Crockett's Weatherpeople

After many years Crockett may again have an official weather station. This article was in this morning's West County Times.

Weather watcher revives tradition Crockett's official weather watcher waits for a record-breaking drizzle By Tom Lochner CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Karen "Dejah" Dorantes was set to post Crockett's all-time record for rainfall in a season when wet winter turned to sunny spring this past week, leaving her a fraction of an inch short.
"We just barely missed during this past rainstorm" over Easter weekend, said Dorantes, the official KTVU-TV weather watcher for Crockett since last year. "I thought we'd see the record fall." She's confident it will happen yet -- after all, the 2005-06 rainfall year ends June 30.
But after a record March, which saw 25 days of measurable precipitation in Crockett, and 10 rainy days out of 17 to start April, the climate has taken a turn for the better -- or worse, if you're chasing bad-weather records. A low-pressure system over the Pacific that appeared headed for a weekend Northern California landfall a week ago was falling apart by Friday, making a new record iffy -- for now.

Dorantes is undaunted.
"We will break the record; we're not done with the rain," she said. "We're at 30.26 (inches). We're very close. A quarter of an inch, that's all it's going to take, and the record falls."
"Come on, heavy weather," she coaxed. The record in Crockett's recorded history -- the qualifier is crucial -- is 30.51 inches, set in 1957.

Dorantes' husband, Rick, gave her a weather kit for her 50th birthday last year, rekindling a girlhood passion. "I've always enjoyed meteorology," she said. "It was one of my favorite sciences in high school and junior high school." The gift also revived a lost Crockett weather-watching tradition. From 1918 to 1977, Crockett was an official weather observation station for the U.S. government, said Keith Olsen, historian at the Crockett Historical Museum.
In those days, the official observation station was at C&H Sugar Co. In 1977, the National Weather Service determined the Crockett weather station needed new equipment. Instead of having it replaced, the government designated other stations in the area. The loss was not only Crockett's but science's. "The weather right here is a little different because of the location," Olsen said.

Dorantes agrees. "Crockett's a perfect observation post because it's at the mouth of the Carquinez Strait, just uphill from the Dead Fish (restaurant)" near the shore, she said. "Vallejo's weather station is way over the hills somewhere, in downtown. I'm closer to the water than they are." Soon after she got her weather kit, she called up KTVU Channel 2 and offered to become the Crockett weather-watcher. "They said, 'Sure.'" Her equipment includes a rain gauge and devices to measure wind direction, speed, humidity, air pressure and temperature. She does "Mornings on 2," rising at 4:30 every weekday morning to check her readings and her software, she said. "I e-mail my data in a few times during the broadcast, every few minutes if the weather's changing." She does it in part, she said, because "I felt Crockett was getting kind of ignored. Now, I get my shout out. Now, people know there is a Crockett."

In some future Crockett Meteorology Hall of Fame, Dorantes would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a giant: the late, aptly-named Charlie Wind, who combined weather science with poetry. An instrument technician who retired from C&H Sugar Co. in the 1960s, Wind was Crockett's weatherman for about 30 years, Olsen said. "In the spring, when the swallows came back to the warehouse, Charlie would go through the whole plant and announce, 'Spring has arrived. The swallows have returned,'" Olsen said. "It would be like 'The Swallows of Capistrano,' Olsen said, alluding to the famous 1940 composition by songwriter Leon Rene. Like Capistrano's swallows, Crockett's would return on March 19 -- or around that date, Olsen said.

In an era when records are increasingly accompanied by asterisks, Crockett's, when it finally falls, will come with one, too. "The qualifier is 'recorded' history," Dorantes said.
That excludes 1977 to 2005. There were some wet spells in that span, notably 1981 to 1983, when rains washed out the Carquinez Scenic Drive east of Port Costa, cutting Crockett's direct road link to Martinez. National Weather Service statistics for Martinez show 32.94 inches of rain in the 1981-82 season; 36.28 in 1982-83; 33.85 in 1994-95; and 35.66 in 1997-98.
Could Crockett's 1956-57 total of 30.51 have been beaten in any of those years?
"Since there wasn't any weather observation," Dorantes said, "we'll never know."