I’ve long had a fascination with weather, to the point of putting up a windmill on our farm up north. I had even researched adding some weather tools to the mast, hoping to join the volunteer weather corp, which is the main point of this post – sharing an account of a volunteer from today’s NY Times. That’s a photo of him, above, studying the sky in the 1930’s for his daily report, which he has done continually right thru today – 84 years! Amazing, how a sense of purpose can invigorate. (He’s 101.)

Our windmill flew for only fourteen months, failing atop the tower. I crashed it, attempting to repair it. The mast, which snagged as we were lowering it, snapped at a coupling. Insurance bought me out. But it was great fun watching the sky for signs of change.

This  Merida windmill, designed to lift water, didn’t survive a hurricane

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Friends helped me erect my pinwheel. We tilted it up with a tractor, for attachment next to the silo.

Our Christmas card, 2006

These are some of my favorite weather tools:
Realtime lightning strikes
North American radar, with animation button
Water vapor, animated
Tropical hurricane tracker