From the 1970s until 2002, Brother Damian Larson at Conception Abbey was a fixture on the radio and in the newspaper as the “weather monk” who gave forecasts. Brother Damian was killed in the Abbey on June 10, 2002, when shot twice by a gunman who killed two monks at the abbey and wounded two others before the gunman killed himself. There was never any indication they had been targeted but were just in the wrong place at the wrong time when the gunman from Kearney drove to the Abbey and opened fire.
Kansas City Times, November 20, 1978, interview:
Curious About the Weather? Take It From Him, Brother By George Koppe, the Staff
CONCEPTION, Mo. It’s hard to curse the weatherman in this part of northwest Missouri, even when it is pouring, and the forecast was for sunshine. The weatherman is Damian Larson, a smiling, bearded man whose gentle. manner would make him hard to dislike–even if he weren’t a member of the Benedictine order at the Conception Abbey. Brother Damian, chief of grounds maintenance for the abbey and the adjoining Immaculate Conception Seminary, has also served as the abbey’s weather observer since 1969.
But the story of how a Benedictine brother from Wichita became the Cheryl Jones of Nodaway County — whose forecasts are heard on Maryville radio and daily in the Maryville Daily Forum —actually began in 1893. That was the year a killer tornado wrecked the then-new Benedictine basilica and killed three people in t the town of Conception. “The Benedictines were from Switzerland, and naturally they had never seen a tornado,” Brother Damian says.” “I would guess it scared them pretty good.’ Brother Damian doesn’t know whether it was coincidental, but the next year Father Adolhelm Hess became Conception Abbey’s first official observer for the U.S. weather bureau. Father Hess kept the weather statistics at Conception for more than 65 years before retiring in the early 1960s.
At the time, that was the second-longest tenure among U.S. weather observers. Enter Brother Damian from Wichita. He acknowledges that he brought no meteorological training to the abbey, but he did bring a lifelong interest in the weather. “I lived in Kansas, and that gave me all the training I needed.’ At first, his job was simple. He tracked temperatures and precipitation and provided the data to the U.S.
Weather Service officials in Kansas City are relaying it to neighboring farmers and to Benedictines preparing to travel. For those travelers too busy to stop to read Brother Damian’s written forecasts on the abbey bulletin board, he devised. W.R., which is short for Weather Rooster. W.R. began as a silhouette that Brother Damian drew in response to the weather.
Gradually, the cartoon bird took on defined features and a personality, prompting students at the seminary to ask Brother Damian to draw a W.R. cartoon in the school newspaper, The Spirit. From there, it was a short step to radio station KNIM in Maryville, which, three years ago, commissioned Brother Damian to deliver a morning weather forecast. In January, sensing that the brother had something unique and potentially as accurate as the National Weather Service forecasts (which are made in St. Louis), R. Joe Sullivan, general manager and editor of the Maryville Daily Forum, began printing Brother Damian’s forecasts at the top of page one. Brother Damian’s recipe for becoming a successful media weatherman in Nodaway County calls for a liberal dose of statistics, mixed with years of personal observation and topped with a sprinkling of caution. Statistics form the basis for his admittedly non-scientific weather predictions. “When I first got the job, what struck me was all the records that had been kept since 1894,” he says. For the next four years, Brother Damian spent much of his time compiling the thousands of temperature and precipitation totals recorded by Father Hess and his successors, and preparing charts showing average temperatures and rainfall for the months and years since record-keeping began. From the statistics- and from what he sees in the many hours he is outdoors as groundskeeper, Brother Damian comes up with his forecasts and infrequent long-term predictions.
