"It has gone up again to 30.02. The cold wave is coming fast. Since Dodge City, Kansas, is about five hundred miles from here, and since the 'high' is traveling at about seven hundred miles a day, and as, moreover, there is generally a slight slowing up as it makes the turn, the centre of the 'high' ought to strike us here about six o'clock tomorrow morning. The cold wave, however, is in advance of the centre, so Mr. Tighe, you need to be prepared for a cold wave tonight.
"If you ship your potatoes this afternoon, as you planned to do, they would meet severe weather and might get frozen. If you ship them tomorrow, you might be safe, but you couldn't be sure, because the 'high' is turning northwards and therefore its eastward distance is not so great. If you ship them on Monday you would be safe, but even then you could not ship them to New York, for a fast train might overtake the tail of the cold wave. On Tuesday you can safely ship them to any part of the United States."
The farmer stepped back from the table and his eye roved over the boys.
"And was that the way that you lads figured out that my fruit was likely to be frozen?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said Anton, "that was how."
"It's a marvel," the farmer declared. "I don't see why more people don't use these Weather Maps."
"Hundreds of thousands of people do," the Forecaster replied. "You'd be surprised, Mr. Tighe, if you knew how big business firms all over the country study these changes of weather. Heating and lighting plants of great cities study conditions of cold and of darkness. Municipal systems, with exposed water mains, take precautions against frost. Large stockyards, like those of Chicago, drain their water pipes. Gasoline engines are drained. Street railway companies are supposed to turn more heat into their cars. Natural gas companies are required to put on a greater pressure. Dredging of sand and gravel is suspended. Piles of iron ore, lying on wharves, are placed in the holds of vessels to keep the ore from freezing solid.
"Take ordinary questions of trade, which we all know well. Wholesalers distribute stocks of cold-weather goods to retailers when a cold spell is forecast, and wideawake retailers make special provisions for it. Advertising managers of big department stores, who prepare their advertisements for the daily papers, the day before, study weather reports very carefully. You can go into an ad-writer's office, with the sun shining in at his window, and find that he is writing display of umbrellas and rubbers. The explanation is the Weather Map, which is lying on his desk. Everywhere you go, you'll find that the really big business organizations study the Weather Reports as closely as a stock-broker studies the Wall Street reports."
