David Michael V. Padua is the Executive Director of the Typhoon Preparedness Center in Naga City, Philippines, and clearly knows his weather (and weather stations!). He was recently featured in the The Philippine Daily Inquirer as the "One Man Weather Center."

The "maverick meteorologist" has been a weather buff since childhood and may be one of the few who considers himself lucky to live in a place so well "blessed" with cyclones. He feels that people in the Philippines have had a " fatalistic bahala na [come-what-may] attitude" and his mission is to change that.

His web site, Typhoon2000, is a resource to many in Naga City, the Philippines, and internationally. He tries to make information understandable so residents can prepare for storms. He even offers a text message updater for up-to-the-minute storm information. He also registered maybagyo.com, which also leads
to the typhoon2000 website, as a backup system. “At least the site is accessible through either of the website addresses even if traffic is high,” he said.

When there is a storm, Padua has an adrenaline rush. He find a thrill in the suspense of tracking a storm. His friends tell me that if he is sick, it seems that he get his vitamins from tracking storms. With his laptop and mobile Internet connection, Padua manages to update his website every hour when an area is threatened,
compared with the fourtimes- a-day updates from the website of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

He has rustled a few feathers at PAGASA, with whom he swears he doesn't want to compete. But compete he does. Rather famously, back in 2004, he forecast that Cyclone Unding would indeed hit Naga City, while PAGASA said it would miss Naga City. Unfortunately for Naga City, Michael won that bet.

Michael is no newbie when it comes to Davis stations. "I've been using Davis products since 1995 when I got a Weather Wizard III," he wrote. "It was destroyed by STY [Super Typhoon] Angela and replaced in 2004 with a Vantage Pro. That one was partially damaged by STY Durian. Then I added a Vantage Pro2 in 2007. I have just installed my fourth Davis product, the brand new and award-winning Vantage Vue which I purchased from the Davis Phillipines distributor, Apex Inc. "