Record Weather

Everybody loves weather facts--just ask Barry Keim. As state climatologist, he fields calls all the time from people looking for odd bits of weather information. But those people usually aren't meteorologists--they're more likely to be lawyers.

"There will be a slip-and-fall accident and a lawsuit, and they'll need to know whether there could have been ice in the parking lot that day," he says by way of example. He gets similar calls from police, the public defender's office and insurance companies, and he knows of at least one murder case where weather records played a role. "It's almost forensic meteorology--reconstructing the scene after the fact," he observes.

But it's not only crime and litigation bringing people his way; the research fraternity also uses his records, which stretch back a century. "I provide data to people who are researching something where climate plays a role. Weather impacts so many other things; it links me up to a lot of people," he says. For example, civil engineering students looking at the expansion and contraction of concrete on bridges want to compare readings on bridge-to-air temperatures for a particular period of time. Or an entomologist needs weather data to find out if temperature triggers metamorphosis in a particular insect.

And then there are the barroom bets. "I get calls from people saying, 'We have a case of beer riding on this,' and they want to know what's the coldest temperature, highest wind, things like that," Keim says. "I get more of those than you might think."

Here are a few weather "biggest hits" from Durham, courtesy of Keim's records:

Maximum temperature:
102 degrees on July 22, 1926 and Aug. 10, 1949

Minimum temperature:
-35 degrees on Jan. 31, 1935

Largest one-day snowfall:
18.0 inches on March 16, 1937

Largest one-day rainfall:
6.49 inches on Oct. 11, 1954

Winter with most below-zero days:
Winter of 1980-1981 with 28

Earliest one-inch or greater snowstorm:
Oct. 11, 1979

Latest one-inch or greater snowstorm:
April 21, 1972

Latest date for the first measurable snow:
Jan. 16, 2000

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