Dear Readers,

Did you lose power over Thanksgiving? We did, and so did many of our friends and neighbors.

The nasty snowstorm, which dropped seven or so inches of heavy, wet snow on us, knocked out power to more than 150,000 Maine homes. This included homes in Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Southport and Edgecomb, and much of Lincoln County.

At our little house on the hill, we lost power for a time, but it snapped back on about a half hour later. We had just enough time to get out the lanterns and light a couple of candles.

Others, like some of our friends, were electricity free for a day or so. Some struggled through the Thanksgiving festivities by hosting the traditional dinner by candlelight. Others shifted the venue and celebrated at another house. Some farsighted folks just fired up their generators.

Central Maine Power reported that most customers had power back by the weekend thanks to the efforts by the more than 1,000 workers from around New England and Canada. These cold weather all stars gave up their own holiday celebrations to turn our power back on. We thank them for their hard work.

One reason the Thanksgiving storm didn't turn this very American holiday into a disaster was — drum roll — the federal government.

Yes, we had lots of advance weather warnings from that very same federal government that seems to serve as a punching bag for some of our favorite politicians, Internet and print scribblers, and our friends, the gaggle of electronic talking heads.

A federal agency called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA for short, is a big reason our 2014 Thanksgiving remained a celebration and not a catastrophe.

Although NOAA was formed in 1970, its roots go way back to the early years of our nation.

In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson, a weather buff who collected climate data, established an agency to survey the coast, called the U.S. Coast and Geodesic Survey.

During the War of 1812, Army surgeons were ordered to collect climate data. The nation's Weather Bureau was established in 1870.

In 1970, several agencies were combined to form NOAA. Then President Richard M. Nixon proposed its creation to “better protect life and property from natural hazards,” according to the NOAA's official history.

Today, the agency uses sophisticated technology, including satellites, radar, computer models, flying platforms and more than 10,000 dedicated volunteers to collect climate data. This data is then translated into charts, diagrams and predictions and released to the public.

That is why our friends at big city newspapers, television stations, websites and other sources of information (including this newspaper) are able to let you know, well in advance, of dangerous weather situations.

Does our dedicated staff at the Boothbay Register and the Wiscasset Newspaper have a staff of trained meteorological experts? Of course not. But we do have access to weather predictions from NOAA and its National Weather Service. And we pass that information on to you.

You can access that information, too. Just put NWS Maine in your device's search engine and it will pop up.

So, the next time you read about an impending weather event, in our papers and websites, or on your TV set, you are reading information that was collected by your government, its workers and volunteers from an agency funded by our tax dollars.

Seems to me that it is money well spent.