Day 122: Again I am grateful to friends for their efforts on my behalf. My 25-year old Davis Weather Monitor II picked the most inconvenient time to die, i.e., while we were having the torrential, flood-and-landslide producing rains a week ago. I have been keeping weather records since March 1975 with very few gaps when one station or another ceased functioning and sent me hunting for an affordable replacement, but even in the interim, I recorded daily temperature and estimated wind speed as well as commenting on "notable occurrences" such as snow, thunder, or even the occasional earthquake (yeah, I know...that's not weather). Charting the data has been as much a part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth. In the Pacific Northwest, rainfall is arguably the most important piece of data to record and while a plastic gauge provides a close approximation of the amount, it's less accurate than I'd like. It was time to replace the station, and I opted for another Davis, the low-end Vue. It arrived today and I managed to get it installed on the pole erected by Joe Dreimiller without mishap, although he had made it look easy to swing a sixteen-foot piece of galvanized water pipe into position. Neither of us considered that he had the advantage of an additional foot in height. For a minute or two, I felt like Archimedes' fulcrum as I tried to get the pipe back into its brackets, but I am happy to say that the job is done and the station is reporting...wirelessly even, although I won't be hooking it up to the computer. Call me old-fashioned. I like paper records that I can pore over when I'm stormed in and the power's out, trying to determine from my graphs if the current weather is part of an established pattern or just a temporary trend.
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