Font ResizeLAS CRUCES - You could call her the weather lady.
Around the same time each morning, 365 days in a year, Mesilla Park resident Suzi Stoltzfus can be found with a sheet of paper in hand, making the rounds past a series of gauges on the campus of New Mexico State University.
She's had the job, gathering official weather data for the National Weather Service, since December 2001. Rainfall, temperature highs and lows, cloud cover and evaporation are all among the readings she takes.
And prior to her tenure, Stoltzfus, 61, said her daughter and son-in-law were the official data technicians.
"We've been involved in it for probably 25 years as a family," she said.
And before that, someone else took the measurements. It's been going on continuously at the NMSU climate station, located adjacent to the campus police department, since 1892, said New Mexico state climatologist David DuBois.
Stoltzfus said she takes down about 13 readings from about seven devices, "if you include the clouds."
A lifelong Mesilla Valley resident, Stoltzfus said she finds the task "fascinating."
"My father was a farmer, so the weather was always a big deal to us," she said.
Her dad, Lonnie Byer, grew alfalfa and cotton.
Stoltzfus said after she makes the rounds, she transfers the data to a sheet in Skeen Hall on campus. Then she goes home and sends it via computer to the National Weather Service's Santa Teresa station.
While the job is straightforward, DuBois noted that it does
Stoltzfus herself is retired from a career as a seamstress. Her daughter first got the weather technician job when she was in high school. Then, Stoltzfus' son-in-law became involved. But after the couple's careers took off, Stoltzfus said they didn't have the time, and that's when she stepped in.
"It funds my retirement account," she said. "But I find it very interesting because I'm one of these weird people who'll go home and turn on the Weather Channel."
Diana M. Alba can be reached at (575) 541-5443.
