My brother came over today, we both worked the Gulf of Alaska and Bearing Sea, we were discussing the weather reports broadcasted by Peggy, she new many of the tug and fishing captains by name, remember the radio going silent at 0600 so her broadcast can go out, she was a saint
3 Likes
It was a sad day when Peggy retired, and the end of an era.
It was very useful listening to the boats calling in their weather observations to Peggy twice a day, especially the boats to the west (we knew roughly how many hours until their wx became our wx).
In those days, we knew a lot of people and knew what they were up to from the weather reports to Peggy and the chatter on the SSB. It created a big maritime community in Alaska.
Today, few people even turn the SSB on. It’s rare to hear any chatter on the SSB, and even rarer still to speak with anyone. Now it’s cellphones (when there is signal), VHF with boats nearby, and Satphone or email. Unfortunately, boat to boat Satphone is too expensive to use without a good reason.
The big maritime community in Alaska is pretty much gone now. We know and keep up with relatively few people.
4 Likes
The radioed in ship/ vessel observations often times helped the NMWS to adjust their forcasts. It was good to know where everyone was so that you didn’t feel alone out in that often crappy weather. Sometimes WBH29 would relay for the Coast Guard during SAR cases. She operated an excellent station. Her husband Oscar Dyson was one of the early pioneers in the Alaskan King Crab fisheries.
Side note, I worked for a small tug operator in SE Alaska (3-5 tugs) for years that frowned on us talking on the radio except for safety stuff because he didn’t want the competition to know what we were doing or where we were at. But I would always listen to her broadcasts.
The broadcasts after Peggy were never the same.
3 Likes
I forget what the guys name on Kodiak was that did the weather when I was up there, I’m assuming that was after Peggy retired.
1 Like
Good article:
https://www.kodiakmaritimemuseum.org/happening/programs/dyson.html
If you were a fisherman in Alaska between 1965 and 2000, you would have set the schedule of your days by the voice of Peggy Dyson, who broadcast the marine weather from her house in Kodiak, twice a day over single sideband radio, at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
At a seminar in Kodiak in 1975, the National Weather Service asked people how they thought the weather forecast could be improved. Oly Harder, a longtime Kodiak fishermen, raised his hand and said, “Let Peggy keep reading it.”
The NWS took his advice, put a teletype machine in Peggy’s office so she wouldn’t have to call the weather service, and year later began paying her to do the broadcasts. She did that for another 25 years.
We were on the way to Dutch one trip and we stopped at Sand Point, ended up staying longer than expected. I remember that when we finally left Sand Point and I called in to report our weather Peggy said that she’d wondered where we were.
4 Likes