Monk's duty: weather watching

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - At the Subiaco Abbey, Brother Anselm Allen has more than one reason to look skyward.

Brother Anselm is one of the National Weather Service's top volunteer weather observers and will be honored next week for his service to meteorology. For 38 years, his daily readings have included the Scriptures, thermometers and a rain gauge.

"The superior here pretty much assigned it to me," Brother Anselm said Wednesday from his abbey in Subiaco, about 80 miles northwest of Little Rock. "I've enjoyed doing it."

Each day at 7 a.m., after morning prayer and Mass, Brother Anselm notes the maximum and minimum temperature from the previous 24 hours, any rainfall and the amount of snow on the ground.

About 55 men live and work at the Roman Catholic Subiaco Abbey, which was founded in 1878 in the Arkansas River Valley town that shares its name.

For 106 years, one of the Benedictine monks at the abbey has reported on conditions for the National Weather Service station at Little Rock. In the abbey's first report, monks noted the sky was "clear with plenty of stars."

Brother Anselm, a 64-year-old Little Rock native, took over the weather duties in 1965. The lowest temperature he can remember at Subiaco is a minus 7; the highest, 107 or 108.

Technological advances now allow Brother Anselm to check temperature readings from indoors, but he still must go outside to measure rain and snow. On Nov. 13, the National Weather Service will present Brother Anselm with one of its 25 yearly John Campanius Holm Awards, which recognize exceptional service in the network of 11,000 volunteer observers.

"During the last 38 years, the Weather Forecast Office in Little Rock has come to rely heavily on his observation reports - which are characterized by their accuracy and timeliness," said meteorologist John Robinson.

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