Dishonored Prophets

New York City's blizzard of '47 (TIME, Jan. 5) was largely a memory by last week; but a lot of loaded snowballs were still being thrown--mostly at the weatherman. The New York Times sternly demanded to know what had happened to forecasts lately ("occasional snow," forsooth, on the day of the 25.8-incher). And what, asked the Times, was being done about it?

The trouble, apparently, was threefold: 1) inadequate equipment and research; 2) failure to keep up with new meteorological techniques abroad; 3) scientific inertia at home. Congress, which keeps the U.S. Weather Bureau on a starvation allowance, was guilty on the first count. But the official weatherman had to take some of the blame.

First, the Weather Bureau's research budget (now a skimpy $200,000 a year) needed a hefty boost. With about $10 million, Chief Forecaster Francis W. Reichelderfer figured that the bureau could give storm and snow clouds a deeper plumbing, learn a lot more about the mysteries of the upper air, and develop advanced radar storm detectors. The bureau also needed an electronic computer that would allow its statisticians to give more time to careful analyses of weather data. With such new knowledge and mechanical aids, Reichelderfer felt certain that the bureau's predictions would be nearer the mark.

The Times, looking for the guilty parties, suggested that U.S. weathermen might profit by some tips from their fellow forecasters overseas. Back in the 1890s, when many Americans were still getting weather predictions from the almanac, France's Leon Teisserenc de Bort was finding out about the stratosphere, charting the upper air (with Germany's Richard Assmann) and collecting weather data from 30 stations all over the world. In 1919, Norway's Vilhelm Bjerknes and his son Jakob (now head of the Department of Meteorology at U.C.L.A.) hoisted forecasting into a third dimension and a new perspective with their analyses of air masses. U.S. airlines and other private concerns were quick to adopt the Norwegian techniques, but the Weather Bureau didn't get around to using them for more than a decade.

U.S. Weatherman Reichelderfer contends that, with all their brilliant ideas, the Europeans have not advanced forecasting directly: "Their discoveries did not point the way to techniques in forecasting that would distinguish heavy snowstorms of this kind that swing inland [e.g., the recent storm] from those that remain at sea."

What's more, "U.S. meteorologists have been perhaps the most productive in the world" in recent years. More international exchange of weather information, Reichelderfer admitted, would be helpful--particularly from Asia, South America and the Arctic. And on the whole, U.S. predictions are certainly not yet good enough: "That's about what we often say around here."

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