Every report and paper that reaches the Signal Office is carefully preserved on a file, so that, at the end of each year, the office possesses a complete history of the meteorology of every day in the year, or nearly 50,000 observations, besides the countless and continuous records from all of its self-registering instruments.
When momentous storms are moving, observers send extra telegrams, which are dispatched, received, acted upon, filed, etc., precisely as are the tri-daily reports. One invaluable feature of the system, as now organized by General Meyer, is that the phenomena of any particular storm are not studied some days or weeks after the occurrence, but while the occurrence is fresh in mind. To the study of every such storm, and of all the “probabilities” issued from the office, the chief signal-officer gives his personal and unremitting attention. As the observations are made at so many stations, and forwarded every eight hours, or oftener, by special telegram from all quarters of the country, the movements and behavior of every decided storm can be precisely noted; and the terrible meteor can be tracked and “raced down” in a few hours or minutes.
An instance of this occurred on the 22d of February, 1871, just after the great storm which had fallen upon San Francisco. While it was still revolving round that city, its probable arrival at Corinne, Utah, was telegraphed there, and also at Cheyenne. Thousands of miles from its roar, the officers at the Signal Office in Washington indicated its track, velocity, and force. In twenty-four hours, as they had fore-warned Cheyenne and Omaha, it reached those cities. Chicago was warned twenty-four hours before it came. It arrived there with great violence, unroofing houses and causing much destruction. Its course was telegraphed to Cleveland and Buffalo, both of which places, a day after, it duly visited. The President of the Pacific Railroad has not more perfectly under his eye and control the train that left San Francisco, to-day, than General Meyer had the storm just described.
While the observers now in the field are perfecting themselves in their work, the chief signal-officer is training other sergeants at the camp of instruction (Fort Whipple, Virginia), who will go forth hereafter as valued auxiliaries. It has been fully demonstrated by the signal-officer that the army of the United States is the best medium through which to conduct most efficiently and economically the operations of the Storm Signal-Service. Through the army organization the vast system of telegraphy for meteorological purposes can be, and is now being most successfully handled. “Whatever else General Meyer has not done,” says the New York World, “he has demonstrated that there can be, and now is, a perfect net-work of telegraphic communication extending over the whole country, working in perfect order, by the signal-men, and capable of furnishing almost instantaneous messages from every point to the central office at Washington.”[Washington.”]
Away up on G street we see the scientific home of both old and young “Probabilities.” We see it from afar, for its high Mansard seems to be stuck full of boys’ kites and wind-mills, playing and flying with the winds. It looks like a gigantic play-house. Any mortal, scientific or otherwise, would pause before this ancient house with an infantile roof, and wonder what child of larger growth amused himself playing with all the vanes and anemometers on its roof. It is painted a pearly drab. Fresh and fair, it has the effect of a youthful wig on an old man’s head, or a girl’s spring hat perched upon the head of a wintry old lady. Inside, the house looks less like a Skimpole in brick, and really takes on a cheerfully serious air.
On the first floor, we find two large offices, and a cozy little library, which stows away one thousand books, or more, on Meteorology, and its kindred themes. In its eastern hall, hang three great weather-maps, on which the state and changes of the weather at all the stations, for the past twenty-four hours, are indicated by established symbols. The second and third stories are occupied by the telegraphic corps. To this the station-work proper is assigned. In one room is the telegraphic apparatus, connecting with the many lines over which weather-reports are received from all over the country. After translation from the cypher into every-day speech, the reports are combined, and the weather-bulletin prepared. On this floor, also, the weekly mail-reports, from the widely-scattered stations, are received, examined, corrected, and filed for future use. Here, tucked away in a little room, we find “Acting Probabilities”—Professor Abbe, the unerring “weather-man,” who makes ready the synopsis each day prepared for the Associate Press Agents, Postmasters, etc.
We are sure, also, somewhere, to come in contact with “Old Probabilities” himself, supervising all. Like Professor Abbe, strange to say, he is a young man. General Meyer looks soldierly, and trig. He has fair face and hair, closely-cut whiskers, a rather small head, and a pair of inquiring, wise-looking eyes. The entire top floor is devoted to “local observations, and the gentlemen who play with the wind-mills and high-flying kites, upon the roof.” Among the instruments used here, are Hough’s barograph, a self-registering tide gauge; Addie’s London barometer, which is acknowledged as the standard barometer; Gibbon’s electric self-recording anemometer and anemoscope, the inventions of Lieutenant Gibbon, of the Signal-Service. The working force of the office is divided into three reliefs, each of which is on duty eight hours out of the twenty-four.
Any night, one sitting by this window, at a late hour, may see a slender youth shooting past toward the Signal-Service Bureau. This is “Young Probabilities,” and he is dressed in white. He is going to forecast the midnight portents for the next day.
The positive advantage of the midnight probabilities is that they relate to the weather of the coming day, and appear at the breakfast table to tell Dick and Dolly what, and what not to do. The number of weather-maps issued daily from the central office is 600; from St. Louis 200; from New York 200; from Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati 100 each, making a daily issue of 1,300. All of these are lithographed and printed at the central office.
