Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Teeter Honored For Service

Prescott's John W. Teeter, who provides weather information to the National Weather Service, was honored Thursday, by the NWS at the Kiwanis Club's weekly meeting.

Several members of the NWS were on hand from the Shreveport, La. and Little Rock offices to pay tribute to Teeter for his 31 years of dedication in providing vital weather information from Nevada County.

Teeter works with the NWS's cooperative program, making sure the organization has accurate information on the area's weather. Lee Harris, a regional director, said the cooperative program has been around for several years and depends strictly on volunteer effort for its success.

He said the volunteers gather, record the data and submit it daily to the NWS. This is all done, Harris said, using regular people with no special training. "Without them, many parts of Arkansas would have no weather history."

As it stands, though, there are more than 11,000 observers in networking in the United States today. In Arkansas, Harris said, many of these volunteers also act as weather spotters in time of potentially severe weather.

These spotters, he continued, give ground truth observation, which is then used for weather watches and warnings being posted in a given area.

Daily, however, the information gathered by these volunteers is utilized by television for weather reports.

Harris said accurate weather information is vital for many areas, including architecture as architects study weather patterns in an area to help them design buildings to tolerate extremes in weather.

This data is also invaluable in having the proper size heating and air conditioning unit installed in a business or industry, as well as a private home.

And, of course, accurate weather information is a must for those in the agricultural industry, as they use the knowledge for planting and harvesting.

In talking about the equipment used by the volunteers, Harris said temperature senors are utilized, as are rain gauges. He had some fun with the crowd talking about the evaporation pan being a "high tech" piece of equipment. In truth, the evaporation pan is nothing more than a pan of water sitting outside with the water level measured to learn the evaporation level of the day.

Once Harris finished his talk, Marion Kuykendall discussed the Holm's Award to be presented to Teeter, with Harry Hassel making the presentation.

Teeter, given the opportunity to say a few words, told those on hand it was thought, six or eight years ago, the ground observers would be a thing of the past because of the new technology available and being developed. "We found out there are as many potholes on the information superhighway as there are on Interstate 30," he said. "Nothing beats a man in the field."

Along with the award from the NWS, Teeter was also given gifts from the club.