OSTED up in public offices, in hotel corridors, and other conspicuous places in our cities, the official weather map is a familiar sight. Even more familiar is the official weather forecast, displayed, as a rule, on the first page of the daily newspaper, and sent broadcast over the country on the little brown cards which one may see in the village postoffice as well as in the city drug-store. When a great storm sweeps over land or sea, detailed official reports concerning its progress and characteristics are published in the daily press. When a lawsuit involves a dispute as to the temperature or the state of the sky on a certain day, the official weather records are consulted.
How much do you know about the branch of the national government that is charged with the duty of keeping watch of the weather—recording its vagaries as they occur, and also predicting them, as far as is humanly possible?
Besides its office in Washington, where more than two hundred persons are constantly employed, the Weather Bureau has about two hundred stations, manned by professional meteorologists and observers. One of these will be found in almost every large city, while some are in towns of very modest importance. A regular Weather Bureau station is well worth a visit. The instrumental equipment of these stations is almost superhuman in the accuracy with which it sets down on paper the chronicle of weather happenings from day to day and from moment to moment. Little less marvelous is the system by means of which weather information—past, present and future—is disseminated from these official foci. The postoffice, the telephone, the telegraph (wire and wireless) are all pressed into service to the fullest extent—especially in giving timely notice of approaching storms and other destructive forms of weather. These agencies are supplemented by visible and audible signals, in the shape of flags, lanterns, railway whistles and so forth.
Contrary to popular belief, the Weather Bureau does not exist primarily for the purpose of telling the public (with a considerable margin of uncertainty) whether it will be advisable, on the morrow, to carry an umbrella or wear an overcoat. The important work of the Bureau is twofold. It consists, first, in the prediction of those atmospheric visitations, such as storms, floods, and cold waves, which endanger life and property on a large scale; and, second, in the maintenance of the records that form the basis of climatic statistics. In both these directions the Bureau splendidly justifies its existence.
Our national weather service was founded in 1870, and for twenty years was maintained by the Signal Corps of the Army. In 1890 it was established on the present basis, as the Weather Bureau of the Department of Agriculture.
Most civilized countries possess official services for the observation and prediction of weather, though no other is organized on quite so grandiose a scale as ours. The British Meteorological Office, the Prussian Meteorological Institute, the Central Meteorological Bureau of France, and the Central Physical Observatory of Petrograd are among the leading institutions of this character in the Old World. Admirable weather services also exist in India, Japan, Australia, Canada, Argentina and elsewhere.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 10, SERIAL No. 110
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
A SIMPLE WEATHER STATION