THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 7, 1996 TAG: 9609060068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 85 lines
JAY TITLOW of Poquoson is a wind merchant.
He doesn't sell flashlights, batteries, canned foods, masking tape or coverings for windows. But a tropical storm or hurricane can make or break his business.
From the living room of his home, the former Langley Research Center meteorologist uses wind instruments fed to his computer to update windsurfers on breezes and gusts.
``If a hurricane is in the vicinity, the calls increase,'' he said. ``Everyone wants to know where the best winds are.''
The downside is that if a hurricane hits. . . the anemometers and wind vanes can be blown off the roofs of weather stations Titlow has set up from Frisco, N.C. to Buckroe Beach in Hampton.
Titlow, 34, is the regional forecaster for the Wind Hot Line, an East Coast phone service - established in 1990 - which bills callers for the wind information. The forecasts are used mainly by windsurfers but also listened to by sailors and boaters, fishermen, anyone with an interest in the direction and force of winds.
Why not phone the National Weather Service or listen to their marine broadcasts, I wondered.
``They do a fine job,'' Titlow said. ``But their primary mission is public safety. Our forecasts are geared toward sailors.''
``Our Wind Hot Line answers two questions: Is the wind blowing hard enough to go windsurfing? And where is it blowing most?''
It's information people can't get anywhere else, Titlow says. Seventy computer-based stations from Maine to North Carolina collect wind readings every five minutes.
About 1,000 customers have signed up for the wind information along the Virginia-Carolina coast.
The station readings are linked to a computer in the Massachusetts home of the hot line's founder - Phil Atkinson. Atkinson is a M.I.T. graduate who, like Titlow, is an avid windsurfer.
Atkinson claims the hot line is the nation's largest private network of wind stations in the country. He estimates there are about 2,000 customers who share the information with 3,000 of their friends.
Atkinson said Titlow is correct when he says hurricanes can literally make or break-up the business. He recalled that when Hurricane Bob passed through Cape Cod he received a phone message about one of the weather stations.
The caller told him: `The good news is that all the weather instruments are attached to the mast and the mast is attached to the chimney. The bad news is that the chimney and the mast were blown off the roof into the sand.''
``Hurricane Edouard was very good to us,'' Titlow said. ``We were flooded with calls but saved our equipment.''
Titlow's weather central is the living room of his home where he sits surrounded by maps. His eyes are trained on three color computer monitors which display information fed from his weather stations - and satellite weather photos - received via a roof dish.
He provides four weather forecasts a day.
His wind stations - anemometers and wind vanes set atop roofs with a cable connected to a computer monitor somewhere inside - have been placed atop piers, mobile homes, permanent residences and windsurfing businesses on the Virginia and Carolina coast.
In Hampton Roads the roofs of the Days Inn motel at Willoughby and the Lynnhaven Fishing Pier's bait shop in Virginia Beach sport his weather instruments. Other locations are the pier at Buckroe Beach in Hampton and a mobile home in Sandbridge.
Subscribers to the Wind Hot Line pay a subscription fee of $40 a year and receive wind and weather conditions at six locations of their choice. Each subscriber is given a PIN number to use when dialing the hotline. An additional 95 cents is charged for each call.
``Our service is a lot like a snow forecast but more important,'' Titlow said. ``If it snows, you can go skiing during the snow or after. But if you're a windsurfer you can't even do the sport without wind.''
Titlow, who received a bachelor's degree in meteorology from N.C. State and a master's degree from the University of Delaware, says he rises each morning at 4:30 to feed his 8-month-old son and prepare his verbal forecast for subscribers.
``You can sometimes hear my son crying in the background,'' he conceded. So far he's had no complaints. Some customers make as many as 100 calls a month, he said.
If you'd like to sign up, the number of the Wind Hot Line is 1-800-765-GALE. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Gary C. Knapp
Jay Titlow operates a Wind Hot Line out of his living room. It's
mostly for sailors, boaters and windsurfers. by CNB