The Uyugan Times

Niagara Falls

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia is the birthplace of HMS Bounty

In Nova Scotia they visited the tall ship Bluenose II, a replica of the original Bluenose schooner.

The ship was built in Lunenburg, home of the tall ships. [Lunenburg is also the birthplace of another famous schooner, HMS Bounty, whose controversial history has been recounted in hundreds of books, movies and documentaries. The original ship having been burned by mutineers in the Pitcairn Islands, a seaworthy replica was faithfully reconstructed in 1960 for use in the movie, "Mutiny on the Bounty". One of the last full-rigged ships still sailing, the H.M.S. Bounty echoes back to an age when majestic tall ships manned by hardy souls explored the world's oceans.]

The couple love to travel, and after Toronto they'll be going to Puerto Rico.

She visited 40 of the 50 states of the Union

Olive has visited 40 of the 50 states of the Union including DC, and counting.

Last year they found themselves in the Cayman Islands visiting their daughter and her family. That was after Olive's trip to Asia and Batanes with some members of the family. Tom has visited Batanes twice and he loved the islands.

The Far East and Batanes trip was interesting in that after spending some time in Japan and Hong Kong, in Batanes they found themselves in an Ivatan fiesta - the San Lorenzo Ruiz Fiesta in Imnajbu in September.

Olive is a good storyteller and entertained her relatives with numerous and some humorous anecdotes (she tells them in a matter of fact way) on the trials and triumphs of her life, most especially her own experience in a foreign land. The experience is not much different from that of many of us, who by choice or by circumstance happened to be living in foreign shores.

She was in the US because of an eye accident that happened to her daughter in Batanes, and while in the States, she met Mr. Blackburn.

The two had a wonderful time visiting places in Toronto. They used mainly the city's transit system (and the commuter rail system for places outside the city) in getting around to acquaint and/or reacquaint themselves with the city.

Among the places the Blackburns visited was the Toronto Islands Park (Centre Island) and they were there mainly for the Garden Tour, but they were a week or so too early. [The park consists of 3 islands (created by sand-bars) and features a boardwalk, picnic areas, pedestrian and bicycle

Centre Island off the Toronto Harbour and a short ferry ride from downtown.

The Blackburns with Toronto Kins

The Royal York Hotel

Centre Island, Toronto Islands Park

The Bluenose

HMS Bounty

Olive and Tom with descendants of Marciano Valiente Batin and Pablo Mata Caballero

The Blackburns visit Toronto
Retired NWS Weather Specialist revisits

The hotel when it opened in 1929 was the tallest building (28-storey) in the British Empire.

Toronto - The Blackburns, Tom and Olive (nee Valiente-Elica) of Tampa Bay, Florida were in Toronto on personal business for a week in May, but while in town they had the chance to meet once again Olive's relatives (they met most of them at the Ivatan Grand Reunion in Las Vegas last year).

The couple travelled to Toronto by way of upstate New York and Niagara Falls and billeted themselves at the Royal York Hotel.

The visit was Olive's first to the city, but for Tom it's like a homecoming after a long absence for he frequented the place in the 1970s (his first wife was from Toronto).

trails, amusement park, beaches and canoe and yacht clubs. It has its own ferry service and commuter airport.]

Olive ended up saying '"Hello" to some horses

Tom loves Toronto and knows his way in and around the city, but in one instance, Olive ended up saying "Hello" to some horses. This unscheduled encounter of the horse kind happened in some RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) stables at one end of the city, and it did add more excitement to the visit.

While it's Olive's first visit to Toronto, it was not their first visit to Canada, for the couple have been to Vancouver (British Columbia) and Halifax (Nova Scotia).

Olive's youth was spent in good old Imnajbu

One of the best times of Olive's youth was spent in good old Imnajbu where the family had a Summer Villa (for lack of a better description). We used to tease her that they were the only family in all of Uyugan to have a Summer Villa.

They did visit what was left of the house and the walls are still standing, but the roof is gone.

In those days long gone, the family would spend the lazy hazy days of summer in Imnajbu, but after each summer they would return to town (Uyugan Centro or what Isantoninos call Idi).

Back to town the family went, but more often than not they found themselves short of one member.

