Category Archives: Summer Jobs

Sometimes I actually get on someone’s payroll.

Why My Mind is [Always] on the Weather

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I’m a walking, talking, texting weather resource.

Yesterday was a beautiful, clear day in central Washington, with the occasional little puffy cloud floating across the bright blue sky. It was warm in the sun, cool in the shade, and a gentle breeze kept any insects from becoming a nuisance.

A perfect day to visit with a friend down in Mattawa, a 40-minute drive south.

I was about halfway there when my phone rang. It was one of my cherry drying clients. I pulled over to make sure I didn’t lose the connection on the winding river-side road. After exchanging greetings, she asked, “So what’s the weather forecast?”

“Twenty percent chance of rain tonight and twenty percent tomorrow.”

We finished the conversation, both promising to keep an eye on the weather. I hung up and continued on my way.

You might be wondering why I knew, off the top of my head, the weather forecast for the next 24 hours. Simple: It’s part of my summer job.

My job depends on the weather. If it’s a nice day, I get the day to myself and can wander away from my base. The nicer the day, the farther I can wander. If it’s a rainy day, though, I have to hang around, waiting for a call to fly.

This means I need to know the upcoming weather all the time.

How I Track the Weather

I use five different resources to track the weather.

  • Seven-Day WeatherThe National Weather Service at weather.gov offers a 7-day forecast with “at-a-glance” graphics and a detailed textual summary. I can also click a link to get an hourly weather graph that charts percent chance of rain, percent of sky cover, temperature, humidity, wind, etc. hour-by-hour several days into the future. This is my primary source of weather forecasting information.
  • Current RadarWhen rain is in the area or on the way, I use the radar graphic at the Weather Channel to see where the rain is and which way it’s going. What I like about this particular radar graphic is that you can drag and resize the map to change the view. I can see the big picture to get an idea of how much rain is on its way and zoom in to see exactly where it’s falling. This is my primary source of current weather information when I’m in front of my computer.
  • WeatherBug on iPadWhen I’m out and about and have access to the Internet, I use WeatherBug on my iPad to see weather information, including a radar graphic, forecast summary, and hour-by-hour forecast. I can also use its Webcam images to help judge visibility in the event that I need to cross the Cascades to get to Seattle. (Which I don’t usually do during the season.) WeatherBug is also available for mobile phones; I really do need to get it back on my BlackBerry.
  • In the RV, I use my radio scanner to listen to weather summary and forecast information from the National Weather Service for my area. It’s basically local weather radio. It isn’t nearly as helpful as the other sources, but it does offer a good overview for my area and playing it tends to keep Alex the Bird quiet.
  • I also look out the window a lot. Knowing which direction the weather usually comes from and watching the sky out that way can give me an early heads-up. This is especially useful when I’m out running errands and don’t have access to any of my other sources.

What’s amazing about the weather forecast is that it’s only accurate for a short while. Yesterday, the chance of rain this morning was 20%. When I got back from my day out, it was 30%. This morning, it was 50%. And then it started raining. It’s been raining for at least an hour and radar shows me that we could get at least an hour more of the stuff.

Knowing this can keep me out of trouble. 20% didn’t seem like much of a chance — and it isn’t. But 50% is a pretty good chance of rain. It went from 20% to 50% in less than 12 hours. So I have to constantly be checking my sources.

Today’s Weather Story

This morning, my client’s son, who manages the orchard, called. It was 7:46 AM. “What’s the weather?” he asked.

I told him what I saw on radar: a long line of rain showers stretching all the way from southwest of Portland to us, moving our way. “It’s raining here,” I added.

His orchard is 6 miles northwest of my position. He lives another 20 miles north.

“I’m on my way to the orchard,” he told me. “I’ll call you when it stops.”

He means that he’d call me to fly when it stops.

So I’m sitting here, dressed in my flight suit and ready to go. The rain is still pattering against the roof and windows of my RV. The radar shows some heavier rain inbound from the Ellensburg area. And more rain beyond it that, if we’re lucky, will pass to the south of us. (That’ll make my buddy Jim happy. He’s down in Mattawa, doing the same thing I am. In fact, we spend far too much time texting each other about the weather.)

Waiting to FlyThe helicopter is a quarter mile away and already fueled and preflighted. All I have to do is pull off the blade covers. I can be airborne within 10 minutes of my client’s call. The orchard is a 4-minute flight from here. So I’d much rather sit in my nice warm RV, watching the weather on radar, than sitting out in my truck by the helicopter, blind without most of my weather sources.

But I guess this explains why my mind is always on the weather — at least this time of year.

Greetings from Washington’s Cherry Country

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Cherry drying season is off to a busy start.

Cherries

Cherries, at the source.

I’m in central Washington state for my third season as a cherry drying pilot. The short explanation of that is that cherry growers often rely on helicopter pilots to hover over cherry trees after a rain to shake/blow water off so the cherries don’t split or rot.

