July 25, 1983
Official weather watcher
If you took all the rain gauges operated by the United States
Weather Service and lined them up side-by-side, they would not
even cover a football field.
That, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln geography professor Bruce Kopplin, "isn't a very big area for measuring precipitation for the entire country."
That is where Pat Gross comes in.
Gross, 42, is president of Triangle Finance in Wayne. He is also the official field observer in Wayne for the U.S. Weather
Service.
The field observers, located throughout the country, collect and record data for the Weather Service, and play an integral part
in making precipitation estimates and flood forecasts.
Such data has been kept in Wayne since 1914. Gross, who has
been a field observer since 1964, receives no money for his duties.
"I enjoy it though, I really get caught up in it," he said.
Gross mails precipitation data to the Weather Service once a month, but immediately sends work in the event of heavy rains, wind or hail.
UNL's professor Kopplin said the field observers are in a indispensable part of weather information gathering.
