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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and today's Weather Notebook gets totally radical, dude. Well, as Jeff Rice reports today, weather had a big influence on the early days of skateboarding, as documented in a new film, called "Dogtown and Z Boys"

Just about every city in America now has a skateboard park. A place where locals can test their wheels against gravity and learn the meaning of the term road rash.

"Try to K-grind some, trying to do some casper flips."

"180 kick flips, front-side board slides."

Skateboarding is hugely popular in the United States right now, but this skate park and the many others like it across the country might not exist if it weren't for a drought that hit California in the early 1970's. A new documentary called "Dogtown and Z Boys" shows how water saving measures in 1975 led to a cool new place to ride.

"California's drought served as a mid-wife to the skateboard revolution as hundreds of pools across the Los Angeles basin were left empty and unused."

The smooth banking terrain of empty swimming pools was perfect for radical skateboard moves that had never been tried before.

"Once pool riding came in, that's like all we wanted to do."

"We were like, the first people that were riding these empty swimming pools and we had no idea what you could do."

It was infectious. Large cement bowls that copied those southern California's pools are a standard at skate parks across the country. All traceable back to the California drought of the 1970's and a few ingenious pioneers who saw an opportunity.

Jeff Rice carves on his board in the half-pipes near Boise Idaho. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. It is supported by the National Science foundation and Subaru. Related Links

More Information
http://www.sonyclassics.com/dogtown/