Dear Tom,
Weather information is used in many ways. In your experience, what is the most
unusual use that it has been put to? Can you relate an interesting story?
Lynn Schneider
Dear Lynn,
Indeed I can. One of my co-workers here in the WGN-TV weather center spent his
childhood in southwest suburban Brookfield. He remembers that a neighbor, Mrs.
Woods, specialized in growing potted cacti, and she took great pride in her collection
of about 75 varieties of those plants. Her house was full of all kinds of cacti.
Mrs. Woods claimed that the secret to growing cacti successfully was water -- not too
much and not too little. Every day, without fail, she would check the weather listing in
the Chicago Daily News (which ceased publication in 1978) for Phoenix, Arizona. If and
only if it had rained in Phoenix did Mrs. Woods water her cacti.
