KOMO News recognizes John Willis for his decades of weather observations

…and for just being a nice, Orcas guy

— from Scott Sistek, KOMO News —

 A man dedicated to continuing his family’s 125+ year legacy of chronicling the weather on Orcas Island has passed away.

John Willis died Saturday in a Bellingham hospital from health complications at 79, his sister Betty Marcum tells me.

Willis was a fixture on Orcas Island, known to many of the island’s residents as a sweet and gentle man always ready to give a hug.

But in the weather community, Willis was known as the fourth-generation weather observer whose family’s dedication to keeping an eye on the skies have given researchers a treasure trove of historical weather data that spans back into the late 1800s.

I was lucky to interview John for a weather blog story back in 2012 to learn about how his family kept up the recording of the weather, through thick and thin!

“We’ve just kind of kept up, maybe it’ll be our claim to fame, our legacy,” John Willis told me in 2012.

The legacy began in 1886, when the Willis’ settled on 150 acres in Olga, which is on the south-central part of the eastern peninsula of the Orcas Island. In 1890, Richard C. Willis began taking daily weather observations.

“The Signal Corps put out request for volunteer observations and send them in,” John Willis said. “That’s how it got started. My great-grandfather took it upon himself to do that, and we just kind of kept it going.”

In his log dated April 1897, Richard Willis notes that temperature was measured on the veranda on the north side of his house and he took temperatures at 7 a.m., 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Richard kept going for 17 years until he handed over the reins to his son Cecil in 1907.

Cecil had to get creative in April of 1925 and move the thermometer under a roof of his south porch because his shelter was blown over in a storm. The logs note that a new shelter was planned in a few weeks.

Two years later, tragedy struck as Cecil was killed in a logging accident on the property in July of 1927. That’s when Cecil’s son Culver took over, who with the help of his mother Louise and sister Frances, kept the weather records going.

Culver would be blessed with a very long life and maintained the records for 60 years until he died in 1985 at the age of 87. No worries though, his son John took over and kept the records going until earlier this year.

He told me back then he had an old max/min thermometer that records the day’s high and low, a rain gauge, and small anemometer near the water. And he’d take notes of anything significant.

“I keep an eye on the wind and we get some unusually heavy winds, I usually write that down and generally try to describe the sky conditions or hailing or general observations,” he said.

Fraser wind events the most memorable

He says their home was full of notebooks with the over 125 years of observations — much of it not really cataloged but it’s all been reported to NOAA over the years, and they keep the official records. I asked what are the most memorable weather events he and his family had witnessed there and he said the Fraser Wind arctic blasts were the worst. Specifically he mentioned the epic winter of 1949-1950, the snowstorm and howling winds of December 1990 into January of 1991.

Perhaps one of the snowiest events was the December 1996 snow that brought three feet to parts of the island, and 28 inches measured at his home. “Still managed to get out there and struggle to take care of the livestock,” he said. “Pretty crazy situation.”

He also mentioned the blizzard of 1916, which his dad said left so much snow that there were still some leftover snow drifts in May.

His family’s dedication has not gone unnoticed. In the 1980s, his family was invited back to Washington D.C. to be honored among others for their dedication as weather observers.

“Nice to know we were appreciated, we really enjoyed it,” he said, adding he has a photo of him shaking hands with Marilyn Quayle.

Future of the site is uncertain

Willis’ sister says John never married and doesn’t have any children, so she doesn’t know if the record keeping will continue. But their legacy will live on in the decades of weather data the Willis family provided.

A celebration of Willis’ life is scheduled on Oct. 5 and hundreds are expected to attend, Marcum said.