The indefatigable weatherman
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could stay Richard G. Hendrickson from the swift completion of his appointed rounds. For 85 years, they WERE his appointed rounds.
A retired poultry and dairy farmer who died Jan. 9 at 103, Hendrickson was the longest-serving volunteer weather watcher in the United States. Twice a day, every day since he was 17, in brash weather and benign, he gathered the data from the small weather station on his property in Bridgehampton, N.Y., on the South Fork of Long Island.
Hendrickson was a member of the Cooperative Observer Program of what is now the National Weather Service. Established in 1890, the program entails a benevolent network of citizen spies, who serve as the eyes, ears and noses of the federal government as they record high and low temperatures, wind speed and direction, rainfall, snowfall and other statistics on the nation’s coasts, in the mountains, on the prairies and in between.
Their work underpins local and national weather reports, boating and aviation forecasts, flood and hurricane warnings, and emergency preparedness plans of all kinds and, of course, farming.
“I’ve been a farmer all my life,” Hendrickson told The Associated Press in 2014. “You don’t cut hay today and let it dry in the field if you know it’s going to rain tomorrow.”
Of the 8,700 observers now serving, Hendrickson was the acknowledged master spy, having begun his work in1930 when the agency was known as the U.S. Weather Bureau and the boss of the boss of the man who ran the agency was Herbert Hoover. It was a time before hurricanes had names. His work harked back to Benjamin Franklin, who published Poor Richard’s Almanack throughout the mid-18th century, and Thomas Jefferson, who kept assiduous records of the weather over four decades from the late 18th century to the early 19th.
His efforts helped chart the country’s meteorological history as it played out on the East End of Long Island from July 1, 1930, the day Hendrickson took his first reading, until this past September, when he put down his instruments, his rotary phone and his carbon paper and, on his 103rd birthday, reluctantly retired.