Elwynn Taylor was fixing a National Weather Service station on a Georgia farm when a famous peanut farmer stopped by to chat.

Meanwhile, panic ensued at the farm’s headquarters.

“They discovered the president of the United States was missing,” Taylor recalls. “They had six, maybe eight, Secret Service agents assigned to guard him. They didn’t know where he was.”

All the while, President Jimmy Carter was safe and sound, visiting with Taylor about the weather station.

That brush with presidential fame was just a precursor of the stellar career that awaited Taylor as Iowa State University Extension climatologist from 1979 to 2019.

“Over the years, I’ve heard many speakers on climate topics, but none better than Elwynn,” says Rod Swoboda, editor emeritus of Wallaces Farmer. “Addressing climate and weather history, trends, implications, and applications — his ability to deliver his message with visuals and a bit of humor is superb.”

For his dedication to Iowa farmers and agriculture, Taylor is receiving the 2024 Iowa Master Farmer Exceptional Service to Agriculture award.

Starting out

Taylor grew up in Utah, where his father was a professor of soil physics at Utah State University. Taylor’s father had an office in the same building as the climatology department.

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“I got to know those guys quite well,” he says. “In high school, I worked in the laboratory of the state climatologist.”

Showing a knack for weather as a youth, Taylor built a soil moisture measuring device that he sold to numerous clients.

“After three months, I was being paid more than any university professor because so many people were buying this little product,” Taylor says.

Taylor later attended USU as an undergraduate, racking up five majors and three minors in such subjects as electrical engineering, botany, climatology, soils, chemistry, physics and mathematics. He later obtained a doctorate in ecology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Taylor says he was miserable in his job at the National Weather Service. “My mother also knew I was miserable,” he says.

She was the dean’s assistant at USU. Back then, announcements on open positions were circulated among land-grant universities before being publicly announced.

She tipped her son off about the Iowa State Extension climatologist position. Taylor interviewed for the position, and by the time it was announced, he had already accepted it.

Coming to Iowa

“I was thrilled to come here,” Taylor says. “The weather’s just what I wanted, with lots of variety, lots of extremes. We have blizzards, we have droughts — everything that a climatologist loves.”

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The glacier that deposited rich soil in the northern part of Iowa 14,000 years ago fascinated him. “It brought Minnesota’s [rich] soil down to Iowa. When the glacier melted, it was there for all of us.”

Taylor, wife Carolyn and their two children immediately got a dose of Iowa’s weather extremes.

“I love it now, but I didn’t when we first moved here,” Carolyn says. “We moved from Alabama where it was 85 degrees [F] when we left and minus 5 when we got here. You could walk up to the roof of our house on a snowdrift.”

Taylor quickly settled into his new position, making countless visits and giving myriad talks to Iowa farmers about weather and climate. He also answered questions on a radio call-in program for years.

“It was all volunteer,” Carolyn says. “He had one of the first cellphones at Iowa State, and he’d call in from wherever he was to do his radio show.”

For Taylor, serving as ISU Extension climatologist was a pleasure, he says. “There’s no finer people in this world than Iowa farmers,” he adds.

“He just loved talking to them, loved being on the radio,” Carolyn says. “He dearly loved the farmers.”

Ball lightning: It’s a real thing

Taylor fielded numerous questions on his call-in radio program. None was more memorable than one about ball lightning, which the National Weather Service defines as “a rare and randomly occurring bright ball of light observed flowing or moving through the atmosphere close to the ground.”

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“A caller asked if it was real,” recalls the retired Iowa State University Extension climatologist. “I told him it was.”

This triggered more calls from listeners, particularly when Taylor said both he and Carolyn had seen it.

Growing up, Carolyn saw ball lightning sit on a stove in her family’s kitchen. “It sat on the stove for about four seconds; then it snapped,” she says. “My family just sat there and sat there and finally said, ‘OK!’ ”

Taylor saw it as a youth rolling down a hill. “It was the type of hill where if you rode your bicycle, you’d be down in 20 seconds,” he says. “But that ball lightning just slowly came down the hill, and finally fizzled out after two minutes.”

Master at a glance