Eyes on The Skies

Backyard Weather Watchers, Tracking Raindrops and Wind Gusts

Keith Allen was just 8 years old that day back in the early '50s when he was struck by a thunderbolt.

While touring the Washington studios of WRC-AM radio -- a prize won at a church bazaar, no less -- a DJ named Willard Scott (yes, that Willard Scott) asked him to read a weather update on the air. It was a seminal moment.

The chance encounter turned Allen into an atmospheric addict, tracking troughs and ridges, thunderstorms and blizzards, highs and lows for the better part of six decades. It led to the $1,000 weather station plunked atop his Chevy Chase garage, the mounds of climatological data piled in the corners of his office, the half-dozen digital thermometers propped near windows around his house, most blinking slightly different temperatures. Since 1988, he has been doing the local weather reports for Verizon. If you call 202-936-1212 to hear the forecasts, you've likely made his acquaintance.

"Willard Scott was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "The best."

Allen, 65, is among this region's legion of home-based weather watchers, buffs, observers, enthusiasts, geeks . . . call them what you will. Unlike professionals who typically major in meteorology or atmospheric science in college, these amateurs just dig scanning the skies and measuring what falls from them.

They can sniff out the Weather Channel on any cable system in any time zone, but hours of listening to Jim Cantore doesn't begin to satisfy the true fanatic. They're driven to assemble gizmos in their homes and yards to track temperature fluctuations near the sandbox and rain totals from last night's gullywasher -- and then share the micro-data with one another and the pooh-bahs at the National Weather Service.

Allen's personal weather station, for example, includes a hygrometer (measures dew point), a 15-foot anemometer (wind speed) and an electronic rain gauge that sets off alarms at the first sign of drizzle . Super-buffs spend hundreds on automated systems that wirelessly send readings (temperature, barometric pressure, humidity) straight to their computers.

"People just love the weather. It's something we all have in common, and in Washington people are very sensitive about it," said Fox 5 chief meteorologist Sue Palka. "It's almost always the first thing I ever talk about with people, and it's funny how many tell me what it's doing outside."

Unlike Allen, Palka keeps it simple at home. She has a few digital thermometers and a low-tech device to measure precipitation: a metallic squirrel holding a glass tube with the inches marked off. "I picked it up at TJ Maxx," she admitted, "but it works."

She may be on to something. Retiree Marty Brumback, former chief of personnel and document security at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been tracking the weather for 21 years, the past nine at his White Plains, Md., home. Brumback said that for $150, you can piece together an "extraordinarily accurate" weather station in your back yard. It's easy to spend a lot more, however: For about $600, you can install Davis Instruments' wireless Vantage Pro2, a gangly all-in-one-system that'll give your yard that alien-invasion look you're after. According to Brumback, it's among the more accurate stations at the best price.

Then again, he's a big advocate of simple four-inch rain gauges: They're plastic, cheap (about $25) and remarkably precise. You just plunk them in your yard and see how high the water piles up. In any case, he advised, "be careful what you buy. Sometimes the higher-priced devices are no better than the cheaper ones."

Though a member of the D.C. chapter of the American Meteorological Society, Brumback is no meteorologist. (Indeed, about 20 percent of the chapter's approximately 200 members are not professionals; anyone who really, really cares about the weather is welcome to join the group on the local level.)

He's also a part of the Maryland/Delaware Atlantic Coast Observer Network (ACON), a group of about three dozen spotters who jot down every bit of info their weather stations spew out and compare notes. Virginia ACON-ites cull their data with North and South Carolinians. The data are compiled into a report each month and sent to ACON members, as well as the National Weather Service.

ACON was started in 1985 to foster communication among amateur weather observers, according to group coordinator Kevin Shaw, a cartographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But those were the prehistoric days before Web sites with real-time weather data were omnipresent. So why does ACON persist today?

"We grew into this thing that we loved, and we weather observers are a real persistent group," said Shaw, who's in the process of updating his own backyard station. "We just wanted to keep things going."

Another local group, the Washington-Baltimore Climate Review, has several hundred members recording what's going on in their yards. In addition, enthusiasts can join the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, whose volunteers measure precipitation and share findings online. Anyone can blog on Weatherbug.com, run by a Germantown firm that operates a network of 8,000 tracking stations nationwide.

But if you just want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow, you can dial the phone and hear the ready-for-radio voice of Keith Allen. Assisted by a staff of eight forecasters scattered around the region, Allen is constantly fine-tuning and updating his Verizon recording; it averages 80,000 to 100,000 calls a day, down from 225,000 in 1985 but still impressive.

Other interests? Well, when he has the time, he watches his new large-screen hi-def TV.

"I love this thing," he said, alternating glances at the set with squinty-eyed glimpses out the window at his cat-adorned weather vane. "The Weather Channel just looks amazing on it."