November 27, 1935-Weather Forecast Tracked to Source; Uncanny Show Bared
Men of the Washington Weather Bureau.
THE WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1935
Weather Forecast Tracked to Source; Uncanny Show Bared
By ERNIE PYLE
If you wait outside the door and listen, you hear a loud voice coming out of the room, constantly and evenly, as tho a train dispatcher were calling off trains in an empty station.
Not another sound comes out. You figure somebody must have left a radio turned on. But when you go in. . .
There you see a dozen men, leaning silently over maps, listening, and making quick marks. At the end of the room, on a high stool before his little desk, sits a man facing them and reading loudly from slips of thin paper.
They are assembling the twice-daily weather forecast for the United States of America. It is one of the most uncanny things in Washington. It takes about two hours. Let’s start at the beginning.
Down in the wire room, in the basement of the Weather Bureau, an old brick building at 24th and M streets N.W., are five telegraph operators.
They take down messages rapidly. Each gives the weather conditions at a certain place. More than 200 stations in the United States report daily. Reports also come from airplanes, ships at sea, from far-away islands, and from stations in countries all over the world. Hundreds and hundreds of them. From Europe, Africa, China, everywhere.
The telegraphic slips go upstairs on a little dumb-waiter. A messenger hands them to this man who does the reading.
One message says: “Mount Washington: Bobolink robinson fatboy boddice bibulous peguan.” And one more from Mobile says: “Godfather bedbug freefarm dimension.”
The man doesn't even laugh. He translates (the parentheses are mine): 30.18 (barometer), plus 18 (temperature), west 16 (wind), snowing all night, plus oh two (change in pressure since yesterday), 18 (dewpoint), min. 18 (minimum temperature, 36 (maximum temperature), got it Mr. Brooks?” And so on and on. The code is not for secrecy, but to save telegraph tolls.
The men around the room have maps all alike. But each puts down a different thing. One records only wind on his map, another only temperature, another only the barometer. The Army and Navy each has a man there, too, filling in maps.
This starts at 8:05 every morning. At 8:30 Forecaster Charles L. Mitchell drives up, parks his car, and goes into his private office. Twenty years a forecaster, five in Chicago, 15 here. And still he learns new things every day.
He takes off his coat, slips on a black alpaca office coat. Then he drinks a glass of ice water. It has been ordered at his desk every morning for 10 years. Joe, the colored boy, always has it waiting for him.
Then Forecaster Mitchell strolls out into the big room where the shouting is going on. He glances over shoulders at maps. He walks around; studies. Then he settles down to one map, shares it with another fellow, and starts drawing lines with red and blue pencils. The man with the voice, his name is Charles Comstock, is still talking. He says:
“Now we hear from ships. And have we got ships! Here are some very fine ships.” He reads off where they are, and what they have radioed about the weather. Then some more cities. Then ships again.
“Here are some boats,” he says, “not quite the caliber of those we have first had. But very nice boats nevertheless.”
And he reads them off. “Here’s a newcomer,” he says, “the S.S. Tamahan (He spells it out.) Let’s see what his weather is.”
Comstock is very good. His voice is deep and clear; his delivery is easy to catch, he talks swiftly and crisply. And he puts in enough extemporaneous aside-talk to keep everybody from going crazy with repetition.
The reports begin to dwindle off around 9:15. Comstock waits for one batch to come from the wire room. Everybody lights a cigarette, and relaxes. Everybody but Forecaster Mitchell. He is deep in study. He puzzles long over the reports (on a separate table) from the airplane observers.
There are 22 scattered over the country. Only nine reported today. They are missing just where he needs them. Weather was bad for some of them, The plane at Dayton has a dead battery. Shreveport cracked up taking off. He has to do the best he can without these upper-air reports.
Mitchell sits on a high stool, looking at his map. Without raising his head he starts talking: “Ohio, slightly warmer, small rain in southwestern section.”
A man with a typewriter types it, reads it back to him. A duplicate is written on carbon to the telegraph operator who has come up from below. The instrument clicks, very lightly. You can hardly hear it. And in a few minutes Ohio knows what its weather will be for tonight.
Mitchell talks on, as if to himself. The typist takes it all down. In 10 minutes the whole country has been covered. The men drift out with their maps, for further study and assembly, and Mitchell goes back to his office.
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