05032 - Bethel, Vt.
Virginia Perkins of Bethel is a volunteer weather observer for the National Weather Service, one of more than 11,000 members in a country-wide network established in 1890. A former dairy farmer who declined to give her age, she took over in 1999 from her brother Vic, who held the post for more than forty years. The following is an edited interview.
I'm not all that interested in the weather, not as much as some people. They send out magazines, and I’m afraid I don’t read them the way I should.
Of course, in Vermont, everyone talks about the weather anyway. Whether you like it or not, it influences you. Very much so.
Once a day, I check the precipitation, the depth of the snow, the previous day’s high and low, and the present temperature. I have to call it in by 7 o’clock in the morning.
There was a man down in Bethel that once did it, I don’t know, maybe fifty years ago. I guess he retired. My brother Vic, he was the postmaster in Bethel at the time, he saw this man sending in his report once a month and they got to talking about it. He must have asked Vic if he’d like to do it, so Vic took over.
Vic won an award for what he did, I don’t know what year. When they gave him that, it was 40 years he had done it. He had to go up to Burlington and they presented him with it.
You know the weather girl up there on channel 3, Sharon Meyer? She even sent him her picture. She wrote, “no one deserves it more.” I don’t think he lived too long after that. He died in June 1999.
He hadn’t been well, and I’d been doing the best I could to help him. Now I got stuck with it. Of course, I had all the equipment and I knew how to do it because I’d seen him doing it forever. So they asked me if I’d take it over.
I don’t think I would have volunteered for it if I hadn’t known anything about it. But so long as I was well acquainted with it, I said, “Yeah, I’ll keep doing it,” as it gets me up in the morning.
I’m not much of a deep sleeper anyway, so I’m usually awake. This morning I was awake about 4:30. That comes from being a farmer.
It’s been about eight, going on nine years now. I’ll keep doing it so long as I can get out there. Like milking cows, it’s just something you do.