Nearly every morning at 8 a.m. for the past 18 years Paul Swift has recorded weather observations, more than 6,500 total, for the National Weather Service. Today, Monday, April 30, is his last day. It begins, like all the other mornings, with precise measurements.
A metal box about the size of an internet modem sits on his window sill and displays the temperature to the tenth of a degree. He logs the daily low and high on a pad of carbon paper. Next, Swift grabs a plastic tube from behind a heater, placed there to ensure any moisture from the previous day has evaporated, and walks out to his backyard.
A metal, cylindrical rain gauge stands next to his shed. Today, it’s bone dry. When it collects rain he measures its depth to within a hundredth of an inch. Attached to the wall of his shed is a soil temperature measurement device. Beside the rain gauge, a white slab similar to a large cutting board rests on a table. When it snows, Swift uses a ruler and measures the flakes up to a tenth of an inch.
Because Swift and his wife, Annie Boyce, are avid mountain climbers, they like to keep track of what’s falling from the skies. For the past 20 years they’ve driven past the border on weekends chasing alpine adventures. “We’ve probably climbed every peak all the way to the Junction that’s readily available where you didn’t have to walk through the brush and be too scared of the bears,” Swift says. “We were interested in being able to look at the weather, and maybe a little seat-of-the-pants forecasting.”
Pete Boyd, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Juneau said local weather observers bring real world data to their modeling prediction programs. Boyd said Southeast Alaska is a data-poor environment, and observers, especially volunteers like Swift who contact the weather service throughout the day to make observations during storms, are vital to making accurate predictions.
“Paul is one of the best co-op observers we’ve had,” Boyd said. “He was very consistent. His measurements were always accurate. If a winter storm was moving through, he would call our office to verify how much show had fallen so throughout the day we could make sure to make adjustments on the computer models.”
After a chance encounter with a meteorologist almost two decades ago at the local hardware store where he worked, Swift volunteered to be a weather observer. “A fella was out fixing the automated weather service station and he had to have some parts. He came in there and he was fussing that he was going to lose his weather observer down here,” Swift says. “I said ‘Well, gee, I’m interested in the weather. Maybe I’ll do it.'”
Swift is now among 28 volunteer cooperative weather observers in Southeast Alaska and one of 10,000 across the United States who awake every day and record weather data. In his 18 years recording observations, Swift has measured a total of 2,865.4 inches of snow, according to weather service data. In his rain gauge he has collected and measured 1,117.72 inches, just more than 93 feet, of precipitation.
For 35 years, Swift has kept his own records of the local weather in journals. He’s collected torrents of data scrawled in yearbook-sized red notebooks lining one of his many bookshelves. Despite that sea of precipitation depths, Fahrenheit highs and lows and snow measurements, Swift and Boyce more often connect with and compare the weather’s variability through memory and anecdote. “I’ll say to myself ‘This year is more like that winter when I lost my primroses,'” Boyce says.
Swift recalls one rainy winter month after his son broke his back. “Annie and I were home alone and it rained constantly in January and it leaked into the root cellar and rotted all our potatoes. Those things you remember.”
During the winter of 2011 and 2012, when Haines received more than 20 feet of snow, Swift snowshoed from his house across the “ridgeline to the Salvation Army”-piles of snow that bridged his house to the Salvation Army building.
Still, they refer back to their data when they or their friends want to recall or confirm specific snow or rain fall. Swift has learned that people’s recollections are often as variable as the weather. “One thing I’ve found out over the years is that people’s memory on weather is very deficient,” Swift says. “They always imagine it one way or another and I’ve looked back or called the weather service to check and it absolutely wasn’t what they remembered. Memories are fallible.”
If Swift misses just three days of weather observations in a month, the weather service won’t use the data and the month’s averages would be lost. When he’s in town, Swift has never missed a day. When he and Boyce take trips, they have a list of at least six friends to call on.
Jim Green, one of those volunteers, is the new volunteer weather observer for Haines.
On Swift’s final day he records the daily low at 41 degrees Fahrenheit and the high at 49 F. There is zero precipitation and the soil temperature is 41 F. He calls the weather station in Juneau to report his results. “Currently it’s overcast. Variable winds four to seven miles per hour,” Swift says. “I have enjoyed all of you. You’re all just great. I’ll stop in sometime and see how things are going.”
Now that his responsibility of making official observations is over, Swift and Boyce plan to make more trips to the Yukon Territory and Interior Alaska. They’re preparing their camper for their first journey later this month.
“I looked up the Haines Junction weather yesterday: sunny every day,” Boyce says.