Volunteer weather watcher's service more than a drop in the bucket

Not much passes for big news in a small, quiet town like Hatch, but the rural Southern Utah community shares one thing in common with people in cities of all shapes and sizes.

They like to talk about the weather there.

“It’s an ice breaker,” said Randy Graham, the National Weather Service’s meteorologist in charge, Thursday after a trip down to the state’s hot Dixie region from his Salt Lake City office to pay tribute to a bit of Hatch heritage.

Graham, accompanied by weather service observation program and cooperative program leader Lisa Verzella, visited the Sterling Court assisted living center in St. George to thank Layton Barney for decades of volunteer service in tracking precipitation data.

Barney, who moved to the assisted living center last year, views the weather as something more than just a way to interrupt the silence between two strangers.

“It’s a pleasure, really, to serve your country. This country’s been good to me,” he said.

Barney understands something of service, heeding his country’s call straight out of high school to join Patton’s Army during World War II, first as an infantry machine-gunner in Germany and then-Czechoslovakia, followed by a stint in the South Pacific that landed him in the first occupational force in Japan after the deployment of the Atomic bomb.

Barney obtained a university education in Cedar City and at Brigham Young University after the war, then returned to Hatch and was appointed postmaster. In addition to operating a service station that provided a variety of merchandise to locals and Bryce Canyon National Park tourists throughout the years, Barney was known as the go-to person in town for precipitation data during 42 years of daily vigil.

As an unpaid cooperative program volunteer, Barney began the continuous routine in 1974 and only passed his gauge on to a new generation of weather watchers last year.

“We definitely consider you a weather patriot,” Verzella said.

Barney didn’t need his decades of experience to provide an assessment of the difference between St. George and Hatch weather, though.

“It’s warm,” Barney said of the recent spate of 110 degree temperatures at his new home.

Barney was one of 100 Utah volunteer monitors affiliated with the NWS and among some 10,000 nationwide. Data collected by the group supplies a national computer model used by weather officials, but Barney's contribution was no mere drop in the bucket.

“We have a good history of real dedicated volunteers,” Graham said as he presented Barney with the John Campanius Holm Award and the text of a citation issued by Hatch’s mayor.

Verzella said that to be nominated for the award and then pass review by regional and national committees, someone has to have been a monitor for at least 20 years and to have provided a real quality of service.

Three of this year’s 25 national honorees are from Utah – Graham and Verzella visited a former volunteer in Castle Dale on Wednesday, and one in Wellington last month to present similar awards.

“I can’t imagine doing it myself, because I could never be at my house at the same time every day,” Graham said.

Barney’s son Craig was a backup on days when Barney couldn’t take the measurements, he added.

“Sometimes there’s a lot of snow. … You have to bring that bucket in and put it on the stove and melt it down so you can measure the amount of moisture,” Craig said. “Everybody in the area would ask him, every time it would rain, ‘How much rain did we get?’ Everyone knew he did it and used him as a resource.”

Barney’s daughter, JoAnn Ipson of St. George, said Barney’s grandchildren knew better than to play with the official rain gauge.

“(The measurements) had to be precise. He was very meticulous about that,” she said.

Barney said the gauge could be a conversation piece with people who stopped into the gas station on their way through town.

“I had it up in my business and so many tourists come by and they wanted to know what that was. I’d tell them it was a urinal,” he said, slipping into a folksy vernacular. “Some of them come back and said, ‘You’d have to be an awful tall man.’”

Graham and Verzella said the measurements are taken to do more than simply satisfy someone’s curiosity.

“For agriculture, especially in the formative years, that was huge information. Local farmers could plan their crops around it,” Verzella said.

More:Hot, windy weather drives Brian Head fire, prompts evacuations

“Taking daily observations serves many purposes for us. One is it creates a climatological record at the location so you can go back over time and see how a climate’s changing,” Graham added.

“But it’s also important for us as forecasters,” he said. “The more observations we can get (from a region), the better we get.”

Barney said he also would occasionally get calls from individuals involved in lawsuits who needed to verify weather information on a given date as part of their cases.

Graham said Barney is in great company historically, noting that Thomas Jefferson and his son were involved in weather observation for about the same amount of time. And Benjamin Franklin was a pioneer of meteorology, helping to establish the transience of weather systems, he said.

Verzella joked that she tried to get Barney to stay on long enough to beat the record of his predecessor, one J.H. Burrows, who was Hatch’s first weather observer from 1915 until Barney took over six decades later.

“Most of the people that are involved in the Weather Service didn’t get there on accident,” Graham said. “Our mission is to protect lives and property and enhance the nation’s economy. … It’s a very dedicated group that really believes in that mission.”

Follow reporter Kevin Jenkins on Twitter, @SpectrumJenkins. Contact him at 435-674-6253.