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6 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2015 By Leighton McLaughlin "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." ~ Charles Dudley Warner Well, Four Seasons resident Dale Beckes does do something about the weather. He records it and transmits it to the Four Seasons website. The temperature, humidity, rainfall, barometric pressure, wind directions, wind speed and dew point are all noted. He has a miniature weather station in his back yard that sends new data every five minutes. If you want up-to-the- minute, local weather conditions, log onto the home page and there it is. Beckes' station is surprisingly small for such a powerful device — about the size of a dinner plate. It is certified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - the outfit that runs the U.S. Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center. He also sends real-time data to the Weather Underground, a private company that collects information from more than 100,000 stations like his and analyzes it to provide forecasts for a variety of clients. (This Weather Underground is not to be confused with the now defunct radical group of the same name that arose during the Viet Nam War and advocated overthrow of the federal government. Both were founded at the University of Michigan, but the new group is a lot different; it forecasts weather and doesn't throw bombs.) Beckes is well qualified for his role as a weatherman. "I was always fascinated by the weather as a kid," he said. "I was known to run from the dinner table to watch the weather — snowstorms and thunderstorms." He has a bachelor's degree in meteorology from Lyndon State College in Vermont and a wealth of experience in high tech. His first job after college was as a meteorologist for a company in Palo Alto called OceanRoutes. The company routed sea-going ships to avoid bad weather, shorten their time at sea and reduce costs. But there was a problem. "The captains of these ships were old salts. They didn't need some kid in Palo Alto telling them how to get to Tokyo," said Beckes. "So they went their own way, sometimes hitting heavy weather that washed containers overboard or delayed their arrival, or both. In 1980's dollars, each day at sea cost the shipping company $25,000 — so they would sue the captains. It happened all the time," he said. One of his jobs was to "postcast," he said — figure out what weather the ship would have encountered if the OceanRoutes course had been followed. His "postcasts" were used as evidence in the lawsuits against the captains. He soon discovered, however, that meteorologists weren't paid as well as comparably qualified scientists in other fields. "It was because of all the retired military meteorologists. They already had a good income from their military pensions, so they didn't need much money to live well," he said. He jumped at the chance in 1982 when he was offered a job with Atari, the video game and consumer electronics company. Watching Our Four Seasons continued on the next page

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