All in the timing: tracking the weather - Amherst record keeper retiring after 14 years

By Bob Dunn
Staff Writer

Published on July 14, 2006

After spending almost a decade and a half recording Amherst's weather, Virginia White has decided to get out and enjoy some of it.

White, 71, is leaving her position as keeper and recorder of daily weather figures for Amherst College after 14 years - work she has done as part of her job in the biology department, where she has taught for 33 years. She'll be leaving that position as well.

'It's time to retire,' she said.

Caroline Goutte, chairwoman of the biology department at Amherst College, said White's contribution will be missed.

'She's incredibly loyal,' Goutte said. 'There's nobody who does that kind of work these days.'

Goutte said the weather station is maintained locally and is not affiliated with an organization like the National Weather Service. White did, however, honor requests for information on local weather from all over the country, said Goutte.

'Addictive' chore

Weather data collection on the Amherst College campus has a long history.

The first to collect such information was Ebenezer Snell, a member of Amherst's class of 1822, its first graduating class.

He began collecting data in 1835 while teaching mathematics and natural philosophy at the college and did so for 40 years, according to the weather station's Web site.

White took over the weather recording duties from Philip Ives, after he died in 1992. He had been cataloguing daily weather observations since 1948.

When she took on the job, White, considered herself only two or three years away from retirement and not a permanent replacement for Ives.

She changed her mind once she started collecting the data on a daily basis and found it interesting enough to put off retirement for a while.

For years she has written a weekly summary of the area's weather for the Amherst Bulletin; she said farewell to her readers in the June 30 issue.

'It sort of becomes addictive,' said White, who plans to continue collecting data until her as yet unnamed replacement takes over.

After that, she says, 'I'll probably travel a little and take time to do things at home that I haven't had time for.'

White lives with her husband, Bradford, and has three children and six grandchildren.

Weather, day by day

White says she has no training as a meteorologist and merely considers herself a recordkeeper.

She records the minute day-to-day changes that occur, as well as Amherst's snowiest and wettest years on record.

'I usually do a brief description of the day, too,' White said.

According to White's records, 2005 had the most precipitation, with 61.42 inches total. The yearly average over the last 58 years has been 46.1 inches.

The greatest amount of snowfall in Amherst was recorded in the winter of 1995-1996 with a total of 105.9 inches, more than doubling the average snowfall of 50 inches.

There's an automated system at the station now, but White still insists on checking it daily.

'The machines don't always work,' she said.

White's handwritten records for the last eight years are viewable at the weather station's Web site www.amherst.edu/~weather/.

Weather watchers

The college is working on a new Web site that will display a broader range of data and record more of it automatically, White said.

Weather data means more to people who rely on it than simply whether to bring a jacket when they leave the house, according to White.

'I was surprised by the number of people that were interested in the data and the number of people that used the data,' she said.

White says that she's been asked to supply weather data to everyone from farmers who want to know when to start planting their crops to insurance investigators who needed to know if it was cold enough on a particular night for a section of road to freeze and cause an accident.

After she retires, White expects she will check the weather station's Web site.

'I won't be going down to measure the snow, though,' she said. 'That's not always fun.'

Robert Dunn can be reached at rdunn@gazettenet.com