I’m based in Quincy, WA, living in my RV with my helicopter parked across the street at an ag strip. I arrived two weeks earlier than I had to. I didn’t know I was that early — I try to arrive about 5 days early. But my first contract was supposed to start early. It was only after I arrived that the start date was finalized to a much later date. It was supposed to start today.

Rain, Rain, Rain

Meanwhile, it’s been raining like crazy here. In the two weeks I’ve been in Washington, I’ve seen more rain that the past two seasons combined. My buddy, Jim, started a contract down in the Mattawa area about 10 days ago and has already flown more than 10 hours.

How important are helicopter pilots to the success of the crop? Well, this story should give you an idea:

Jim originally had two orchards under contract and was drying both when called to do so. One day, there was a light rain and only one grower called. He dried that orchard, then called the other grower to see if he needed his dried, too. He told Jim that the cherries didn’t seem that wet, that he thought he could dry them himself with the blower equipment he had on hand. Three days later, he cancelled the contract because he’d lost 60% of his crop to water damage after that light rain. He wasn’t even going to bother picking the rest.

The loss of so many cherries in this season’s crop makes the remaining cherries even more valuable. Last season, the problem was that there were too many cherries and the growers weren’t getting a good price. Some of them would have had a loss on their crop, so they didn’t even bother to pick.

But this year, with all the rain we’ve been having, cherries are going to be difficult to protect. Any grower who doesn’t have cherry drying hover service lined up for his orchards will likely lose his crop.

Expect to pay more for cherries this year, folks.

My First Dry

As for me, that first contract started a day early. It rained overnight from Thursday to Friday and was still raining when I got up in the morning. At about 9 AM, my grower called and said he’d likely have me start a day earlier. He launched me at 10 AM, right after the rain had stopped.

The clouds were still low when I made the 6-mile trip to his 32-acre orchard block on the Columbia River. I ducked beneath them and made the steep descent to the river. Remembering the pattern I’d flown the year before, I circled the orchard, descending. I settled into a hover five feet over the tops of the trees in the southeast corner of the block, being careful to avoid the water tower beside the trees there. And then I got to work.

Crescent Bar Orchard

My client’s orchard is the big patch of dark trees in this photo.

This particular orchard is one of the most difficult I’ll have to dry this year. There are trees at various ages and sizes. Some rows go east/west while others go north/south. There’s a gully deep in the west side with trees going right down into it and a house tucked into the south side. And a processing shed in the middle.

The grower arrived about 10 minutes after I’d started. I think he took some video of me flying around. And there were onlookers along the road from the nearby trailer park and condos.

It took me 1.2 hours to get there, hover over all the trees, and get back. The grower waved and stepped into his truck as I left the last tree and started my climb out.

More to Come

There’s a 20% chance of rain tonight and a 30% chance of rain tomorrow morning. So I’d say I have a 30% chance of flying again tomorrow.

While I hate to see the growers spending a lot of money to protect their crop, I have to admit that it’ll be a nice change for me to have a profitable year.

Diving Back In

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I get to work on my second book revision of the summer.

One of the drawbacks of being a freelancer is that you spend part of your time lining up work but have very little control over when that work needs to get done. As a result, your life can be a mixture of large blocks of time off with large blocks of time working your butt off.

This summer is a perfect storm of work. Not only did I manage to get nine weeks of contracted cherry drying work in Central Washington State, but three of my books came up for revision at almost the same time.

Fortunately, cherry drying is mostly a waiting game. Although I’d like to see more rain (and, hence, more work) in the area, the waiting time can be easily turned into working time for my book projects. Once I get motivated, that is.

I spent much of July working on the biggest of those three projects and got it off my plate right after starting my last contract of the season. When it was over, I was burned out. I couldn’t start the next project until I had beta software to write about anyway, so I took five days off.

Then the software came and I took another five days off.

I am a procrastination expert. I can find anything to do other than work when there’s work to do. Yesterday, I even paid my bills — that’s something I usually put off doing. You know you’re grasping when you start using the things you don’t want to do as procrastination tools.

But today, I get back to work.

Writer's Keyboard One of the tools of my trade.

While I’m not at liberty to discuss the software I’m writing about, I can say that the software revisions should make the project a bit more difficult than a straightforward revision. I’m expecting about a 25% change in the content of my book. I’m not doing layout, which is a good thing. But I do have to come up with plenty of fresh examples and hope I can get all features working properly in my limited setup here at the motel.

So I’m diving back in today and will keep myself productive by turning off Twitter and my e-mail client and my Web browser. I’ll set achievable goals for each day’s work and knock off chapters, one after the other. The book has 23 chapters. I’m here for the next 10 days. Two or three chapters a day and I’ll have the book done before I leave.

I probably won’t be blogging much while I’m on this crazed schedule. I’ve found that if I blog in the morning, it sucks away some of my best working time. (I’m a morning person.) And by afternoon, I’m too burned out from the day’s work to write any more. But we’ll see. This revision might just go better than I expect.