Prophets for Profit

Nothing affects business like the weather, and the weather affects every business differently. Snow sells cough drops but slows construction; a wet spring makes farmers buy fungicide by the carload but gives air-conditioner manufacturers the shudders; at the first frost orchids and oranges perish but antifreeze and ski-wax sales bloom again. Yet only a few businessmen can depend on the U.S. Weather Bureau's generalized daily reports for the information they need. To get the precise, specially tailored reports they want, more and more companies are turning to private weathermen, who tell them what the weather will be one hour or one year ahead. In the process they have spawned a booming young business of 29 independent firms and some 600 private meteorologists, whose gross this year will top $15 million and whose forecasts will save U.S. industry an estimated $200 million.

Gas & Concrete. Ever since the mid-1930s a few big, weather-wise companies have had prophets for profit on their staffs. As early as 1937, San Francisco's Pacific Gas & Electric hired Meteorologist Charles Pennypacker Smith to forecast temperatures in northern California, where a 1DEG drop can change gas demand by 40 million cu. ft. But the real boom in private weathermen came after World War II, when a flood of new meteorologists and new techniques from the armed forces became available to industry. Now, at fees ranging from $25 for a short-range forecast up to $20,000 for a comprehensive yearly service, dozens of weathermen are telling airlines when to fly, builders when to pour concrete, shipping companies when and where to steam to avoid ocean storms, oil-drilling crews when to evacuate their offshore rigs.

What makes the business highly profitable is that a private weatherman needs nothing but brains to start, and has a free, ready-made research staff in the U.S. Weather Bureau. To launch Los Angeles' National Weather Institute in 1945, Weatherman Edward B. Derr merely paid $40 for a set of 15,000 surplus weather maps going back to 1905. By using the old maps and current Weather Bureau bulletins to chart climatic patterns for his customers, and by using his weather-wise head in the bargain, he now grosses well over $1,000,000 annually, has a staff of four meteorologists (salaries: around $10,000). "We make the future out of the present," says Derr, "and the Weather Bureau gives us the present for nothing." The real secret, Derr explains, is to find out precisely what a businessman has to know, and then tell him in nontechnical language.

Magic on the Stand. Nobody talks a client's language better than Dr. Irving P. Krick, 50, onetime Caltech meteorologist who started the first private weather firm in Denver in 1938. A leading rainmaker as well as a hail-halter (TIME, May 20), Krick now serves 200 companies, 260 radio stations and the Mexican Department of Agriculture. As a controversial proponent of really long-range predictions, Krick insists that daily weather can be foretold as far ahead as several years. His most famous forecast: a magic burst of sunshine for the inaugural committee just as President Eisenhower stepped onto the reviewing stand last January. Krick's system ("Do they think I use tea leaves?") is based on a theory that weather repeats itself in wavelike patterns, plus a newly rented (for $50,000 a year) Remington Rand Univac computer. By feeding vast globs of 60-year-old data into his Univac, Krick accurately forecast the inaugural sunshine 17 days ahead of time; the U.S. Weather Bureau refused to predict more than five days in advance.

To some, Weatherman Krick was merely lucky, but he and his colleagues insist that their fast-growing young business, financed by industry's millions, is making great strides in the art of weather forecasting. In Hartford, Travelers Insurance Co.'s Meteorologist Dr. Thomas F. Malone has been working on an "odds system" of reporting, which tells radio listeners the precise odds on climate changes ("rain today: 6 out of 10") in contrast to the usual vague predictions. And even a small enterpriser like Houston's John C. Freeman Jr., 37, president of two-year-old Gulf Consultants, can make an important contribution. Two months ago Freeman completed a TV-sized electronic tide-telling machine, claims that it predicted a 10.7-ft. tide at Cameron, La. well in advance of Hurricane Audrey. Actual height of the tide: 10.4 ft.

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