Hobbyist Meteorologist Takes Local Weather Very Seriously

If you live in or around Tarrytown and really, really want to know about the weather, you’ll want to visit Rich Caldropoli’s website www.tarrytownnyweather.com.

The hobbyist meteorologist is not messing around by just posting the temperature and whether or not it’s raining out.

Clicking around his website, you can find a wealth of information—air quality reports, sun-moon almanacs, weather forecasts and trends, radar pictures, and even a live webcam recording the weather outside Caldropoli’s door—all automatically updated every three seconds.

Caldropoli has a Davis Vantage Vue weather station mounted on his roof, which measures temperature, humidity, wind, and rain. That information is transmitted to a PC in his home that uses Weather-Display software that calculates parameters like dew point and windchill and creates charts and other graphics, among other interesting information.

Caldropoli, 49, said he was interested in the weather when he was growing up, but certainly not obsessed.

“Everywhere you go, you have to check the weather,” he said simply.

Caldropoli is part of a surprisingly large community of online weather enthusiasts, many of whom communicate on websites like www.weather-watch.com, where chat forums can generate thousands of comments. It’s a supportive group, Caldropoli says. One enthusiast he met online--Chris Maini of gateway2capecod.com--built his website in a day and others build and share their own weather software for free.     

What makes someone take up meteorology as a hobby?

“A lot of weather enthusiasts are like people who liked CB radios back in the ‘70s. Many of them have been ham radio operators,” Caldropoli said.

The father of two is hardly the “weather geek” you might imagine. An avid gardener, he works on Wall Street but does take time off to tend to his garden when he can; his own “gardening leave.”

Caldropoli bought himself the Davis Vantage Vue weather station for his birthday last year. His wife and kids were skeptical about his new hobby.

“When I got it, my wife asked, ‘What do you need that for?’" he said.  “My kids would sort of tease me and say, ‘What do I wear to school, dad?' I said, look on the website.”

So while the website is relatively new, it’s always picking up fans. His kids’ Irvington schools have used the data, and many of his neighbors receive his daily weather newsletter. Now his kids are into it, and even his wife has come around.

“Now that all the neighbors are into it, she likes it,” he said.