Citizen scientist measured Rockies snowfall for 50 years. Two new hips help him keep going
Four miles from the nearest plowed road high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, a 73-year-old man with a billowing gray beard and two replaced hips trudged through his front yard to measure fresh snow that fell during one mid-March day.
Billy Barr first began recording snow and weather data more than 50 years ago as a freshly minted Rutgers University environmental science graduate in Gothic, Colorado, near part of the Colorado River’s headwaters.
Bored and looking to keep busy, he had rigged rudimentary equipment and each day had jotted the inches of fresh snow, just as he had logged gas station brands as a child on family road trips.
Unpaid but driven by compulsive curiosity and a preference for spending more than half the year on skis rather than
