Legendary Milford weather watcher dies

Thursday, November 5, 2009

By DAVID BROOKS

Staff Writer

MILFORD – Andrew Rothovius, who made his mark through voracious reading – he donated more than 2,000 volumes to the Wadleigh Library – and perseverance as a weather watcher – his half-century record with the National Weather Service is unmatched in New Hampshire history – passed away last week at age 86.

Until the very end of his life, when he moved to a Bedford nursing facility, Rothovius lived in the 12 Smith St. home where he had been born in 1923. His father, the late David Rothovius, was a quarry worker at the Kittredge Quarry; his mother, Evelina, and his sister, Sigrid, died years ago. He never married, and has no family in the region.

The son of immigrants, Rothovius spoke only Finnish until age 4, and tuberculosis kept him out of public school and dashed his dreams of being an adventuring naturalist like boyhood hero Roy Chapman Andrews. Instead, he explored the world through books and via the NWS weather station that he maintained in his back yard, from 1951 through the very end of the year 2000.

He was one of more than 10,000 volunteer weather watchers used by the National Weather Service to accumulate daily data about the nation’s weather and climate.

Every evening at 7 p.m., he would tally high and low tem--perature and precipitation from the previous 24 hours. Those records, plus general weather observations, were kept in logbooks mailed monthly to the NWS, and are used today as part of any analysis of weather trends in New England.

He followed in the footsteps of Charles Emerson, who had taken weather readings from his South Street home from 1926 until failing health led him to pass the torch to Rothovius.

In his entire half century as a weather watcher, Rothovius missed just one day’s observation, on May 9, 1979, when he had to go to the hospital and couldn’t get hold of his backup.

His knowledge of the region’s weather was prodigious. Rothovius knew the difference in micro-climate among various parts of Milford – noting, for example, that Route 13 near the Brookline line tends to get the most snow in town.

Rothovius also wrote more than 4,000 weather columns for newspapers, including The Cabinet.

His appetite for knowledge was obvious from his cluttered home, which was packed with books, newspapers and pamphlets on topics from medieval history to archaeology to whatever else caught his attention.

“I have a suspicion of clean people; I think those people never do anything worthwhile,” he said in a 1990 interview with The Telegraph.

He made his living as a financial analyst and also worked for Sanders Associates, the predecessor to our branch of BAE Systems, and Milford’s Kenmore Stamp Co. Weather watching, he always said, was just a hobby.

A graveside service will be held Monday at 2 p.m., at Riverside Cemetery on Nashua Street in Milford.