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J6 S.
stations and 12 regional forecasting centers in the United States, together with countless stations in other countries, constantly keep watch on the irrepressible giant which is the world's weather.
Most important of the members of this great family of watchers are the forecasters, all highly skilled tech' nicians. They are responsible for the accuracy of tomorrow's weather fore' cast. But it is impossible to place all the weather factors in a formula and come up with a forecast, and for this reason the weatherman occasionally is wrong. What sometimes bothers the forecasters, however, is that people seem to remember only their mistakes, not the more frequent "on-the-head" forecasts. But most weathermen accept this philosophically. They accept without protest, too, the innumerable jokes about weathermen, their predictions that go wrong, and their "crystal ball" forecasting.
Actually, weather prediction is becoming less and less a matter of guesswork. The wet -finger -in -the -wind method has been replaced by scientific gadgets that never need rest and that can pluck weather information out of places in the atmosphere that men cannot reach.
For example, forecasters know that most of our weather is "manufactured" in the upper air, high above the normal range of airplanes. Information from these upper regions is necessary for more accurate forecasts, and the weatherman's most useful tool in this case is the radiosonde. This is
February, 1949
an uncanny little radio transmitter attached to a balloon which sails high into the sub-stratosphere, sending back temperature, air pressure, and humidity data as it goes. Another device follows the path of a small balloon as it soars aloft, recording its position as the winds at different levels blow it about.
In addition to these aids, the forecaster also has information gathered on the ground 24 hours a day by automatic mechanisms which record temperature, humidity, wind velocity and direction, and air pressure. Then too, pilots bring in reports of weather conditions along their routes, and sometimes special planes are sent out to investigate potentially dangerous storms. During the autumn months, squadrons of weather planes are kept ready in the southeastern states to fly out over the Caribbean and keep track of any hurricanes that may threaten the East Coast.
But these mechanical aids are secondary to the information from ground observers. Their reports clatter into the central offices every hour on the automatic typewriters. Forecasters use these local reports to check on changing weather conditions all over North America.
Today's weather in the Yukon or Mexico may be in your back yard tomorrow, but don't v^orry about it. The weathermen have their eyes on it. Maybe they can't postpone tomorrow's thunderstorm, but they can warn you in time to take your umbrella.
The driver is safer when the roads are dry; the roads are safer when the driver is dry.