Diary of a Weatherman
May 2 Mostly clear. Towering cumulus clouds at sunrise and about two hours after sunset.May 3 Mostly clear. Cumulonimbus east of us at sunrise and in the early afternoon. A massive influx of stratocumulus clouds at sunset with very light rain showers over sections of the base about an hour after sunset.Diaries bring back the days, and with the days come memories. Small moments jotted down blossom into reflections. Faces, names, laughter, anger, frustration, good people, and not-so-good people—people you’d just as soon never have to deal with again. A diary entry is like a code; a few encrypted sentences hold histories and lifetimes.VVA member Joel Rosenbaum didn’t think his diary would contain any earthshaking secrets or grand history that researchers would pore over in the future. He thought only that it would be interesting to him when he came home from Vietnam. He thought the diary would be instructive. As for historians, perhaps they would find something of value in it. But like most diaries, this one was personal.He was an Air Force lieutenant in 1968, a weather forecaster at Cam Ranh Bay. His diary recorded the Vietnam experience with a unique perspective. He wrote it every day for a year.May 4 Mostly clear. Towering cumulus clouds at sunset. Sky condition almost went scattered to broken about two hours after sunset. Towering cumulus appeared as rain showers on radar at 2100 local. (Cam Ranh had a relatively simple FPS-103 weather radar.) The rain showers dissipated. It appears that very light winds during the day contribute to stratocumulus formation after sunset.May 5 Mostly clear.May 6 Mostly clear.May 7 First thunderstorm of this year occurred at 0530 local. No precipitation, only thunder and lightning. Rest of day mostly clear.Like many Vietnam veterans, Rosenbaum had difficulty confronting the memories of his year in-country. Back home, the weather diary sat in a drawer, unread for 15 or 20 years. It was difficult for him to read. Then one day Rosenbaum decided he was getting older and nobody lives forever. So he took it from the drawer.“I didn’t think it was a terribly historic document, but I thought it was an interesting account that most people probably wouldn’t bother to keep,” he said. “There are weather records that are kept, but not quite like this. I had explanations for why things happened. It had more emotional impact than dry columns of data.”Joel Rosenbaum wanted to be a weather forecaster even when he was a little kid. He was motivated. At Rutgers University, where he earned a degree in agriculture, he joined ROTC, arguing with friends that he’d rather spend four years in the Air Force doing something he loved than spend two years as an Army draftee doing something he hated.After Rutgers, he studied weather science at Texas A
Tell others about
this page:
Comments? Questions? Email Here