The Weatherman
People driving north on Grove Street in Glenwood may or may not notice the important equipment planted in the ground at the corner of Fifth Street.
It is quiet and unassuming, much like homeowner Larry Pratt. These two pieces of equipment, a thermometer and a rain gauge, however, are vital to the lives of southwest Iowa residents.
The National Weather Service recently recognized Pratt for 20 years of outstanding volunteer service. Pratt serves as the cooperative weather observer in Glenwood. He is one of 11,000 cooperative weather observers nationally, although he is the only volunteer in southwest Iowa. For his efforts, he received a plaque and a lapel pin, but not by the National Weather Service representatives themselves.
“They actually called and wanted to know if I’d be at work that day,” Pratt said. “I guess I missed them by 10 minutes.”
When he got to work that January day, his award was waiting for him. Pratt didn’t mind that he missed them, he simply enjoys what he does.
“I get to record the daily high and low, and precipitation at the time of observation,” Pratt said as he moved from the couch to the floor so a small brown poodle named Lizzie could snuggle between his knees. “Then I let the weather service know the results. It used to be complicated – it was all by touch-tone phone, so you had to enter everything manually. Now it’s all done by computer program.”
It’s a job that was essentially thrown at him, but he doesn’t mind. Ole Olson of Glenwood formerly handled the recordings for southwest Iowa. He handed over the reigns to Pratt in 1995.
“He said, ‘There you go!’,” Pratt said. “I rather liked it.”
Pratt would actually like to get more involved. He would like to help predict wind-speed, both for the community’s sake and his own. Knowing wind speed would help with his hobbies, including flying model airplanes and riding his 2005 Yamaha Roadstar motorcycle. He and his wife, Mary, also like to garden. Volunteering, especially helping with weather-related issues, came naturally to Pratt.
He works in waste water management at Glenwood Municipal Utilities, which has provided for the weather observer for many years. He came to Glenwood from Elmwood, Neb., where he worked as a water treatment plant operator. At that time, Pratt also served on the volunteer fire and rescue squad.
“Every time there was a tornado, you’d go out,” Pratt said. “As soon as you saw one, you’d get the heck out of there.”
Pratt records the weather and precipitation between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. seven days a week. If a snowstorm is forecasted, Pratt will check it repeatedly, then contact the weather service to keep them updated.
“It only takes a few minutes a day,” Pratt said. Those few minutes of his time means a lot of people stay safe. “He’s behind the scenes, but it’s very vital,” said Larry Hurst, director of Mills County emergency management and homeland security. “Some of the data he has given me goes a long way towards getting presidential decorations.”
“Presidential decorations,” to the average citizen, means emergency funds from the government. When Pratt sends Hurst information about bad weather, Hurst goes into action. He arranges for plows to remove snow, or sandbags to secure levies. He secures money from the county, then the state, to make sure people are safe from flooding and damaging snowstorms.
“If the governor determines this is bad enough, we go to the federal government,” Hurst said. “His (Pratt’s) data plays a large part in that.”
Pratt shares his data with KETV Channel 7 and The Opinion-Tribune.
“Bill Randby called and said they were starting a weather watchers program about 15 years ago,” Pratt said. “So I started recording the weather for them, too.”
“Larry has been great,” said Randby, chief meteorologist at KETV. “He’s called us every time there’s a weather problem. He’s just a nice, gentle giant.”
Pratt said the worst weather he’s seen over the years came in October 1991.
“We had that ice storm on Halloween,” Pratt said. “We went three days with no power. I was with People Service at the time, so we had to make sure there was water in the towers. We were hauling generators and babysitting water plants. That was almost a 40-hour weekend.”
Pratt, at the time, wasn’t recording weather. Hurst can recall several times when Pratt’s information proved vital to the community, but one time sticks vividly in his mind.
“In 2011, during the summer flooding, we once had nine inches of rain overnight,” Hurst said. “We were predicted to get even more rain that night, so we had to stop a train because we were losing rock on the tracks due to all the water. The info I got from Larry helped greatly to evade the problem – I was able to get the train stopped and I believe the railroad had to come out and inspect things before it could go through again.”
While stopping a train sounds like a job for Superman, Pratt doesn’t consider himself such. He’s simply doing a job. He doesn’t need credit or accolades.
“I used to get about $36 every three months,” Pratt chuckled. “It’s been about five years since that happened. The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) defunded it.”
“They used to have an annual picnic at Channel 7,” Pratt said later. “They quit doing that a few years ago.”
Pratt has stuck with it because he still enjoys the job. “You have a closer relationship with the cycles of the weather,” Pratt said.
“You pay attention to it more.” Although he has 20 years of data and pays attention, Pratt is strictly an amateur when it comes to actually predicting the weather.
“The biggest con is that people will argue with you,” Pratt said. “They’ll say, ‘well, we got 10 inches, not two,’ or something. I’ve even had Homeland Security mad at me, ’cause we had six inches of snow here, and they had 18-20 inches 10 miles south of us. They couldn’t get any money based on my data.”
The reason for that was because of Glenwood’s location. “Right now, he’s the only person in the county doing this,” Hurst said.
“My goal would be to get one to the north and one to the east. We’re talking to the state climatologist to try and get that.” “Glenwood is weird, because a lot of weather systems go around us,” Pratt said. “It must be because of the bluffs.”
Knowing his hobby, people often ask Pratt to predict the weather.
“All I can do is tell you how badly the weathermen lied about it,” Pratt said with a smile. “Actually, they’re usually pretty close.”