Imagine being so dedicated to your passion and your country that you volunteered to do the same thing twice a day, every day for more than 84 years. This 101-year-old man from New York is a contender for the world's greatest work ethic.

Meet Richard Hendrickson, a Bridgehampton, New York centenarian who's voluntarily taken weather reports for the National Weather Service twice a day, every day since 1930. He has sent the NWS more than 150,000 observations in his lifetime, according to the New York Times.

During his more than century of life, Hendrickson has lived through some of the worst weather events in recorded history, including the "Long Island Express" hurricane of 1938. He recalled to the New York Times what he saw the day that the storm tore through his hometown:

"It was a different world by sunset," he said. The farm was devastated and his weather instruments were "blown flat," he said, but none were broken. "I set them back up again and put longer stakes in the ground, the legs on the shelter," he said, "and went and milked the cows."

Hendrickson is part of the National Weather Service's Cooperative Observer Program, an initiative created back in 1890 to aid the agency in gathering weather information from across the country to fill the gaps between official reporting stations. A fact sheet on the CoOp's website states that there are more than 10,000 stations recording weather data nationwide.

Volunteer weather observers are crucial in aiding the collection of weather data. In addition to the Weather Service's CoOp program, a joint government/university venture called CoCoRaHS — Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network — collects precipitation data from thousands of observers across all 50 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

[Image via AP]