For the last 48 years Joseph and Velma Hannigan have performed the same daily ritual. Every day — 17, 532 times — they have checked and recorded the weather at their Norwood home, and shuttled that information to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association for its inclusion in their weather data.
On Saturday, they received the NOAA’s highest honor, the Jeffferson Award, for their outstanding volunteerism.
“It was an honor,” smiles Velma Hannigan. “It’s been 48 years that we’ve been doing it, and it’s been very interesting.”
The retired Norwood couple have been witnessing the weather long enough to have seen its most remarkable fluctuations. Velma recalled a week in January, 1963, where the temperature never got above zero degrees, and actually hit 33 degrees below zero. She said that it never seems to get too hot, at least at their house, but about a decade ago it hit 102 degrees Fahrenheit in July.  
“Generally it stays in the 90s. Our average high in the summers is about 89 degrees,” says Hannigan.
When they started in November of 1960 they needed to go outside and spin their thermometer, she recalls. But as they got older, the technology improved and made their job a little easier. Now they have electric thermometers they can read from inside, she says, although they still need to go outside to collect and measure any precipitation.
Hannigan says that it wasn’t an interest in meteorology or a sense of civic obligation that got them started as weather observers — it was their house. The occupants of their house before them, two men who lived consecutively in the same home, were weather observers. So, the Hannigans just took over the observations.
“We kind of fell heir to it,” laughs Hannigan.
After nearly five decades of being on duty, the couple is ready to retire from it. They have put the word out that they will relinquish the job to anyone willing and curious about the weather.
“If anyone would be interested, let us know,” says Hannigan. “It’s fun to watch.”