National Weather Service representatives presented Newcastle resident Arlene Cole with the Edward H. Stoll Award for 50 years of collecting weather data Thursday, Aug. 13.
Cole, 85, is a cooperative weather observer, a volunteer who collects data about precipitation and temperature, as well as other information, daily and reports monthly to the weather service.
“It is part of my life now and I would miss it if I didn’t do it,” Cole said. “I have no plans on giving it up.”
Cole can record temperature data from the comfort of her home, but must venture out in all kinds of weather to gather data on rain and snowfall.
“I have no trouble there,” she said of going out in the snow. “I go out the front door. It’s not far.”
National Weather Service Director Dr. Louis Uccellini expressed his gratitude to Cole in a letter.
“Cooperative weather observers like you serve a critical role by contributing to our knowledge and understanding of the local, national, and global climate,” Uccellini said in the letter. “Your observations over the last 50 years prove your deep level of commitment to public service and are a lasting and important contribution to the NWS, research, and private-sector communities.
“More specifically, they have helped us to understand and solve problems related to climate change, commerce, transportation, and agriculture. Thank you for your dedication and faithful service over so many years.”
Cole joins a small group of cooperative weather observers with a half-century of service. The National Weather Service representatives could only call to mind one other in the region the Gray office covers, a woman in the Northwestern Maine town of Eustis.
“I’ve always been interested in the weather,” Cole said, since her childhood on a farm in Jefferson. A Jefferson woman, Nancy Rollins, gathered weather data back then. When Rollins died, her husband recommended Cole to the weather service.
The weather service representatives also brought gifts, including a new pen to record her observations – Cole does not have Internet access and continues to record statistics by hand on cards she mails to the weather service – and several other items.
The namesake of the award, Edward H. Stoll, was a cooperative weather observer in Elwood, Neb. from 1905 until his death in 1981. He was the first observer to receive an award for 50 years of service.
In 2012, Cole received the weather service’s Thomas Jefferson Award for “unusual and outstanding accomplishment in the field of meteorological observations in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, pioneer weather observer and third president of the United States.”
Just five of the service’s 11,000-plus cooperative weather observers receive the Thomas Jefferson Award – its most prestigious for the volunteer observers – each year.
