Sands honored by the National Weather Service

Recognizing 23 years of dedicated service, NOAA National Weather Service officials have named San Marcos resident Steve Sands as a 2008 recipient of the agency's John Campanius Holm Award.

This year's coveted Holm Award is being presented to 26 people who have performed exceptional volunteer service as a weather observer.

Joe Arellano, Jr., meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio forecast office, presented the award during a noon ceremony on Friday at the San Marcos Electric Utility office.

“Cooperative observers are the bedrock of weather data collection and analysis," said Jack Hayes, director of the NWS.

"Satellites, high-speed computers, mathematical models and other technological breakthroughs have brought great benefits to the nation in terms of better forecasts and warnings. But, without the century-long accumulation of accurate weather observations taken by volunteer observers, scientists could not begin to adequately describe the climate of the United States," he said.

Sands began taking temperature and precipitation observations in 1985. Recently, he wrote a computer program to gather, file and enter weather information data into his National Weather Service reporting form.

The data is quality controlled and then e-mailed to the Austin/San Antonio forecast office. He also provides computer assistance to other cooperative observers.

He owns and operates his monitoring equipment and provides the weather data to the Lower Colorado River Authority, other agencies, universities and businesses. He provides weather information to the city of San Marcos and the San Marcos Public Library affording citizens the opportunity to directly examine the local weather data. The San Marcos River Foundation also uses his data to keep up with rainfall.

Sands on Friday retired as the Senior Energy Efficiency Representative for the San Marcos Electric Utility department. He is an active leader in the local community and his church.

Weather records retain their importance as time goes by. Long and continuous records provide an accurate picture of a locale's normal weather, and give climatologists and others a basis for predicting future trends. These data are invaluable for scientists studying floods, droughts and heat and cold waves. At the end of each month, observers mail their records to the National Climatic Data Center for publication in "Climatological Data" or "Hourly Precipitation Data."

The National Weather Service Cooperative Weather Observer Program has given scientists and researchers continuous observational data since the program's inception more than a century ago. Today, nearly 12,000 volunteer observers participate in the nationwide program to provide daily reports on temperature, precipitation and other weather factors such as snow depth, river levels and soil temperature.

The first extensive network of cooperative stations was set up in the 1890s as a result of an 1890 act of Congress that established the U.S. Weather Bureau. Many of the stations have even longer histories. John Campanius Holm's weather records, taken without benefit of instruments in 1644 and 1645, were the earliest known recorded observations in the United States.

Many historic figures have also maintained weather records, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson maintained an almost unbroken record of weather observations between 1776 and 1816, and Washington took weather observations just a few days before he died. The Jefferson and Holm awards are named for these weather observation pioneers.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

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