‘Mountain weatherman’ awarded for years of service
Of the 117 volunteer weather observers that Bob Coblentz oversees for the National Weather Service, John J. “Jack” Hughes of Chalk Hill is “perfection.” “Jack and three others I use as examples,” Coblentz said Tuesday when he presented Hughes with an award for 30 years of service as an NWS Cooperative Observer. “Jack is perfection.”
Coblentz said he supervises observers in 36 counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland, and Hughes is one of the most reliable in the network.
“Jack’s been doing this for a long time, so we have continuity here,” Coblentz said. “I can call him in the middle of the night, and he’ll go outside and measure the snow.”
Hughes is one of more than 11,000 observers that record daily weather information and form the backbone of the country’s climatological data collection network, according to the NWS Forecast Office in Pittsburgh. The data includes normals, means and extremes for temperatures and precipitation in the local area. In some cases, river stages are computed directly from observers’ reports.
“We totally rely on these people,” Coblentz said.
Hughes, a retired insurance agent from Uniontown who now lives in Deer Lake, said his fascination with the weather came from his father.
“My dad could walk outside and sniff the air and tell what the weather would be,” Hughes said.
Even though they lived in the city, his dad was much like farmers and other “old timers” who learned how to predict weather by reading the clouds and sky.
He recalls a November night in 1950 when he was outside with his dad when an airplane flew overhead.
His dad said a peculiar “droning” sound coming from the plane’s engines was caused by the cloud cover and those clouds meant that it would snow in the morning.
Sure enough, 6 inches of snow was on the ground when he woke up, Hughes said.
Today, anybody with a computer can get a forecast at anytime.
And though technology exists to gather weather information from automated gauges, they are large and too obtrusive to be placed in the residential lawns of volunteers like Hughes.
So Hughes and other observers are given thermometers to measure the temperature, metal tubes to collect and measure rainfall and yardsticks to measure snowfall.
The thermometers are housed in a shelter box in his back yard near the tube, which is known as a standard rain gauge, but affectionately called a “rain bucket.”
He calls the NWS every morning with his readings and observations.
“It’s a way of giving something back to the community,” Hughes said.
“It’s something I’m passionate about. I’m called the mountain weatherman. Each of us has something to offer the community. I have some weather skills.”
He said his wife or his son helps out if he’s out of town and he would like his son to take over eventually.
Coblentz said that would fine with him.
That’s because if Hughes decides to retire, the person who takes over has to live within two miles of him and be within 100 feet of the elevation of the Hughes residence in order for the NWS to maintain the records from his readings.
A new set of records will have to be started if the location of the next observer’s home exceeds those limits.
After 30 years, Hughes does not have to look at his records for weather statistics.
He said the average snowfall is 80 inches in the mountains and in 40 inches in Uniontown.
Last year was exceptional with 138 inches in the mountains, but the year before that exceptionally low with only 37 inches.
The record of 164 inches was set in 1994-95.
The average rainfall is 40 inches per season in the mountains, but 54.5 inches have fallen so far this season and a month and half is remaining.
“People say this is a wet year. Yea, it is,” Hughes said, noting that there was above average rainfall every month except of March and April.
One question he can’t answer is: How much snow will fall this winter?
While the amount of snow a particular storm will deliver can be predicted, nobody can accurately predict total snowfall for an upcoming season, he said.
An entertaining newsletter he distributed to his neighbors this year tells them to “make peace with winter.”
It mentions how some people tell him they can predict winter weather by looking at the stripes on woolly-bear caterpillars, the fur on animals and the abundance of acorns.
“Even the most disgruntled woolly worm advocate will enjoy the winter more of they learn to make peace with it,” he wrote.