“I forecast by just watching local weather conditions,’ he says. “I start about sunrise, observing the wind and cloud directions, the sky color, and the cloud types.” “Bro. D, do you know which record book has the historic November killer freeze?” makes its best guess based on the scientific evidence available,” replies Sullivan of the Daily Forum, a newspaper editor who obviously puts little faith in any weather prediction other than the one he makes looking out the window every morning. “Brother Damian makes his best guess based on his own evidence.” Does he believe Brother Damian’s forecasts are accurate? “Well,” says Sullivan, “‘We don’t use the weather service anymore.” Brother Damian seems to have a little more faith in his own predictions than Sullivan. Although he won’t come right out and say it, he seems willing to stand on his record. “I don’t like to remember my mistakes too much,’ he says with a laugh.
“But I have made a few.” Some of his mistakes, he says, occurred when he “gave in” and changed his forecast to match a radically different one he heard on Kansas City radio. “Sometimes I’m weak and giving in,” he says. “But there have been times when I’ve stuck to what I’ve forecast even though it might be opposite to what others are saying and I’ve come out right.” Brother Damian has never met Allen Pearson, director of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City. Still, a little awe creeps into his voice when he talks about Pearson and the National Weather Service. Pearson has heard about Brother Damian, too. Although a ‘meeting between his wife and Brother Damian in a retreat at Conception is the closest encounter the two men have; had, Pearson readily admits the brother’s forecasting could be right on target *Anybody who stays in one place and watches the skies and is very observant will turn out to be a very good weather predictor,” Pearson says, “He’s a little closer to God than the rest of us, too.” Despite what some people believe, animals and other traditional weather auguries are no help.
“People misinterpret what the animals tell us,” Brother Damian says. “They say the more nuts a squirrel gathers, the colder winter it means, but it isn’t true. What it means is there was a good nut harvest that year. And if a squirrel breaks into your shed to go after the nuts you have gathered, it doesn’t mean a severe winter is coming. It means you got to the nuts first.” However, Brother Damian is willing to make some conjectures about the upcoming winter, saying that the fall of 1978.
reminds him- statistically- of 1940, a year that had a warm November followed by a mild winter. But he is quick to add that the winter of 1941 was horrible and that even the first months of 1979 could turn harshly cold if weather patterns shift. How accurate is Brother Damian’s forecasting? “The National Weather Service. There are no satellites or radar for this weatherman. “Nature,” he says, “gives me all the information I need.” Nature and his statistics, which can tell him what type of weather resulted from similar weather patterns in previous years. Brother Damian has determined that there is a “weather line” running through Savannah, Mo., about 30 miles to the south.
He believes storms that develop below that line usually cause little trouble in his area. “We know our danger from storms is from the northwest.’ he says, even though storms in the Kansas City area come out of the southwest. We have learned up here to watch storms developing along the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska.” Another key to Brother Damian’s weather forecasting is his unwillingness—the need to make too many long-range predictions. Too much can happen to change weather patterns, he says.
The St. Joseph News-Press on June 11, 2002, had this tribute after a gunman had killed him and another monk at the abbey. They were not specifically targeted but were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Brother Damian, 64, was popularly known in Northwest Missouri as the “weather monk,” the “mailman,” and for his “Holy Smoker.” For more than 30 years, he studied Conception Abbey weather logs and predicted the region’s weather. He had weather shows on radio stations in Maryville, Mo., and Bethany, Mo., wrote weather columns for three local newspapers, and drew a weather-related comic strip.
“He was an outgoing, people person,” said Jerry Larson, his brother, who lives in Wichita.
“He was a very laid-back person. He never hurt anybody.
Jerry Larson fondly remembered his ingenuity in building a large barbecue grill from scrap parts. Brother Damian used the grill this past weekend to barbecue for monks and visitors.
“You could grill 100 steaks on it,” Jerry said. He said they had shirts made with “Holy Smoker” on them.
Brother Damian, originally from Wichita, loved the outdoors and was the abbey’s groundskeeper. Also, as a part of his daily routine, he used to go pick up the mail for the abbey and the seminary in a big yellow mail truck. Tom Ludwig said everyone used to look forward to Brother Damian driving up to deliver their mail.
