Salt Lake Telegram | 1913-08-09 | Page 5 | How Weather Forecasts Are Made by Government Service Experts

How Weather Forecasts Are Made by Government Service Experts (The ant of a eerie or Hn artlclee hewing the Inelde working of the wee t he r bureau.) . BT FB.AXX M OOWH Ell Clicking telegraph InstrumeeU, rat-1 rat-1 1 1 n typewriters and the busy hum af workara early aaaoaaaa the weather condition for the day all over the United States. Every district weather oflice is made a aaa ef papara, babbling ovar with tatiatiea aad surcharged with tae atraoaphara of "heat tomor row," "fair waatber today," " framing fram-ing front Monday" aad "generally warm tonight." Map, graphically ahawlag rein, now and wind eouraaa for tha nett twaaty-fonr hours ara made la tha 1700 weather ntatlons of tha country ia law than two hoar aftar tha initial road-inga. road-inga. Every station from Baagor, Me., to San Diego, Cel., aad from Belling ham. Wash., to Tampa, Via., report briefly to ita central station tha barometer ba-rometer aad temperature readings of tha fixed hour in the morning, which weald label with tha tiasSpa da- ' "'wTth this ia hand, aad comparing with former map, yon would thea ob-aerye ob-aerye the direction of high aad low area, wind current, heat wave, etc., aad formulate a foreeaat. Then sop. Ksing you had painstakingly figured at the storm area from Oregon, approaching ap-proaching this city, would Just mi a fair Zion, yon would pronounce your foreeaat. "Fair weather." However, supposing a alight digression oeeurred, say a wind from the north came up aad drove the edge of your storm area jut barely over Halt Lake City, sousing your foreeaat with rain, yon would be in fearful straits. "Maklr, " "know-nothing," "know-nothing," "lobster" aad eimilar epithets epi-thets would he burled at you. Yaw would be tbe nnhappv weather ma a and would be romlemued eternally aa an irreeponaible "gueaeer. " And, worse still, had your calculation beea correct, the sweetest morsel you could have picked up would have bean: "Well, IH be hanged. He did get II right once, didn't bet" range from 5 o'clock la Calif araia to 8 o eloek In New York. The compile tioa of this data, afford erode material for weather map the nation oyer. All this i done in lea than two hour time the reading, telegraphing, compiling, returning and transforming of weather figure into man and should yon happen to be a weatler man tomorrow to-morrow vour duties would be aa follow: Pile out of bed and reach tha office at 6 o'clock in the morning, if at work in this state Take readings of the barometer and thermometer, wire them to a certain one of tea central station sta-tion and then wait for returning wire. To wire your figure yon would use a hort .simple code. For Inrtance, if you wished to aay "Temperature. 84; barometer, ba-rometer, 30," you would wire tha ay Ha blee "U-D-e-v-a-n," which would appear ap-pear perfectly intelligible to tha re eeiving compiler. He would tranalate tha first syllable to say "Barometer 38" aad toe hut two would indicate "Temperature 84." A short root would than intervene while vour reading, along with hundreds hun-dreds of others, would be compiled at tha central headquarter. When all are reported the entire batch would ba returned re-turned to you poet hat and you would next figure tha day 'a foreeaat aad weather map. Confronting you would atand a large blank map of the United States, on which ara tha various weather stations With pencil in hand you would connect all point of the same temperature aad draw circle around thoee section haying tha aame barometric pressure. The circlee you would then label a crooked, jagged eujeruue linee. or Isotherm, toii