Olive always found an excuse to stay behind and live with her Auntie Lucena (Valiente) and Uncle Narciso (Mata).

The excuse was we were told that she so loved the place, but there must be other reasons. Imnajbu (like other places in Batanes) then and even now was home to some wonderful young people ... Well, it was a case of mutual admiration and/or respect between and/or among young people.

Springtime in Toronto

Back to Toronto, it's now springtime and typical of spring weather everywhere, thunderstorms are the name of the game, but for some periods during their visit, the sun showed its face to the city.

That a former weather specialist* from the sunshine state was in town must have not been a mere coincidence. (Yes, Environment Canada - Canada's weather office - did forecast thunderstorms with sunny breaks.) - vbc, May 2006
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*Tom Blackburn

Tom has retired from the NWS (program manager), but still supports weather operations on Florida's Suncoast by providing routine observations to both the NWS and local media. This labour of love stems from his illustrious career in NWS - a career highlighted by groundbreaking efforts in both weather observing systems and workforce diversity.

Tom's early career took him around the eastern United States and Puerto Rico. Stops included Toledo, Richmond, San Juan, and a brief stint at Florida State University. His first position in the then Weather Bureau was in Toledo as a weather observer, providing data needed most importantly for aircraft operations.

Weather operations were drastically different back then. A severe weather warning meant making dozens of individual telephone calls to the media. There was no radar. An hourly trip to an aspirated shelter provided our dry and wet bulb readings (2 trips each hour if the wick was frozen). The "Wilson Grid" was used to "manually" predict the motion of 500 mb troughs and lows. Later, thanks to computers, came the barotropic and (initially disastrous) baroclinic models. However, there were no model guidance forecasts, and precipitation probability forecasts did not exist.

In the early 60s, while in Richmond, VA, Tom began pursuing larger issues, which would shape his career. He set up a small real-time flash-flood network of volunteer homeowners, reporting rainfall and creek-levels in a flood-prone area. At the same time, he became involved in the fledgling civil rights movement in his spare time.

Then Tom left the mainland for San Juan. He was now a forecaster, primarily for trans-Atlantic flights and tropical cyclones. Flight forecasts were provided to the US, South America and Europe for several international commercial carriers. Some airlines had navigators, who calculated wind direction and speed using "dog factors" (d-values - the difference between the pressure and radar altimeter readings) and air vs. ground speed. Tom's major achievement was to convert d-values into upper level constant pressure height data, which for it's time was the only source of such data over the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Tom goes to Washington: Late 60s to early 90s

In Washington, DC, Tom's first tasks included researching and writing papers on data needs and codes for World Meteorological Organization Region IV (North and Central America). This experience provided several travel opportunities to the Caribbean to answer questions from government weather representatives. Tom also arranged for other nations to encode Airmen's Reports (AIREPS) to fit the NWS mainframe computers. During the 1970's, Tom wrote manuals and revised forms for taking and reporting co-op weather observations, and started a metropolitan weather-observing network. In addition, requirements for the optimum spacing between official observing sites were implemented, using a weighted frequency of weather hazards by population density.

As civil rights became a national mandate for change, federal government agencies did likewise during the late 1960s and 1970s. Tom was part of a team that started a pilot project to bring minority high school students into the NWS. After some growing pains, Tom's initiative became a personal success, as the students were vital in publishing a monthly newsletter and collecting data.

During the early 1980s, Tom became involved with initial climate change studies. With energy prices near record levels, Tom helped to prepare daily maps forecasting the amount of solar energy expected to reach the ground across the nation - to help determine the feasibility of harnessing the sun as an alternative source of energy. These initial forecasts laid the groundwork for the Ultraviolet Index.

From the mid 1980s to the end of his tenure in 1996, Tom was the Program Manager for Cooperative Observations. Tom developed requirements for new instruments and worked with the Engineering Division to test and implement them. Improved technology allowed observations to be collected by telephone or modem. Soon after the Persian Gulf War (1991), the first Global Positioning Satellite units were field tested, and were eventually distributed to NWS offices with Cooperative Program Managers.

Even in retirement, Tom has provided vital, near real-time data to the weather community, and continues to produce and mail monthly weather summaries to his local network. Source: National Weather Service Tampa Bay.