Mighty 2DEG

On the U.S. east coast this summer, many a vacationer shivered on wet, chilly beaches or glumly played bridge indoors. Farmers and home gardeners watched their tomatoes, starved for sunlight, refused to redden. Lawns stayed green through August; human skins stayed untanned. When city folk streamed home disgustedly after Labor Day, many had the feeling that they had weathered al most an entire summer of dank Aleutian cold.

Not so, said the U.S. Weather Bureau, glancing up from its charts and instruments. A psychological illusion. In the eastern U.S., July and August had aver aged only about two degrees cooler than normal. West of the Mississippi, the sum mer was slightly warmer than usual.

But in the New England "vacation-land," August had indeed been wet, with 67% more rain than usual. Here was where psychology got its innings: vacationers consider wet or cloudy weather cold, even when the thermometer aver ages only a trifling two degrees below normal. And August is the month which most vacationers remember.

In one respect the summer was better than usual: there had been almost no "Bermuda highs" -- the masses of stagnant air which often loiter for days or weeks over the Atlantic. Slowly revolving in a clockwise direction, they plague the coast al areas with sweltering humid weather blown off the tepid Gulf Stream, make Manhattan seem like Manila or Singapore.

Bitter enemies of the Bermuda highs are the "polar air masses" which bulge down from Canada. Their cool air creeps below warmer air masses, lifts them off the ground, wringing the moisture out of them in belts of chilly rain. When a polar air mass finally dominates the sky, the weather turns cool and clear.

Sometimes a polar air mass protects the eastern states in a more dramatic way. Last week a West Indian hurricane roared northward toward New England. Storm warnings flew; fishing boats scurried to cover. Two hundred Navy airplanes fled to Albany from Quonset Point, R.I. Police on Cape Cod were alerted for onrushing trouble. But a rescuing polar air mass hovered over the threatened area, pushed the dreaded hurricane harmlessly away from the land and out to sea.

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