WEATHER VOLUNTEERS HONORED
Volunteers keep
serving, whatever
the weather
Two Hawaii residents are
By Eloise Aguiar
among 25 of 11,000 volunteers
nationwide to be honored for
gathering important data
Star-BulletinAt 7 a.m. each day -- rain or shine -- 67-year-old Richard Borsukiewicz checks a temperature gauge inside his home and then goes outside to the gauge on the side of his house to measure the amount of rain that fell in Kaneohe.
The information he has been collecting for the past 14 years is used by the National Weather Service in weather reports and in long-term information banks that help meteorologists track and predict the weather.
If you've ever seen the high and low temperature or rainfall totals on TV weather forecasts, you can thank Borsukiewicz and thousands of other weather volunteers across the country who help gather the information and who save the Weather Service millions of dollars a year.
"It's stuff I think about all the time naturally," he said. "I like to know how much rain I had last night and what the temperatures are."
Borsukiewicz is one of two Hawaii residents receiving a national award today for their weather-watching efforts. Nuuanu resident Virginia Dominis Koch also is being recognized for providing rainfall data for 16 years.
Koch, 83, downplayed her volunteer duties with the Cooperative Weather Observer Program, for which she collects a monthly printout produced by the "spaceship" shaped rain gauge in her front yard.
"The hardest part is just remembering to do it," Koch said with a laugh. "It's no big deal. It punches out (the information) every 15 minutes. I just take the tape off and drop it in the mailbox."
But the National Weather Service, which runs the program, does consider the efforts important. Only 25 volunteers out of 11,000 nationwide are receiving the John Campanius Holm Award for outstanding service.
Borsukiewicz's interest in weather spans about 30 years, beginning when he forecast climate conditions while serving in the Marines.After retiring from the service, he worked for the Navy in weather oceanography.
Koch's relationship with the National Weather Service spans 30 years, she said. At first, the agency wanted her to be the contact person during tsunami threats for her Punaluu neighborhood. She alerted people connected to her telephone party line.
"So I'd pick up the phone and ring the ring and talk to 20 people at once," Koch said. "Everybody would answer the phone."
When Koch moved back to her family's home in Nuuanu, she was recruited after noticing a stranger poking around her front lawn, she said. "It was the weatherman. He was looking for someplace to put (the gauge)."
The collected data is sent to the National Weather Service office, which forwards the statistics to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
The information helps researchers investigate global warming theories, El Nino effects and other climate trends, said Jim Weyman, meteorologist in charge of the Honolulu Forecast Office.
The Cooperative Weather Observer Program is run by the National Weather Service: EYES ON THE SKY
Volunteers: Hawaii has 54. There are 205 observers Pacificwide and 11,000 nationwide.
"Citizen volunteers like Mrs. Koch and Mr. Borsukiewicz save taxpayers millions of dollars and provide data to more accurately forecast future climatic trends," Weyman said.
Hawaii has 54 volunteer observers, said Derek Lee Loy, manager of the observer program. Pacificwide, 205 observers report regularly, 42 of them calling in daily information that is used immediately by meteorologists.
While most information is collected from instruments in the volunteers' back yards, some instruments are in out-of-the-way places like cane fields and wildernesses.
One gauge is located in Waiahole Ditch and can only be reached through a 6-mile-long tunnel, Lee Loy said. Another, on Kauai, had to be relocated when the movie "Jurassic Park" was being filmed.
Impressed with the volunteers, Lee Loy said they all seem to have the same commitment to community involvement.
"What I've learned too is they all are so knowledgeable about the weather, especially the cane-field workers," Lee Loy said.
The U.S. Weather Bureau formed the cooperative weather program in 1890. However, weather records from some stations across the country have even longer histories.
Holm, for whom the award was named, collected the earliest weather data without instruments in 1644 and 1645.
Other notable Americans who collected weather information are Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson kept an almost unbroken record of weather data from 1776 through 1816. Washington took his last weather readings just a few days before he died.
