"Regular sunny days?" Christensen asks. "Who cares?"

Christensen has been able to put his interest in the weather to good use as the official Campbell "Weather Watcher" for NBC 11. Just about every day for the past seven years, Christensen has been reporting Campbell's weather to the news station's WeatherPlus meteorologist John Farley, who then reports it on the evening news.

Farley started the Weather Watcher program in 1998 as a way to make the local weather reports more accurate. Without this program, NBC 11 would have to give reports for the Bay Area based on an official climate site at the Mineta San Jose International Airport and other sites run by the National Weather Service in Mountain View, Fremont and Morgan Hill.

"In terms of the South Bay, the sites are pretty sparse," Farley says.

The weather watchers provide an invaluable service, he adds.

"It's analogous to the military," he says. "No matter how much equipment you have, the bottom line is you still need boots on the ground."

When Farley announced he was looking for "weather watcher" volunteers from different neighborhoods, he got about 120 phone calls.

"Brian was very pushy; it was great," he says.

Christensen, 48, who lives just east of the Pruneyard Shopping Center, says he's been interested in the weather since high school.

"I didn't have any formal training, but I've done a lot of reading and Internet work," he says.

Farley says training isn't necessary. The only difference between his interest in the weather and theirs, he says, is that he went to school to learn about the weather.

"We're all kind of weather geeks, just my geekiness got sanctioned," he says.

From his home on Midway Street, Christensen keeps track of Campbell's rainfall, high and low temperatures, wind speed and direction, humidity and more.

"Anything you want to know, the whole enchilada," says Christensen, a former Campbell parks and recreation commissioner.

Though Farley provides some weather watchers with thermometers and rain gauges, Christensen bought his own equipment.

Christensen's high-tech weather-watcher gear sits somewhat inconspicuously atop his roof. A metal pole sticks out from the top of his garage, holding the anonometer, which measures wind directions and looks like the tail of a model airplane. Next to it is a device that looks like three black measuring spoons spinning furiously in the wind, which measures wind speed. There is also a black container positioned on the pole to collect rain.

The gear is overshadowed by a large antenna that stands next to it. Christensen is also a licensed amateur radio operator.

The measurements from Christensen's weather instruments are electronically relayed to a box in his laundry room.

"People think I stand on a ladder all day doing this, but I don't even need to go outside," he says.

Just to ensure he's got the right measurements, Christensen keeps a second container to collect rain on the other side of his house. This second rain gauge holds up to 10 inches of water, which Christensen says is plenty.

"If we got five inches, these houses would be floating down the street," he says.

Campbell usually sees about 14 inches of rainfall in a year, Christensen says.

Christensen calls Farley every day a little after 4 p.m. with his report. There's just one weather watcher for each community, and "it's a volunteer thing, so if I'm on vacation, Campbell goes without," Christensen says.

Besides reporting the Campbell weather to Farley, Christensen also keeps track of it on his personal website. He keeps track of the city's month-by-month rainfall, as well as the cumulative rainfall for each year. Typing "Campbell rainfall" into a search engine will most likely bring one to Christensen's site.

"Folks from any where in the world can know exactly what the rainfall is in Campbell," he says. "That's something I do just for fun."

Christensen says his neighbors often ask him about the weather, and he even gets inquiries from out-of-towners who are planning to visit the Orchard City.

"We have seen his little antenna and figured he was a weather buff," says Christensen's neighbor Jane Harmer, who often walks by the Christensen house with her husband, Jeff.

Neighbor Warren Lindstaedt, on the other hand, says it took him a few years even to notice the equipment on Christensen's roof. Lindstaedt says he appreciates the NBC 11 weather report.

"It's more of a local report," he says. "Otherwise, they report more on the San Francisco area, which I don't particularly care about."

Christensen isn't the only weather buff in his family. His father, Harvey Christensen, is the "weather watcher" in Los Gatos, and his uncle Leroy Christensen is the "weather watcher" for Sonoma.

For more information about weather, visit Brian Christensen's website at www. christenseninc.us.

El Camino Hospital