Science: Warm and Cloudy

About ten years ago the U. S. and Britain divided the Atlantic’s weather reporting between them; storms east of 35° longitude (even with the eastern edge of Brazil) were hunted by Britain; those west of 35° by the U. S. and Canada. But since the opening of World War II, the great British weather-broadcasting station at Rugby has been silent, lest it give aid to enemy bombers, and U. S. weathermen have been left completely in the dark about weather forecasts east of 35°.

Last week Canadian isobars* also disappeared from U. S. weather maps. Although the attitude of Canadian weathermen towards their U. S. collaborators continued warm, their forecastings were cloudy, omitted any mention of barometric pressure. Chief U. S. Weatherman Francis Wilton Reichelderfer was nothing daunted. Said he, U. S. meteorologists have developed such a weather-eye technique that lack of Canadian reports will not seriously affect U. S. forecasts. Most U. S. weather is brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, or somewhere on the vast North American hinterland south of Alaska, and most U. S. storms move from west to east.

*Isobars are lines joining areas which have the same barometric recordings at a given time.