Published: September 29, 2008 12:14 am      

Q&A: After 26 years, Jack Kanack grabs first honor for contributions to National Weather Service.

From his home just off Sweeney Street near the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda, Jack Kanack, 47, is busy collecting weather data and filing reports used by the National Weather Service — that is, every day for the past 26 years.

Last week he was presented with the national agency’s John Campanius Holm Award, after dutifully recording the weather as one of 11,700 volunteers called “Cooperative Observers” nationwide.

The volunteers help fill in the gaps in climate records by submitting their data in conjunction with measurements taken at places in Buffalo and the Niagara Falls Air Force Base. His equipment, including thermometers designed to capture the day’s high and low temperatures, a rain gauge and boards used to measuring snowfall were all provided to him by the Weather Service in 1981 when, as a member of the Western New York chapter of a local American Meteorological Society club, he expressed interest in starting his own weather station.

The club still operates, with 22 members who meet once a month, setting up guest speakers to talk about the weather. Kanack, however, is one of only a few private individuals whose observations are considered official.

One way he makes a living is as an expert consultant in legal matters or business where justice or a considerable cost factor hinges on predicting or explaining the climate.

The award goes to 25 people each year and recipients must have put in at least 25 years of service to the program. It is significant that he was selected in his first year of eligibility and he said many people wait much longer.

Kanack, who is clearly not in it for the publicity but always eager to talk about the weather, shared some of his story for this week’s Q&A.

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QUESTION: What has been your involvement with the Cooperative Weather Observers program?

ANSWER: I was in high school and I always wanted to have a weather station. In 1979, my last year in high school, (the local National Weather Service) started up a weather club originally formed in 1949. They rejuvenated it. I got to know a couple of people at the Weather Service and I expressed my interest in starting up a weather station and in 1981 they gave me some equipment. By 1982 I was ready to go. This has been going on every day, every month from approximately 1982 to the present.

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Q: Do you have any formal education in this area?

A: I went to Buffalo State College, graduated in 1983, and my degree is in Geo Science. It’s one third meteorology, one third astronomy and one third geology. The people who took it basically said they were rock stars in weather.

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Q: How has your work benefited the city and region over the years?

A: In 1999 we had 50 inches of snow from Jan. 2 to Jan. 16 and toward the end we couldn’t put the snow anywhere and so Mayor Dawson and the (City of North Tonawanda) were taking Bobcat loaders and clearing the snow at the corners — they used my report to recoup the federal aid money after President Clinton declared it a disaster area — the city had exhausted the snow-fighting budget for that year.

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Q: What sort of equipment you use?

A: All the equipment is supplied by the Weather Service. They have people who come out and maintain it. It didn’t cost me a thing. There’s a maximum temperature thermometer, a minimum temperature thermometer, a rain gauge and snow board for measuring (snowfall).

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Q: Are you accustomed to living according to the weather?

A: I’m always looking at the weather and trying to figure out, for example, what would be the best day to cut the lawn, what would be the best time. Usually when I’m done and I’m putting the lawn mower away you hear the thunder crackling in the distance — I usually beat it.

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Q: You like to live dangerously when testing your predictions?

A: It’s everything like that — taking bike rides. My pool, usually around Labor Day they’ll put out an eight to 14-day outlook — what the temperature is going to be and what the precipitation is going to be. If the temperature is going to be below normal, I’ll just close up the pool. I won’t waste the chemicals or the electricity. So in that case I’m saving time and money.

One year I did lose the gamble. I closed the pool on the 18th and the outlook said it was going to be cooler than normal. It ended up being warmer than normal. I was kind of bummed out about that.

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Q: Is saving people time and money the reason lawyers and contractors might hire you as a weather consultant?

A: I have an Internet site called csiweather.com. I just try to help people solve their weather problems. It’s kind of a living, yea, that’s working with lawyers and testifying — you never find out the results (of court cases). You get all sorts of strange requests. You work with farmers, contractors. Say you’re going to pour a concrete driveway. What if it’s raining 30 miles away and there is a storm moving in and you don’t know about it. You hire somebody like me and you don’t pour the driveway and you save time and money. That’s just a hypothetical.

I got a call from somebody who put on a roof, and the roof was guaranteed unless there was a sustained wind of 35 miles per hour all day. The only places that (record) that are the weather station in Buffalo and the Niagara Falls Air Force Base, and not much in between. The only thing he could use for his defense was that wind data.

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Q: Do you record wind data?

A: If you try to find wind data there’s a total lack of it. That’s in the works to get, besides the precipitation and the temperatures, the actual wind data and the barometric pressure. If you feel the wind on your face it’s four to seven miles per hour. If you see smoke and it’s a slight drift — it’s one to three mile-per-hour wind. You kind of get the hang of it.

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Q: Should we worry about changing weather patterns? Are weather events more intense?

A: My unifying theory is that it is global warming. I audited a course from a professor at Buffalo State College and I got the report. The water is a couple of degrees warmer. So instead of getting a category one hurricane, you’re getting a category two hurricane.

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Q: You have a weather theory about the Buffalo Bills?

A: The last time we had this much rain in a summer it was 1992, so we’ll see what happens.