My interest in the weather began in 1972 with the gift of a barometer. My wife, Jeanie, gave the instrument to me when I was succumbing to the stress of school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it became not only an escape from intense academic work, but the first step on the road to a different kind of awareness about the world. From the start, I was never content just to watch the barometric needle. I was fascinated by the alchemy of my charts and graphs that turned rain and Sun into visible