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Show : ) l O "J . -4 v. l j EATHER DEVICES ! By ROSELYN KIRK jODNTIFUL - Mark Eubank, KUTV. meteorologist and weatherman and his oieJean looked at location around the ! 3 Lake Valley for three years before JD' found the perfect spot of their home 1 j)j Mark's weather station on the east i jffldi in Bountiful. Mark was looking for .spot with interesting weather. HARX SAID he has been interested in 1 Miner as long as he can remember. He s a meteorologist first and a television jtismlity second. "I just love any kind rfweather. The more changeable and the it weexireme, the more I like it." He said : torn the spot high on the hill, he can nidi storms come across the lake. On Monday morning during the inter-' inter-' net, Mark pointed out a storm that was moving across the lake, picking up mois-..; mois-..; are. Sometimes he gets up at night and niches the storms, especially from the bedroom window. Jean admits she aches weather too. "It sort of rubs off ctrau," she said. "It's contagious." P110R TO moving to Bountiful three rats ago, the Eubanks had lived in a BBision in the Salt Lake City area, but m looking for an acre higher up on the nountaiTi where Mark could watch the itather. They ended up buying 7' acres agh on the Bountiful bench where they an hare fruit trees and a garden, in ad-iitron ad-iitron to a weather station. ( Mark measures and logs weather con-' con-' dinons every day, recording snow, rain, flnd and other climatic conditions. He ; ciarls the weather each night about mid-ughi mid-ughi and keeps a record which goes to the : at climatologist. Though the weather station and measuring devices for rain ad snow are outside, Mark has all the I ccflirols for measuring weather remoted the kitchen of the house. IHE8E HE can record the barometric ircssure, the wind speed and direction, tramfall and the temperature. Mark t1 like electronics so I rigged up the wees. Since Mark spends a lot of time rhe kitchen with his family of seven he decided that the kitchen was ' W spot for the indoor monitors. He Mered with some of the instruments , "4 a friend who helped him to put the !m together. Outside, the thermometer readings, hare recorded on the remote devices -lie kitchen, are available from ther- ' ters located on a white weather box. 'automatic rain gauge, which also on the instruments inside, and the al gauge are located near the sther box. The other measuring device "snow stake which looks something ; a croquet peg with black marks to ; wihe snow depth. mE three years that Mark has been tsn at the weather station, the s measured about 100 inches c "r- season. This year so far Mark l's "area only inches of snow a.. 7"fsthat the last snow, called the ena" by the Indians, has not yet i?'iwh" ,irs' came 10 Sa" Lake City , I a' sa,d ne (irs heard uf ine Uriim a caller. Every year since watched for the big spring snow, -wnday the snow measured three ita!h'S wealner station, but Mark . didn't think the fruit trees had t'C, The te"iperature had reached hihM bUI ,his was only enouKh to Hi n 6 and would ni" miure ,he """I the temperature deops to 29 inM tAl 22 degrees the fruit is de-he de-he said. 'hom 'IAKK a"d Jean had P'cked Slle in an area where a lot ol Jjwnd blew out of Ward Canyon. The devises for measuring rain, snow and wind are outside, but controls are remoted into Mark and Jean Eubank's kitchen where Mark has put the instruments together in a control panel located above the refrigerator in their kitchen. they took the precaution of anchoring down the roof on the house. When the wind comes from the south there is a storm approaching, Mark said, but when the shift is to the northwest, the storm is quieting down. The west wind brings clouds and snow down from the mountain If the Eubank family wasn't prepared for snow at first, they learned quickly since the year they dug their basement, it snowed over 27 inches in one night. Mark said he has walked up the hill to his home several nights. Even though his truck has a snowplow blade, he couldn't make it One night he got stuck in the parking lot at Channel 2 and had to spend the night on a couch at the station, missing one of the biggest storms of the year recorded at his weather station. MARK POINTED out that he is a meteorologist me-teorologist and television is only the medium he uses to get across his message. mes-sage. In addition to working weather news on television, Mark also owns a weather company with contracts with 12 radio stations in several states, including Montana. Mon-tana. Oregon and California, to provide a daily weather report, sometimes two. This company with a staff of four is housed in the same building as Channel 2. The morning weather broadcasts are produced in Mark's study at home. There he uses a programmed mini-computer to provide weather projections for surrounding areas based on yearly averages. HE CALLS each radio station for which he provides the forecast on the telephone. The station tapes the weather message and then plays it over the air at the scheduled time. He begins work on the tapes and finishes about 8 a.m. On Monday Mon-day and Friday he completes administrative administra-tive work until about 4 p.m. when he prepares for the weathercast on Channel 2 at 6 p.m. After the weather spot, Mark comes home to spend about two hours with his seven children who range in age from four weeks to 14 years. Sharon, 14, takes weather readings from the weather devices and reports the readings to her father when he calls from the station. Later in the evening Mark returns to appear ap-pear on the 10 p.m. news. MARK SAID although some people tend to blame the weatherman for the weather, most do so only in a kidding way. "They know that weather is not an exact science and we do our best," he said. Although Mark graduated in meteorology me-teorology from the University of Utah in 1972, he was already working as a weatherman on Channel 2 when he graduated. He had prior experience as a weatherman in Redding, Calif., where he had lived prior to coming to Salt Lake City. He and Jean are both California natives. na-tives. Mark still does radio weather reports for the Redding, California station. sta-tion. THE AREA where the Eubank's house is located is just under 5.000 feet, but the clouds that cross the lake and then are lifted high into the mountains, often release a lot of moisture. Mark says thai Bountiful Golf Course is the recipient of more rain and snow than his area, but outside of that area and the Olympus Cove area in Salt Lake City the Eubank weather station records more rain and snow than any other weather station along the Wasatch Front, not including the high mountain area. Mark said he has kept weather records continuously since 1955. His interest in weather first began when his friend had a cloud chart. "I guess I've always been a nut about the weather," he said. |