Arizona thunderstorms won’t sneak up on you, but they can be surprising in their beauty and shocking in their intensity.
The unexpectedly fascinating character of Arizona skies unites a motley crew of amateur meteorologists under the Weather Underground umbrella.
“What’s cool about Weather Underground is the network, so even though one station may not be properly calibrated, the network will give you the feel of the overall weather,” says Bryan Snider, who has been contributing data to the system for three years.
Not to be confused with the radical group from the 1960s, Weather Underground is a collection of data from more than 100,000 official weather sites and home-based weather stations run by weather enthusiasts or hobbyists. WU takes readings every three seconds from these private stations and airports like Sky Harbor and Ak-Chin Regional to create summaries and forecasts.
There are eight private stations in the Maricopa area.
The “hobbyists” come from all walks of life, but at some point each became so interested in the weather he wanted to be part of gauging it.
“It’s fascinating to be able to know that other people can use the data to see what’s happening,” says Eric Summerville, who has a station at his Hidden Valley home.
Summerville has been a weather hobbyist since junior high school. He became involved with Weather Underground after seeing how a friend was using that weather data as a private pilot.
He set himself up with a weather station and broadband at the same time in 2005.
“The monsoon season is kind of interesting,” he says. “There will be no rain, and suddenly the weather pattern will flip. Arizona tends to be more constant; where we have monsoons and it’s hot and humid with occasional surprises, that’s the winters back East. They’re unrelenting.”
A retired pharmacist, Summerville has been working as a science and tech writer for computers and high-tech gadgetry, including a job with Microchip.
“I like to see how things work and explain it to other people,” he says.
That includes the Davis Instruments ProVantage equipment he uses for weather data.
“It’s a semi-pro piece of equipment,” he says. “It’s reliable and long-lasting, and I got it cheap.”
In particular, he enjoys Weather Underground’s WunderMap that maps weather through local terrain, “so you can see in real time if it’s going to skip you or hit you head on.”
Summerville is a self-described “techni-geek” who has been part of a local amateur radio club. Bryan Snider, who lives in Cobblestone Farms, is a professional photographer and a storm-chaser.
His fascination with the weather started when he was a videographer at Hillcrest High School in Springfield, Missouri. He knew being a meteorologist would involve studying “weather theory” and other fields “beyond what I wanted to do.” But shooting weather events for television was right up his alley.
As a freelancer, he shoots weather landscapes and storm calendars. He also does time-lapse videography. His recent footage of a storm over Tucson went viral when weather pros and buffs realized it included a rare recording of a microburst. He is receiving requests for copies or permission to use the footage in an educational setting.
“It was cool to have captured something that made a difference,” he says. See his work on his website BryanSnider.com.
Born in New Mexico, Snider likes the open skies of the Southwest, where storms can be seen coming from miles away instead of being hidden by trees. “If you want to have an idea of the forecast, just look out the window,” he says.
While some weather station owners set up their equipment in their backyard, Snider has his attached to his roof to get the most accurate readings for his location.
Where equipment is placed depends on the micro-environment of the neighborhood, the best place to capture wind speeds and avoid the misleading temperatures of direct sunlight. Snider likes to see the “ground truth” versus what the radar may be saying.
When he and his wife moved to Maricopa from the Midwest, “literally, it was love at first sight,” he says.
His in-laws gave him a weather station three Christmases ago.
Snider wanted to be a pilot, but health issues sidelined that. David Durst earned his private pilot’s license in 1988. Today, he has flight simulation software on his computer in his Villages home.
Durst can tap into weather patterns anywhere in the world and fly through storm systems in the safety of his home office. His wife suggested he take over a room of their house with a full flight simulator.
As much as he likes flying, weather was a first love.
“Ever since sixth-grade camp up in the mountains, I wanted to be a weatherperson,” Durst says.
He and his wife moved to Maricopa from Chandler in 2004. He is a Level 3 support at a global communications company.
He says his brother has a Wunderground station in Las Vegas. Durst found it to be one of the easiest sites to hook up to and communicate. He uses his own data for his own edification, but he will occasionally check the readings from the other Maricopa stations.
“You can see the wind sort of blowing in a circle sometimes from their readings,” Durst says.
Jeff Price, whose weather station is in his Homestead yard, got involved in weather data by necessity. After retired in 1991 at the age of 51, he hit the road in an RV.
“Traveling around the West, the weather was very concerning to me all the time,” Price says.
He moved to Maricopa in 2009 and bought a Davis off Amazon in 2013. He got involved with the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) to distribute the data.
Weather Underground is just one of hundreds of organizations that use CWOP information.
In August, WU started its own live show weekdays on The Weather Channel, using data from personal weather stations to “appeal to everyone’s inner weather geek.”
As another gizmo guy, Price is also part of the HAM radio crowd. His Davis setup is hard-wired at the house, and he does keep an eye on the data from other Maricopa Weather Underground members.
“If people are using my data,” he says, “it makes it worthwhile, I guess.”
This story appeared in the Fall Edition of InMaricopa the Magazine.
