburg, or during the tornado that ripped through Colonial Heights and Petersburg last Friday.
But it can't show when tree limbs are flying through the air or hailstones are bouncing like popcorn off the front lawn or even when the wind is spinning 'round in a tornado.
Sometimes, the National Weather Service's radar is surprisingly vague.
"Sometimes," Kuckenbuch says, "no matter how good your radar is, you need someone out in the field."
And she's the field.
For Kuchenbuch (pronounced cookin' book), this is a hobby she fell into about six years ago when she called the weather service to "offer some constructive criticism" that its forecasts weren't specific enough for her little patch of what the meteorologists classify as "the Southern Highlands."
Everybody complains about the weather, but Kuchenbuch sounded more knowledgeable than most. By the time the phone call was over, she'd been recruited as a "weather spotter."
For the National Weather Service, weather-watching is serious business. So over the years, it's lined up an informal network of amateur weather watchers to help it know what's really going on.
When the skies turn strange, and the weather service needs to send out periodic bulletins, warnings and advisories, the meteorologists in the Roanoke office are on the phone to these far-flung spotters for instant advice.
Or, as the meteorologists call it, "real-time data."
"Ground truth."
"Weather is the most perishable commodity there is," MacIntosh says. "Fifteen minutes is nothing. One minute there's a roaring thunderstorm and the next it's down to nothing, a calm day. If you keep putting out warnings, you're spitting into the wind."
Many of these spotters work at places that likewise have a professional interest in the weather - sheriff's departments, highway offices, radio stations. But others, usually one per county, are simply ordinary folks who have volunteered.
And just who are these people?
Well, there's Kuchenbuch the Christmas tree farmer, who worries about thermal inversions yellowing her pines and keeps meticulous records going back years to chart her crop's progress.
But then there's Mickey Apgar in Lafeyette, who sells lumber at the Moore's store in Salem and inherited the spotters' job from his uncle.
And there's Jim Lapsley, a retired electrical engineer in Fancy Gap, and Sam Hambrick, an elementary school principal from Marion, who, well, have just always been weather junkies.
"I remember back in high school, I kept weather records for a science project," Hambrick says. "It's just a hobby of mine."
Indeed, perhaps the curious thing about the weather service's network of spotters is just how many people are out there for whom weather is a hobby, and a pretty serious one at that.
These people get no pay, no publicity. "There's nothing you get other than knowing you're doing a good job and helping out," Kuchenbuch says.
Yet many have kept weather records on their own for years, well before anyone asked them to. Apgar, for instance, used to run the old Sunset Service Center in Elliston, where weather was a main topic of conversation. "At one time, we used to have a chalkboard where we'd record the rainfall," he says.
What's this fascination with the weather?
That's often hard to articulate. "It's fun and it's something you can relate with," Apgar says.
Says Lapsley, who lived near Fincastle before retiring to Carroll County several years ago: "It's something you can't escape."
Virginia, in fact, may be something of a hotbed for amateur weather-watchers.
He can't prove it, but Jerry Stenger, who works in the state climatologist's office at the University of Virginia, suspects the state has an unusual number of people who keep their own weather records.
"Some have pretty sophisticated equipment, such as for measuring wind," Stenger says. "There's no shortage of people in the state."
He attributes that to the Old Dominion's British origins. "A lot of it has to do with the traditions brought over from Europe, particularly the British who settled here," he says. "They were very avid weather observers. Those traditions live on in the state."
Indeed, MacIntosh found many of his current spotters when their names popped up on a mailing list as subscribers to the state climatologist's office newsletter, the Virginia Climate Advisory.
The weather service already has more than 100 automated rain gauges scattered throughout Western Virginia that instantly report downpours. That sounds like a lot. But MacIntosh points to the chart on his wall, dotted with thumbtacks that pinpoint these gauges, and bemoans their inadequacy.
"Thunderstorm cells are usually 5 miles across," he says. "These automated gauges are 30 miles or so apart. Anything can slip through."
That's where the spotters help make up the difference. The most valued spotters tend to be in outlying counties to Roanoke's west, because they can eyeball storms before they get to the big population centers in the New River and Roanoke valleys.
That's why MacIntosh hangs so much on what Kuchenbuch sees atop Laurel Ridge.
"It's a very, climatologically speaking, important area," she says. "We're at 2,700 feet on this farm. A lot of time you get strange weather happening here that foreshadows the weather in Roanoke. Sometimes, thunderstorms build on the mountain range and then drop into the valley."
So when she sees something swirling, she'll let the meteorologists know, especially if it doesn't match their forecast. "The other day, things were getting really strange out here. I called and said `Hey, keep your eyes on this.' Nothing really happened, but things were looking strange."
These summer days, the weather spotters are keeping their eyes peeled for rogue thunderstorms. Come winter, they're on the look-out for snow.
"That's the exciting time for weather people," Hambrick says. "Nobody cares if you miss by 10 degrees in the summer, but if you miss a degree in winter, you're in trouble - especially if it's 32 degrees."
So when a predicted drizzle suddenly drops that critical degree and begins spitting snow over Smyth County, Hambrick is quick to give the Roanoke office a heads-up that trouble is on the way.
For that, the weather service is grateful enough that MacIntosh sometimes visits his spotters just to say howdy and thank them for their help.
"Harry MacIntosh himself has been up here," says an impressed Lapsley from his weather-beaten mountain in Carroll County, "and we chatted quite a while."
What about?
What else?
"The weather."
by CNB