UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 13, Page 3
November 30, 1995
Geography prof. serves as state's top weather watcher

     Along with teaching and doing research, Daniel Leathers,
geography, has a third job: He is the official climatologist of the
state of Delaware.
     The state climatologist is a service position that requires an
appointment by the governor, he said, and an appointee's credentials
must be approved by the National Weather Service.
     What exactly does a state climatologist do?
      According to Leathers, public contact is an important part of
his job, and he responds to a variety of inquiries.
     "The majority of what we do is fill data requests for the general
public," Leathers said, "Along with that is media work and research on
weather conditions in the Delmarva area."
     Leathers spends a lot of his time working on the free service of
digging out the information requested and putting it into the proper
format. Because the demand for information is increasing, he soon may
have to hire an assistant to keep up with the demand.
     "I receive a lot of calls from the public," he said. For example,
Leathers recalled a phone call from a woman asking him for a place to
move where it doesn't rain as much as in Delaware. "After she
relocated," Leathers said, "she sent me a letter thanking me for my
good advice."
     Currently, Leathers is working with a student on an undergraduate
thesis about severe weather across the Delmarva Peninsula. He also
gathered a tremendous amount of information for the governor's drought
commission, which was active during the past summer.
     After the severe drought of the summer, is Leathers able to
predict any weather trend for the upcoming winter?
     "No, you can only do a good job predicting up to three days in
advance," he said. "After 10 days or more, the accuracy is about the
same as flipping a coin."
                                                       -Susanne Schott